Capitalism


A Lesson for the RIAA and MPAA

Lost in their ongoing attempt to keep the music market constrained the RIAA continues to harrass music downloaders and the MPAA is attacking peer 2 peer applications and working to have anticopying technology built into consumer goods.
They would, perhaps, be better served to look at what is happening over at that bastion of capitalism on the web: the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Amongst other activities these folks sell books and an interesting thing has happened to the volumes that they have made available on the web: the sales of paper copies improve. For example, they recently made a book called Omnipotent Government available on the web:

What happened was precisely the reverse of what the publisher expected. Instead of lost sales, the sales of the book shot up. In the few weeks since the text went online, more copies of this book left our warehouse than during the whole of the last decade.

The RIAA and MPAA folks would do well to think about this:

The point is to expand the market and not assume a fixed number of consumers. Books online and offline reinforce the viability of each other, just as movies in theaters boost movies in rental, and free radio helps the market for CDs for purchase. It takes some thought and entrepreneurial judgement to understand why, but the history of technological development informs the case.

Read the rest of the article.
Via Hit and Run.


Search and Seizure

Just in from Europe:

The European Parliament has passed the EU Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive by 330 votes to 151.

At passage, the law imposes civil penalties on counterfeiters, but amendments aimed at bringing in criminal sanctions for piracy, favoured by large media companies, were defeated, and a late-tabled amendment restricted the civil penalties to so-called professional counterfeiters, and not individuals copying music or films on an occasional basis “in good faith” for their own use.
… the directive does allow companies to raid offices, homes, seize property and petition courts to freeze the bank accounts of those they believe to be engaged in piracy.

Do they really mean “allow companies to raid…?” So now Vivendi, et al, hire their own enforcement arm to perform the function of the police?
Well, I’m going to look at this in more detail when time permits just to make sure what the article says is a reasonable translation of the proposed law. But, if it is even close to right then folks in the EU are in real serious trouble.
Via Nipper’s Patent Law Blog.


SPAM Suits

Well, I wasn’t convinced when the ‘Can-Spam’ legislation originally passed that we could count on the big folks to go after the spammers. I was wrong:

Microsoft Corp. and other leading Internet companies, in an unusual joint effort among corporate rivals, announced six lawsuits today against hundreds of people accused of sending millions of unwanted e-mails in violation of the new federal law against “spam.”

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. But, heck, even if they successfully stamp out these folks in the US I expect that the increasing number of items I see from Russia, etc., will continue.
You can find the actual complaints at Findlaw.


Where Does the Buck Stop Now?

Apparently it still stops in the Lincoln and other White House bedrooms:

Bush’s criticism of the Clinton fund-raising scandal is one of the reasons the White House identifies guests. In a debate with Vice President Al Gore in October 2000, Bush said: “I believe they’ve moved that sign, ‘The buck stops here,’ from the Oval Office desk to ‘The buck stops here’ on the Lincoln Bedroom. And that’s not good for the country.”
Bush’s overnight guest roster is virtually free of the famous � pro golfer Ben Crenshaw is the biggest name � but not of campaign supporters.
At least nine of Bush’s biggest fund-raisers appear on the latest list of White House overnight guests, covering June 2002 through December 2003, and-or on the Camp David list, which covers last year. They include:

Yes this bit of hypocrisy should be pointed out but no one should be surprised that bedsheets are traded for friendship or money.
First, you can pretty much count on the bush team either having done, doing or planning to do something they hammer the opposition about.
Second, and more important, the US government transfers huge amounts of money from the losers to the winners and the latter’s stripes change only modestly from administration to administration. Until we the people put a stop to the massive transfers we can expect politicians to seek favours votes and donations and reward those who give them with both bedsheets and favorable laws and regulations.
Via Calpundit who picked it up from It’s a Crock. The Apostropher also comments.
Update: John Cole and Mark Kleiman both argue that a Bush – Clinton comparison is off the mark and I acknowledge both their points which are different enough that you should go read their posts.
I will, though, stick to what I say in the two paragraphs above the ‘Via’ statement.


Ideological Purity II

As promised I retook the Libertarian Purity test. This time I tried to take on the persona of a libertarian minarchist: score 105. What I don’t know is whether this would meet Professor Caplan’s scoring for a minarchist since his grading scale is really based on perfection being a pure anarcho-capitalist.
Tomorrow, if time permits, I’ll be someone with libertarian leanings and a more practical view of the next 20-40 years.
Oh yea, Jim Henley discusses all of this a bit here.