Nick Reynolds-FM&T wrote:
"But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits
and should be abolished."
I'd like to see some hard numbers/evidence for this statement. How much
are the costs? In dollars and pounds? How much is the benefit? Not
statements of principle, but numbers.
My opinion is that is you had hard numbers, the case for abolishing
copyright would not stack up, and that copyright creates more benefits
than it costs - in numbers.
I don't but others do.
A dutch filesharing study.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01/20/dutch.study.file.sharing/
Outcome filesharing is revenue positive, many other studies have reached
the same conclusion.
"A study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs has just
concluded that the net economic effects of file sharing for music,
movies and games are positive. The resulting 142-page report, put
together by research company TNO, doesn't narrow the results to strictly
illegal content but argues that, as consumers save money on unnecessary
purchases and spend it on more wanted content, they save much more in
wasted spending than music production companies lose."
The costs of the enforcement of the three strikes law, for BT are
greater than inflated music figures for losses due to filesharing.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/04/sabip_7m_stat_sponsored_by_bpi/
Figures are from BPI study.
"BT has warned that the file sharing efforts proposed by the government
and Peter Mandelson could cost the industry £1m every day. That would
increase each customer's bill by £24 per year, said John Petter, the
head of the company's consumer division.
The music industry claims that file sharing costs them £200m each year,
though many analysts have poured scorn on those figures, saying that
that statistic is based on flawed methodology and inaccurate monitoring,
as well as the assumption that one download is equivalent to one lost sale."
The telecoms industry which could be damaged by lockdown, is many times
larger than the Content Vendors, not to mention the Consumer Electronic
Industry, again damaged by lockdown.
Andrew Michael Odlyzko is a mathematician who is the head of the
University of Minnesota's Digital Technology Center.
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.communications2.pdf
"The Internet is widely regarded as primarily a content delivery system.
Yet historically, connectivity has mattered much more than content. Even
on the Internet, content is not as important as is often claimed, since
it is email that is still the true “killer app.”"
Table 1 presents statistics that show the relative sizes of several
sectors of the U.S. economy. (See pdf for Table 1).
Will that do as a start ?
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