-
Strategies for a discontinuous future.












Thursday, August 12, 2004
 


The EFF's recommended economics of file-sharing - a Pigouvian tax; or, as they call it 'Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing'.

Great for consumers, terrible for publishers(record labels), and - crucially - artists. I wrote a paper about this in b-school; it was actually my first thought when the replication wars broke out - 'why not create an ASCAP/BMI for file-sharing?'

The problem is that, from an incumbent's pov, the economics are less attractive than that of any other solution - even the current one. Think about how ASCAP and BMI haven't exactly encouraged a flourishing songwriting industry - the gains to licensing are simply too small, even if they're redistributed efficiently. As a consequence, we don't see massive entry into the songwriting business. I think the EFF is incredibly cool, but from a strategic pov, I'd be surprised if this is the industry economics that emerges.

-- umair // 7:58 PM //


Comments:
Post a Comment
search



new


input

due diligence
ventureblog
a vc
techblurbs
tj's weblog
venture chronicles
terranova
the big picture
gigaom
venchar
bill burnham
babak nivi
n-c thoughts
paidcontent
techdirt
slashdot
london gsb
mefi
boingboing
blort
hardwax
betalounge

ing
morgan
chicago fed
dallas fed
ny fed
imf
world bank
nouriel roubini

portfolio
contact

mail.
uhaque (dot) mba2003 (at) london (dot) edu

skype.
umair.haque

atom feed

technorati profile

blog archives