DISQUS

Tim, don't those online music purchases also come with a great deal of debate about whether they are sales or licenses ? (ISTR that the record companies get to pay the musicians less if they're one rather than the other).

If they're sales (and they certainly look like sales to me - no ongoing relationship, etc, etc), the same logic applies.

Why should contracts be involved in a straightforwrad sale ?

I buy a DVD (in Europe). I buy a DVD player )in North America). I want to play my DVD on my DVD player, which means that I have to break their market-manipulating DRM. Where's the contract ?

Where's anything other than a restriction of my rights to my tangible property ?

Most DRM systems are "tied selling", which is illegal.

How many iTunes songs were bought before they reduced the number of computers they could be copied to ?
(admittedly, they're a little cheaper).

Exactly.

This is simply another example of how copyright tends to protect creators who have already created while disfavouring those who have already created (see also documentary creators and the appropriation art people).

It's no coincidence that the people pushing hardest for longer terms and more exclusive rights are those that already hold lots of copyrights rather than those who are trying to decide whether to create a work.

I find it surprising that most the average age of a purchaser is 37 and yet parents are present 92% of the time.

Either video gamer buyers are sad people who still go shopping with their parents into their early 30s or most purchasers are kids and there's one really, really old guy who brings the average age up.

While I appreciate arguments about marginal cost and the like, my biggest problem with any argument comparing intellectual property with physical property is that the two conflict. Every right granted to an owner of intellectual property is one less right granted to the owner of physical copies of that intellectual property.

If I own a music CD and the government decides to grant the music copyright holder a propping-up-the-table right, the value of my physical property has decreased because I can no longer use it to prop up the table without first buying a license.

Every single intellectual property right has this effect of decreasing the value of physical property. That's the main reason I think we need to be very careful to grant the correct amount of rights to owners of intellectual property.