Economic efficency of licensing scheme? (Score 1)

One of the great advantages of information is that it has effectively
zero marginal cost. Therefore, in order to be economically efficient,
the marginal price of information should be zero.

I am not advocating that the average price of information should be
zero. This would not be economically efficient either, as a system
that does not compensate a producer moves the incentive to an
inefficiently low position.

It is therefore my belief that any solution to the Intellectual
Property issues facing society today will resolve around differential
pricing.

Lots of differential pricing schemes have been tried for software:
Open Source funded by initial users of the project, Shareware,
Crippleware, Usable demos, "free for non-commercial use", student
pricing, Microsoft's former practice of charging $5 for OEM MS-DOS and
$199 for retail MS-DOS. I don't think we've figured it out yet, but
we're getting closer.

My question to you, Professor Pollack, is how do you respond to my
belief? Your scheme would seem to increase the marginal price of
popular commercial software, and be economically harmful.

Thanks,
Bryan