riaa

Section 5.4.4 Returns to Scale in Media Goods talks about the increase in sharing and downloading files.

"With digital downloading from the Internet available, or becoming available, for all these goods, the marginal cost of additional copies is fast approaching zero. This has resulted in a huge piracy problem for recorded music and is becoming an issue with movies. To counter this, the RIAA has instituted legal action targeting the makers, and very recently users, of share-swapping software."

First, I had some issues with the way the text approached this. When talking about the advent of VCRs, there was little discussion of the legal implications of how people were using them. People were recording TV shows and sharing them with others. Did not this threaten the entertainment industry at the time? Did the industry not try to put a stop to it? Please tell me if I'm inaccurate in this, it was a little bit before my real cultural awareness set it.

Anyway, those issues not withstanding, I did think this was an interesting view of the phenomenon of file sharing. I guess it was kinda implicit or understood but I never really thought of file sharing from quite this economic perspective. The reason it's so easy to share files is because of the very very low marginal cost.