Re: Paul Krugman holds forth on the future of publishing

Marion Gropen wrote:
> On Jun 9, 2008, at 7:18 AM, Jon Jermey wrote:

[snip]

>> The  
>> degree of misallocation gives us an indication of how badly the  
>> market is malfunctioning due to artificial restrictions on trade  
>> and distribution.

> I disagree with this definition, and with the assumptions that  
> underlie it.
> 
> First, what are the artificial restrictions?

Copyright law. By nature, there is no inherent ability for an author to 
control the dissemination of his or her work, except through secrecy. In 
order to encourage authors to publish (i.e. make public) their works, 
some governments have created artificial monopolies, thus granting 
authors some limited degree of control over the dissemination of their 
work so long as they have the cooperation of the government.

I believe that what Mr. Jermey is suggesting, is that the degree of 
misallocation is a good indicator of just how well (or badly) the 
copyright monopoly is doing in achieving its stated goals.

To my knowledge, the Statute of Anne (1710) was the first attempt at 
creating this artificial monopoly specifically "for the Encouragement of 
Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or 
purchasers of such Copies."

Recognition by one nation of copyrights granted by other sovereign 
nations really did not occur until the Berne convention of 1886 (less 
than 150 years ago).

The intellectual forbearer of the Statute of Anne, was the monopoly 
enjoyed by the Stationer's Company granted in 1557 during the reign of 
Mary I. According to Wikipedia, "Under this regime, company members 
would buy manuscripts from authors but once purchased, would have a 
perpetual monopoly on the printing of the work. Authors themselves were 
excluded from membership in the company and could not therefore legally 
self-publish, nor were they given royalties for books that sold well." 
The Stationer's guild monopoly is interesting in that it was not really 
enacted to protect even publishers, but as a means of royal censorship. 
Only Guild members were allowed to practice the art of printing, and if 
you printing something that displeased the crown, you could lose your 
patent and effectively be put out of business.

Copyright, and other governmental restrictions (even for propaganda and 
censorship purposes) on what has become erroneously known as 
"intellectual property," is now, and always has been, an artificial 
restriction.

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