To understand what DRM does to artists, you need to understand how copyright and technology interact. Copyright is inherently technological, since the things it addresses—copying, transmitting, and so on—are inherently technological.
[...] I argued that it would be deucedly difficult to continue to apply the Adam Smithian economic principles regarding the relationship between scarcity and value to any products that could be reproduced and distributed infinitely at zero cost. I proposed, moreover, that, to the extent that anythi…
[...] Geoffrey Ingham has most effectively conceptualized the essentials as: (1) private enterprise for producing commodities, (2) market exchange, (3) a monetary system based on the production of bank-credit money, and (4) a distinction role for the state in relation to these features.
[...] calling capitalism a "mode of production" highlights the fact that there are other, different ways of organizing the social relations of economic life. Feudalism, which preceded capitalism in much of Europe, was one in which economic activity was organized by coercive lord-vassal relations of…
The problem is not that capitalism is a conspiracy of greedy people. The problem is that capitalism, as a way of organizing our collective life, does its best to force us to be greedy—and if that is true, then finger-pointing at nasty CEOs and investment bankers may be morally satisfying, but fails…
