Feh, the mismatch -- with the public interest -- was always there. "New realities", "digital age", and the like are giving way too much away to the rentiers. Jefferson and other founding slaveholders made (another) mistake.
I kind of agree, but the tilt of the imbalance between the "pro" and "con" arguments for these monopolies, while always tilted toward "con", has gotten much steeper with the advent of the Internet and with the sheer growth in absolute human population (after all, monopolies on knowledge and ideas cost more the more people there are, by definition, because the number of people restricted increases while the number "helped" remains constant).
Sure, market size, effectively increased both by population and lower communication costs, does further undermine monopoly arguments. http://works.bepress.com/tom_bell/1/ is a good paper on this.
But AFAICT this level of sophistication just about never underlies calls for reform based on "new realities", "digital age", etc. Rather ahistoricism, fetishism for both the internet and founding slaveholders, and the like.
But AFAICT this level of sophistication just about never underlies calls for reform based on "new realities", "digital age", etc. Rather ahistoricism, fetishism for both the internet and founding slaveholders, and the like.