The economics of Piracy to the Pirate (Score 1)

I am a Metallica fan a student and a napster user. I also didn't do to much homework in microeconomics so please excuse my terminology.

Any good has two costs, explicit and implicit costs. To buy the Metallica S&M CD there is the $16 in monetary cost which carries the implicit cost that you could have ben oing something else in the time it took you to run to the store and to earn the cash. To pirate the S&M CD there is no explicit cost, it costs no money; the implicit cost can be measured in the lack of a phisical CD, lyrics, and booklet, the hassle of running searches and assuring quality, and depending on the person, principle an guilt.

When the total cost of a CD is less than the total cost of pirating, people will buy CDs. Always.

Why do I pirate? Because the sting of doing something I beleive is immoral, and the time spent downloading over a narrowband connection amounts to a lesser cost than 2 hours labor at a resteraunt job.

Perhaps a person of higher morals would consider working hours far less of cost. Or a person with a higher salary would only work 30 minutes and consider breaching his moral code a greater cost.

The only effective way to stop pirating is to
* Decrease the explicit cost of the music
The implicit costs are impossible to decrease
Lars said it was a seperate discussion, I agree

* Increase the implicit costs of pirating
This can be done through awareness "Pirating is wrong campaigns
Or by creating more hassle through relentless legal persecution.

There is the economics, solutions are a little more difficult.