An Economic Theory of Clutter with Application to Internet Pornography
Cancelled
Sendil Mullainathan
Wed Jan 30, 02:30-04:00pm, E51-395
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
As services such as Napster have made clear, the Internet appears to pose a serious threat to any industry that markets material that's easy to copy: music, photos, video, writing. Anyone can buy one copy and simply resell it or give it away, making it in principle quite hard to make a profit. In short, a combination of costless entry and costless production should drive prices towards zero. In this activity, the market for pornography will be analyzed. The pornography market provides a sharp contrast to the Napster experience: clutter makes it hard to find sellers and especially those who are giving away pornography for free. In principle, this market should suffer, but the logic falls apart. The speaker will argue that, in fact, the long-run outcomes in these markets will not be the complete decay of property rights, but instead that clutter actually helps sellers prevent copying and redistribution.
Web: http://econ-www.mit.edu
Contact: Melissa Maney, E52-380, 252-1565, mbegley@mit.edu
Sponsor: Economics
Latest update: 10-Jan-2002
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