[lbo-talk] Dumb QOTD: What kind oflaborproducesintellectualproperty?

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Wed Sep 7 17:02:29 PDT 2011


SA writes:


> My sub had lapsed for a long while and I decided to re-up when I saw
> there was something in an issue that I wanted
> to read. I'm not sure I would have done it if I could have
> just peeked at the pirate website ...

I think you're making my point (one of them, anyway): if you only got a sub because there was a single item you wanted to look at, this is no Business Plan For Doug. You are an outlier in the question of What Does Copyright Do For Doug. The fact is that you're uninterested in reading his newsletter, and while I think you're poorer for it, I don't think it would matter one way or another to Doug if you either a) pirated the one item you were looking for or b) forgot about the whole issue (i.e., didn't get a one-use-only-subscription that you won't renew).

You are exactly like someone who downloads a pirated copy of a Britney Spears album and never plays the songs on your iPod: meaningless to the discussion.

The fact is that you *can* pirate almost anything you want, and it hasn't seemed to make much of a difference to all but a few producers. The music industry *distributors* have gotten nailed in the last 15 years, for sure -- but so what? Likewise, Doug will soon have his revenge on book producers when all that's left is secure paywalls like Kindle: they will be cut out forever.

Doug says he wants $20k to update Wall Street, and maybe that's a good deal and maybe it isn't. But at least it won't be so lopsided in the future if/when he decides to write another book. More than half of all books sold by Amazon are the Kindle version, and the question of copyright enforcement goes away for platforms like that. If he did update the book and sold it on Kindle for $10, he'd get to keep at least $5 of it. $20k is "only" 4,000 copies ... hmmm, maybe I should be Doug's Venture Capitalist :-)

/jordan



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