Economics and Finance

   

The Internet, the Creator of Public Goods — Epublic Goods?

Authors: Blair D. Macdonald

Media and entertainment industries are in decline; profitability is down due to more access to computers and file sharing. Is the Internet producing ‘Public goods’ (ePublic Goods) from what were ‘Private goods’? With respect to tradable goods via the Internet, the assumption used to classify ‘Private goods' and ‘Public goods' in an economy (the degree of excludability and rivalry) was analysed and tested. It was concluded that these goods within the entertainment/media industries are slowly being repositioned from 'private' goods to their extreme opposite, public goods—termed in this paper, ePublic Goods. The ‘free rider problem’ of ePublic Goods has become the ‘free copy problem’. It was hypothesised that the Internet was the cause. It was discussed that Public Goods—by tradition—fail in the market and are therefore provided by the Government. Is this to be the destiny of Internet goods or any item on the Internet subject to file-sharing or digital copying in any form, including—at the extreme—the human genome, solid object 3D printing, and even money in the form of bitcoins?

Comments: 4 Pages.

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Submission history

[v1] 2015-03-28 15:00:22
[v2] 2017-04-11 02:25:27
[v3] 2026-03-01 09:14:41

Unique-IP document downloads: 338 times

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