The great intellectual property trade-off; BBC, June 25, 2017

Tim Harford, BBC; The great intellectual property trade-off

"For most economists, scrapping intellectual property entirely is going too far. They point to important cases - such as new medicines - where the costs of invention are enormous and the costs of copying are trivial.

But those who defend intellectual property protections still tend to argue that - right now - those protections offer more than enough incentive to create new ideas.

Dickens himself eventually discovered a financial upside to weak copyright protection.

Twenty five years after his initial visit to the US, Dickens returned, keen to make some money.

He reckoned that so many people had read cheap knock-offs of his stories that he could cash in on his fame with a lecture tour. He was absolutely right: off the back of pirated copies of his work, Charles Dickens made a fortune as a public speaker, many millions of dollars in today's terms.

Perhaps the intellectual property was worth more when given away."

Bootlegging Dickens: A Novel Look At 'Bookaneers'; Podcast [5 min. 18 sec.] via NPR's All Things Considered, 5/10/09

Podcast [5 min. 18 sec.] via NPR's All Things Considered; Bootlegging Dickens: A Novel Look At 'Bookaneers':

"Hollywood is constantly battling overseas bootleggers. But in the 19th century, publishers in the United States made a fortune bootlegging British authors — even the biggest, like Charles Dickens."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103993065

Jonathan Yardley on 'The Man Who Invented Christmas', Washington Post, 11/30/08

Via Washington Post: Jonathan Yardley on 'The Man Who Invented Christmas', Dickens was facing financial ruin when he imagined Ebenezer Scrooge:

"In the United States pirated editions of the book were quickly issued, including one from the ostensibly reputable Harper and Brothers, which infuriated Dickens, a passionate advocate of international copyright. A bogus edition appeared in England as well, but there he won his legal case against the offending opportunist. There also were dozens of unauthorized stage adaptations, but by and large he was less concerned about them. The practice was widespread, and the dramatizations provided free publicity for the book."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/26/AR2008112603425.html