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JustinColanninoFirstPaper 20 - 05 Dec 2009 - Main.JustinColannino
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Ice-Water, Digital Distribution, and Social Costs | | | However, if we decide as a society to reject alternative methods of providing compensation and stay the course so that the way we provide compensation and recognition is to allow authors to control and sell their distribution rights absolutely, even when making an additional copy is free, then I think that we owe it to ourselves to recognize the social costs imposed by such a system. This essay will proceed by observing how the distribution right fundamentally alters the distribution properties of works representable in digital form. Taking this observation, it will explore how a system that does not interfere with frictionless distribution could enhance our form of self-government.
Phase Transitions and Charging for Distribution | |
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< | A useful way of illustrating the cost of rents on distribution is through the concept of phase transitions. A phase transition can generally be thought of as an abrupt change in the behavior of a system at a critical point. In physical science, the most common example of a phase transition is the difference between water molecules at < 0°C, ice, and water molecules at > 0°C, water. Not limited to physical science, other examples of systems possessing a phase transition include certain NP-Complete problems and certain types of graphs. | >
> | A useful way of illustrating the cost of rents on distribution is through the concept of phase transitions. A phase transition can generally be thought of as an abrupt change in the behavior of a system at a critical point. In physical science, the most common example of a phase transition is the difference between water molecules at < 0°C, ice, and water molecules at > 0°C, water. Not limited to physical science, other examples of systems possessing a phase transition include certain NP-Complete problems and distributed wireless networks. | | | The marginal cost of distributing goods also has a phase transition centered around the critical point of zero: goods with marginal cost = 0 have different properties than goods with a marginal cost > 0. Eben put forward a few propositions about the different properties of goods above and below this critical point, and I would like to recall/reemphasize two. First, when marginal cost of reproduction and distribution is equal to zero, goods are less likely to be lost because most of the copies distributed will be controlled by a different entity and freely able to be redistributed. This allows seekers to find the good in many locations, and prevents loss through distributed storage. Second, and more importantly, zero marginal cost allows a copy to easily be distributed to anyone interested, for free. |
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