[LINK] $60 million music piracy operation

[Chris Maltby]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 11:20:40AM +1000, Dean Povey wrote:
> A similar, and even more incredible lie is told when the recording
> industry tells you that "piracy adds $X to the cost of the CD".  Again,
> the simple economic fact is that competition generally works to decrease
> costs.  In theory, piracy (and P2P/Internet downloads in particular)
> should work to keep the price of a CD down, by greatly decreasing the
> scarcity of the resource.

You note that they don't tell us how much of the price of a CD is
related to ephemeral (in the sense that they add no value to the
commodity being traded) expenses such as advertising, promotion,
marketing, anti-piracy lawsuits, political lobbying etc. Or, for
that matter, how much is allegedly "added" by the "cost" to the
industry of shoplifting, sale of stolen or used CDs, etc.

Chris