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The Economics of Ideas and the Ideas of Economists

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Author Info
William R. Johnson ()

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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.

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File URL: http://www.virginia.edu/economics/RePEc/vir/virpap/papers/virpap368.pdf
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Virginia, Department of Economics in its series Virginia Economics Online Papers with number 368.

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Length: 23 pages
Date of creation: Nov 2005
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Handle: RePEc:vir:virpap:368

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Web page: http://www.virginia.edu/economics/home.html

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Related research
Keywords: Intellectual Property property rights creativity

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
O34 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Intellectual Property Rights
O38 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Government Policy
Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

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References listed on IDEAS
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  1. Robert W. Fogel, 1999. "Catching Up with the Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 1-21, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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This page was last updated on 2008-7-1.

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