--- Philip Hart <philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU> wrote: > On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, Steven Brust wrote: [...] >> For the record, I heartily approve of used book stores, and >> buying used books. > Do you there think there should be a mechanism to pass some > nominal payment back to you when someone buys your work nth > hand? Others have covered the legal and moral aspects of this question. I just want to point out briefly that from an economic perspective, there is such a mechanism: each additional purchase of a used book increases (at the margin) the market price for used books, which makes new books a relatively more attractive purchase. In addition, the right to resell a book makes the initial decision to purchase it new more attractive. There are other ways as well -- for example, a reader who purchases a used book may enjoy the book and later buy a new copy of that book or new (or used) copies of the author's other work. Or an author publishing now may benefit from the demand for books that is present because readers who now have money were able to read, when younger and poorer, due to the existence of used bookstores (and libraries). (That isn't to say that those with more money don't or can't use those distribution mechanisms; but they could still obtain books without them.) At the broadest level of generality, we arguably all (including authors) benefit from a society in which more people have access to books. These last three effects, however, are also present for unauthorized copying. -- Greg