Re: A Chance Encounter with Brad Templeton, of ClariNet

[wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)]

Adam Shostack writes, incorrectly (:-)) :
> 	Brad is in the 'intellectual property' business.  He makes his
> money selling access to information.  There is an entire parasitic
> class that does nothing useful, but makes money from the idea of
> copyright.  (Most entertainment industries operate like this.  
[ Economic and political descriptions and predictions deleted. ]

Brad's really in the information collection, sorting, and distribution 
business, which relies primarily on contractual agreements rather than 
copyright.  The newswire services, like AP and Reuters, sell their news
stories to newspapers, who print them on paper, and don't redistribute
the raw feeds to other places mainly for contractual reasons; otherwise
the AP and Reuters would sell them news service.  Sure, copyright laws
reduce the number of newspaper readers who cut the stories out and
sell them to newspapers themselves, but those cutout stories are
something far worse than copyright violations - they're Yesterday's News,
and hence not worth much.

In Brad's business, he buys the wire service reports and sells them to 
*his* customers, who also agree not to redistribute them without paying
Brad and/or the wireservices their fees.  Anybody who rips off one
of his stories is either violating a contract with Brad, or perhaps
with his/her network provider, assuming the network provider has
done a proper job of contracting about such items.  Unlike newspaper
stories, however, stolen Clarinet stories are Five Minutes Ago's news,
which may still be worth something.

As far as the Marxist-drivel "middlemen are parasites" argument goes,
in old-style physical stuff businesses, you had workers who really made stuff,
bosses who decided what stuff to buy and bought the raw materials,
money-lenders who loaned money to bosses (*with varying splits of the risk),
distributors and salesmen who helped stuff-users and stuff-makers get together,
and truckers who brought the stuff to the users.  NONE of them are inherently
parasitic, and markets find ways to avoid paying for parasites because
they cost more money than the "services" they may provide - the main
parasites in those businesses were the folks who got their cut by threatening
to use violence against people who didn't pay them - like tax-collectors
and Mafiosi and some of the union folks (not most of them, most years.)

In the information business, many of the same people are around,
in similar functions.  You've got information-generating workers,
bosses, venture capitalists, salesdroids, distributors, internet-providers,
and the like.  The differences are fuzzier - sorting through information
to find *interesting* information is somewhat like generation and somewhat
like distribution.  I tend to agree with Adam's dislike of "intellectual 
property", since having a copy of a piece of information doesn't deprive
the original holder of his/her copy, and if it's an invalid concept,
than some use of intellectual property laws (and the government force
threat behind them) can be parasitic and abusive - but on the other hand,
the so-called "parasites" are usually the information-generating workers
themselves or folks who've paid those workers money in return for the 
privilege of exploiting their work - so be careful who you insult!

In the music industry, the reason modern artists have much less need for
the producers and distributors and moneylenders isn't because all those people
are unnecessary parasites - they were there because they were providing useful
services for the artists and/or consumers.  The change is because technology
has altered the economics of production and distribution, and the services
that they used to provide, which were critical at the time, are less useful
now because we have other ways to get similar functions done at lower cost.


		Bill Stewart, Anarcho-Capitalist for Sale or Rent.....