The Grateful Dead was famous for letting their fans tape their live shows. I remember being on a flight to Vegas from Seattle with a planeload of Deadheads and the guy next to me had a suitcase full of live concert tapes that he had recorded with each tape meticulously labeled with the concert date and location.
The Dead recognized that allowing fans to record for free widened their audience and the band became one of the most profitable groups in history. The band’s lyricist, John Perry Barlow, went on to become an Internet guru.
Barlow wrote in Wired in 1994 that in the information economy, “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away.” He explained to Joshua Green of the Atlantic: “What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then–the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes. In the physical world, that works beautifully. But we couldn’t regulate [taping at] our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.”
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1: “theft: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.” If one still has what one had before an event, there is no theft.
2: Who wants a book written by this moron? But if they did, they still may buy it after sampling it. If the moron is so worried and fetishistic he should not put his book on the internet.
“theft: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.”
Yep. The income for my ebook. I see we agree.
Who wants a book written by this moron? But if they did, they still may buy it after sampling it. If the moron is so worried and fetishistic he should not put his book on the internet.
And unfortunately, that is the best argument the thieving viewpoint of IPless anarchists can come up with. If your living is from writing books, you can make your living out of everything but selling them, because of the hordes of anarchist thieves. I’m just off to sign up for my pole dancing course. I’ll do the strip while balancing my ebook on my head, and see if I can fluke some money that way.
Pity I don’t live in a capitalist minarchy that protected my property rights, and I could make my money from selling the books I write, the products of my mind.
And on that other topic, you never did answer, Flossy:
How many more Allied soldiers would you have been prepared to sacrifice due to the vicious and protracted war that would have endured if it wasn’t for those bombs?
For me, not one. (Though in fact hundreds of thousands of Allies would have been killed, and I’ve seen estimates of millions of human lives overall).
How many flossy? 10,000 soldiers fighting for freedom from Japanese brutality. 20,000?
Geez, why nuke a city full of civilians? Why not nuke some Japanese battleship in the middle of the ocean instead? Wouldn’t a simple demonstration of American capabilities force Japanese surrender immediately?
Mark Hubbard is the shiznit! He reminds me of Eric Dondero. Repeating the same argument over and over to see how long until all other commenters start completely ignoring him. Maybe the 325th post. I can hope.
“Yep. The income for my ebook. I see we agree”
A good portion of the American people would love to cut off GM’s income. The Auto Manufacturing Unions are even more aggressive and just as moronic on that subject as Hubbard is on his imagined rice bowl. Refusal to prop up or endorse every business model a person can come up with is not theft.
“Geez, why nuke a city full of civilians?”
A more openly psychotic Randian on another forum recently tells us why, Jay:
“Killing enemy civilians to stop them from providing moral and economic support to an initiator of force is moral. Its not a moral option but a moral obligation. The alternative is the destruction of morality and thus of man’s life in principle. A cost of living in a nation which initiates war is becoming the target of your leader’s enemies who must kill you to stop him.”
The sleazier Randroid here pinpoints the exact children who must be vaporized, flayed alive and poisoned: ones born in Japan. Ones who were not even born yet when criminals who also happened to be born in Japan went to China to massacre civilians. The music goes round and round. Osama bin Laden explained the same Randian wisdom to innocent Americans.
Somehow Hubbard’s “logic” escaped all of these American officials on the scene:
http://blog.mises.org/archives/011689.asp#c673143
(link to link, sorry, this crazy thing won’t let me straight link)
Dear Mark,
>> theft: the felonious taking and removing of
>> personal property with intent to deprive the rightful
>> owner of it.
>Yep. The income for my ebook. I see we agree.
So, you had some money before someone “stole” your ebook, and afterwards you don’t have it. Futhermore, the missing income is equivalent with the ebook (i.e. it is impossible to distinguish between them). I see how in a world where contradictions can be valid at the same time it makes so much more sense than substitution effect and externality.
I TOTALLY agree with Mark Hubbard on this one… My idea is the product of my mind and I own it. I own the rights to it. Anarchists are futile in their thinking…
How about then answering my questions, which all IP proponents so far failed to do: how do you distinguish between externality and property (on the causality scale) and between substitute and property (on the similarity scale)? Without a method to distinguish between them, by reductio ad absurdum, the first human ancestor to discover the most abstract social concept (human action), would own all human action of everybody that came after him.
The Grateful Dead is known for their countercultural views on freedom of choice. Musicians typically are not concerned with revenue as utility but are most concerned with fame and recognition as the primary utility. The band surely did not realize the Economic implications this huge shift in the supply curve would cause for their demand. They just wanted to be appreciated by their fans. I doubt they knew how lucrative this concept would become for the band at the time but it worked. The supply curve was shifted rightward indefinitely by giving away rights to music. In turn it greatly affected the demand of substitute goods such as tickets and merchandise. The band managed to make an elastic good, music, into an inelastic good, free music, by taking price out of the equation. I believe the Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is rewarded in this circumstance. Keeping in mind the second Golden Rule “Whoever has the gold makes the rules”. Sure not all companies should give away their inventories to receive greater profits but the music industry is primarily based on labor by musicians. In return the consumer gave the Grateful Dead more revenue of substitute goods. Keep in mind the fame and recognition that was the primary utility for the band and music appreciation was the primary utility of consumers. The cost and revenues were not at the forefront of the idea.
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They could not control the recordings so they embraced it setting up specific locations just for others to record. Even though Jerry passed on the license for their brand including Grateful Dead shirts is as popular as ever. That shows just how loyal the fan base is.
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