The binding carries the price

Claim (verbatim)

The binding carries the price. This connects Ottoman probate evidence with the economics of a copyright-free book market. Where any text could be lawfully recopied by anyone, the work itself commanded no rent; scarcity lived entirely in the object, in the calligraphy, illumination, paper, and binding. The price distribution should show it: dispersion within a single title should dwarf dispersion across titles, because a ragged and a resplendent copy of the same divan are economically different goods, while different titles in similar dress are near substitutes. The market priced craft, not intellectual property, and the probate courts wrote that fact down for centuries.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

In Ottoman probate (tereke) registers, for titles appearing at least five times within one city and half-century, the within-title maximum-to-minimum price ratio exceeds 10 for at least half of such titles, and the pooled within-title log-price variance exceeds the variance of title-level median log-prices. Primary clause: the within-title max-to-min ratio of 10 or more for at least 50% of qualifying titles; the verdict follows it.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the published Istanbul court registers (Istanbul Kadi Sicilleri, ISAM edition, openly available online) and Barkan's published Edirne askeri kassam registers, both itemizing book valuations in estates.

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

Ottoman probate (tereke) inventories are an established price-history source, and their itemized book valuations have been studied for estate research (Establet & Pascual on Damascus estates around 1700; the wider tereke price-history literature). The no-copyright premise -- that with any text freely recopiable the rent lives in the object (calligraphy, illumination, paper, binding), not the work -- is a recognized feature of the pre-print book market. Not located: the item's variance-decomposition test -- within-title max/min price ratio >10 for >=50% of titles appearing >=5x in one city/half-century, and pooled within-title log-price variance exceeding the between-title variance -- executed over the Istanbul Kadi Sicilleri and Barkan's Edirne registers. Known market character, unrun decomposition.

• Colette Establet & Jean-Paul Pascual, 'Les inventaires apres deces, sources froides d'un monde vivant' (Turcica, 2000); Establet-Pascual on Damascus estate inventories incl. books — Tereke inventories as itemized, consistently valued book-price sources
• Istanbul Kadi Sicilleri (ISAM edition) and Barkan's Edirne askeri kassam registers — The kill dataset for the within-title vs between-title price-dispersion test

Predictions

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