Re: Paul Krugman holds forth on the future of publishing

Well put, Lee.

But let's add to that the remainder system, which actively 
removes books from shops when they could be competing on 
price with a new batch of books. What would the fruit 
business look like, do you suppose, if fruit wholesalers 
were willing to buy back at full price anything that the 
grocer hadn't been able to sell? How much would you be 
paying for your oranges and apples?

Every market distortion ultimately hurts the consumer. Since 
the vast majority of the population spend more money on 
books than they make from writing them, removing market 
distortions like copyright and the remainder system must 
provide a net benefit. And every profession has a long 
history of defending those market restrictions which act to 
their benefit and criticising those that hurt them; but 
hopefully the public and the politicians who are meant to 
serve them know better.

Jon.



Lee Passey wrote:
> Marion Gropen wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 

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