[12246] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Phil Karn)
Thu Jan 9 12:23:30 2003
Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 00:59:59 -0800
From: Phil Karn <karn@ka9q.net>
To: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
Cc: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
In-Reply-To: <200301081017.h08AHeC29754@new.toad.com>
John Gilmore wrote:
> The kind of segmentation your graphs rely on can easily be created
> by *time* segmentation. Producers start off charging high prices for
> their goods, and then gradually reduce the prices as they ramp up
> volumes, pay off their startup costs, learn the desires of their market
> better, etc. This gets the social benefit you desire, without propping
> up any artificial forms of segmentation.
Exactly. Time segmentation already practiced by the movie studios and
book publishers, and it's pretty hard to arbitrage -- until somebody
invents time travel.
Much movie piracy is driven by the strange practice of releasing new
movies in different countries at different times. This is a major form
of geographic market segmentation. If "Two Towers" had been released
world-wide on the same day instead of only in the US and a few other
countries, then there would have been little motivation for anxious fans
around the world to get US collaborators to make a crappy videotape of
the film in a US theater and export it. They'd just go to their local
theaters and see it in its full glory.
Phil
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