The Economics of Ideas and the Ideas of Economists

William Johnson

Virginia Economics Online Papers from University of Virginia, Department of Economics

Abstract: On college campuses across the country and on millions of home computers, too, young adults download from each other digital files containing recorded music and films for their entertainment. The owners of that copyrighted material pursue the downloaders with legal action as well as the software services that facilitate it. Napster’s existence as a free file-sharing internet site was shut down in 2001, and the Supreme Court has recently ruled that a successor file-sharing service, Grokster, engaged in copyright infringement by providing an easy way for individuals to exchange files. The amount of filesharing activity is not trivial; Paul Romer (2002) estimates that Napster users were downloading at the rate of 1.5 billion downloads per month before Napster was shut down and that the consumer surplus generated by downloading roughly equaled the revenues of the recording industry.

Keywords: Intellectual Property; property rights; creativity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 O34 O38 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2005-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-sog
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Related works:
Journal Article: The Economics of Ideas and the Ideas of Economists (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vir:virpap:368

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