Monopoly’s event-horizon

The true capitalist singularity.

When a superdense, concentrated mass forms a black hole, the laws of physics around it change, giving rise to an eldritch zone where the normal rules don’t apply. When corporations form a concentrated industry, the laws of economics likewise change.

Take copyright: when I was a baby writer, there were dozens of comparably sized New York publishers. The writers who mentored me could shop their rights around to lots of houses, which enabled them to subdivide those rights.

For example, they could separately sell paperback and hardcover rights, getting paid twice for the same book. Under those circumstances, giving authors broader copyrights and easier enforcement systems could directly translate into more groceries on those authors’ tables and more gas in their cars’ tanks.

But today, publishing has dwindled to five giant houses (possibly four soon, depending on whether Penguin Random House successfully appeals its blocked merger with Simon and Schuster). Under these conditions, giving exploited authors more copyright is like giving bullied schoolkids more lunch-money.

Whatever copyright authors get will be non-negotiably extracted from them via the near-identical, unviolable core contracting terms from the Big Five publisher. Today, the bullies…