Economists widely recognize the effort by incumbents to suppress new technology as one of the most significant social costs of market concentration. In the long run, such efforts are seldom successful. Still, they delay the social benefits of new technology in the meanwhile, and lead to the development of wasteful and undesirable black markets. Fair use You observe that efforts to prevent piracy also prevent fair use. This is one of the most insidious consequences of overprotecting intellectual property.
Fair use constitutes the core of consumer sovereignty.
Producers of any kind, and those of intellectual property in particular, always profit from greater market power, and for this reason have always argued against fair use. Congress and the Supreme Court have wisely resisted this pressure, recognizing that eliminating fair use serves no broad economic purpose and thwarts the copyright laws' goal of maximizing the use and enjoyment of protected work. Given that Napster and related technologies have had little impact on the profits of the majors, it is hard for us to avoid the conclusion that much of what is being sold as an effort to prevent piracy is in fact an effort to prevent fair use and so increase future monopoly power. We are especially concerned about the economic consequences of adding copy protection to multi-use devices such as computers. Complex software and hardware invariably have bugs.