&gt; &quot;For computer software, patents together with copyright protection are the entire price of the product.&quot;<p>That doesn&#x27;t ring true. Software is sold in far more complex ways that in no way benefit from the copyright regime. That could mean software consulting and support for open source projects, or it could mean advertising and IAP-supported free-to-play games. Both are extremely lucrative.<p>You might want to call in-app purchases something that corresponds to copyright. I think all that matters is what is enforceable (ask the movie and music industries). That game services have figured out how to make the enforceability of copyright irrelevant by centralizing hosting and matchmaking is the far bigger story.<p>Put another way, the researchers bring up removing patent regimes on drugs in order to save money and reduce rents. That&#x27;s only because of the peculiar way that drugs work—it doesn&#x27;t necessarily make sense. Jana Hunter, an indie musician, had this great phrase: &quot;If technology provided loopholes for free food and shelter, that’s what we’d be arguing about.&quot; [0] But technology only provides loopholes for some free stuff, like music and drugs, and we can&#x27;t just decide that property rights can be ignored when they&#x27;re cheap to exploit (like copyright or patent infringement).<p>On the other hand, we will just, in a Darwinian way, end up in a world where the technological loopholes intrinsically don&#x27;t exist. This happened in commercial video games, and it happened so quickly only because of enormous ingenuity, an extremely competitive market and a complete disconnect from the conventional political process (ever heard of a video game studio lobbyist?).<p>If you want to improve wealth distribution, messing with the mechanics of how things are bought and sold, as always, isn&#x27;t going to get you very far. Maybe just raise taxes, you know?<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lowerdens.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;34308869231&#x2F;on-spotify-and-music-consumption" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lowerdens.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;34308869231&#x2F;on-spotify-and-...</a>