Sunday, April 25, 2010

Bleg: Copyright (over-extension) as rent-seeking

I've merely glanced at the Wikipedia article on "rent seeking," a phrase which I've read dozens upon dozens of times in the past two or three years without knowing what it means. I found this sentence very interesting in the copyright context: "Rent-seeking behavior is distinguished in theory from profit-seeking behavior, in which entities seek to extract value by engaging in mutually beneficial transactions."

Note that Adam Smith divided income into three categories: wages, profit, and rent.

Here's an article that brings game theory into the discussion.

My question: Has anyone used the concept of rent-seeking in analyzing the current highly-conflicted status of copyright" Or IP generally?

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