DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics

[Eric Rescorla]

Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com> writes:
> It's fairly well-known that far more people died from
> regulation-caused delays in deployment of several heart-attack drugs
> than from active damage by failures such as misuse of thalidomide,
> though some people still believe that we're better off because
> the regulators also prevented wide deployment of
> SideEffectOMycin and DidntWorkATol.
Regulation is a qualitatively different kind of barrier from
patents. I agree that it's rather more difficult to argue that
FDA-style regulation has increased welfare. That's an 
empirical question that hasn't been determined.

However, it's certainly the case that case that expensive drugs are
better (Pareto dominant) than no drugs at all, which I claim is gthe
outcome of removing patents.

> But back to the DVD issue - it's not an issue of public safety;
> this stuff is just television.
Sure, but that doesn't make the economics much different.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at wasabisystems.com