2.20 Some industrial commodities are mass-produced and others are serial-duplicated.

Industrial commodities: composite commodities that human industry can produce without any assignable limit as long as it gives itself the means to do so.

1. The production of ten thousand identical cars or computers requires, after the studies and tests that led to the development of the model, ten thousand assemblies of the same object.

Automobiles and computers are mass-produced. On the other hand, the production of ten thousand copies of the same software package requires assembling a duly tested copy and then having it copied ten thousand times. Similarly, the production of ten thousand copies of a book requires a set of proofs to be drawn up and then ten thousand copies to be printed and bound. Software packages and books are duplicated in series.

2. The sale of mass-produced industrial commodities transfers a right of ownership that the seller renounces.

This is also the case for the sale of certain mass-produced duplicated commodities. But for others, the right transferred is strictly limited to the use of the product. To illustrate this point, let's compare what the rights of the buyer of a book are and the rights of the buyer of a software package.

• The buyer of a book on paper does not have the right to make a complete copy of it, but he has the right to resell the book.
• The ultimate purchaser of a software package generally has the right to make copies of the package for its own use only (backups), but not the right to resell the copy it has purchased or a copy of that copy.

3. For an industrial product that is duplicated in series, the notoriety that the most influential prescribers give it often plays a more important economic role than for a mass-produced industrial product.

Let us compare, for example, what happens in the case of software packages and books on the one hand, and computers and furniture on the other. For software and books, the quantity sold is highly dependent on the appreciation of the most influential prescribers. Their price, as long as it remains below the level considered excessive by these prescribers, often has only a marginal effect on the quantity sold.