Posted on 07/27/2013 4:54:30 AM PDT by Lloyd Marcus
I'm not aware of any economists commenting about the extent to which those who are willing to spend money to punish bad behavior benefit others, or those who let bad behaviors slide harm others, but failure to address such issues will lead to societal decay. If someone who picks a company at random and tries to cheat them of some small amount is sufficiently likely to get away with it, and sufficiently unlikely to suffer any significant consequences, that unscrupulous people can expect to profit from such behavior, such behavior will become widespread and impose major costs on businesses that pay off the crooks as well as those who spend money going after them. If, however, such crooks can expect to be pursued with enough vigor to make their schemes unprofitable, then few crooks will actually engage in such behavior, the total cost to businesses will be relatively slight.
As a simple example, suppose a business is faced with a choice of paying royalties to use the song "Happy Birthday" or opposing such royalties in court. Because the melody for "Happy Birthday" dates back to the nineteenth century under the title "Good morning to all", and has a documented association with the title "Happy Birthday to You" before the earliest possible copyright cutoff, I would consider implausible the notion that the song represents an original work which was not publicly disseminated before the copyright cutoff (much less before the claimed copyright date of 1935). I would expect that if someone wanted to dispute the copyright claim in court, that party would ultimately emerge victorious. On the other hand, while there are many people and companies who could benefit by having courts recognize "Happy Birthday" as being in the public domain, there would be relatively little benefit to any particular one of them. Because the damage from the false copyright claim is so dilute, there's little incentive for anyone to fight the claim. It's easier to simply give the claimed copyright holders money to which they are not entitled. A company which refused to tender such money and fought the claim vigorously would save relatively little in royalty costs, compared to the legal costs necessary to achieve victory.
Rest in Peace FreeperFriend...
Thanks GOPJ.
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