Pocket PC eBooks Watch - eBook and beyond  
 http://cebooks.blogspot.com 

Business 300
Revolt of the Poor - The Demise of Intellectual Property
A book which costs 50,000 DM to produce with a potential audience of 1000 purchasers (certain academic texts are like this) - would have to be priced at a a minimum of 100 DM to recoup only the direct costs.
If illegally copied (thereby shrinking the potential market as some people will prefer to buy the cheaper illegal copies) - its price would have to go up prohibitively to recoup costs, thus driving out potential buyers.
But this defies logic: the market today is global, the costs of production are lower (with the exception of the music and film industries), the marketing channels more numerous (half of the income of movie studios emanates from video cassette sales), the speedy recouping of the investment virtually guaranteed.
Moreover, piracy thrives in very poor markets in which the population would anyhow not have paid the legal price.
In the near past, no one considered knowledge or the fruits of creativity (art, design) as 'patentable', or as someone's 'property'.
The monopolists of knowledge and intellectual products cannot allow competition anywhere in the world - because theirs is a world market.
I published a few book on the Internet and they can be freely downloaded by anyone who has a computer or a modem.
The demise of intellectual property has lately become abundantly clear.

posted by Jerry permanent link