Proceedings of a conference in Potsdam last October. In addition to some invaluable history and analysis - I found especially interesting the article by Stan Liebowitz. Stan is unique among economists in being strongly in favor of copyright, even in its current exaggerated form. What I found striking about his article is that he seems to have given up on the economic argument in favor of copyright and turned to a moral argument. If Stan can't defend the economics of copyright anymore, nobody can.

We haven't much discussed the connection between culture and IP, especially copyright, although it has been an important theme, for example, of Larry Lessig's work. The point being that the sharing of ideas, themes, and common experience including art and music, is what makes up culture. IP and copyright, especially in its current excessive form, is a threat to the idea of culture - although judging by piracy statistics, culture appears to be winning. Christophe German directed my attention to a UNESCO study on diversity - meaning in this case cultural diversity - see especially page 10 in the executive summary where copyright is rightfully recognized as one of the primary threats to cultural diversity. I'd also like to direct your attention to his blog which in addition to discussing the broader legal and moral issues involving culture, discusses specifically the role of copyright law.

Joe Stanganelli an attorney explains why it is a good idea for Eolas to own the web

Critics nonetheless mewl argue that patents "stifle innovation." This is like arguing that requiring people to pay money at a restaurant "stifles feeding," or that making it illegal to steal a UPS truck to start a delivery service "stifles entrepreneurship." (Doubtlessly, when Thomas Edison denied Nikola Tesla the $50,000 he had promised him in exchange for spending several sleep-deprived months improving Edison's DC generators, Edison likely felt that honoring the contract would have "stifled" his company's innovation.)

It is unlikely that making it illegal to steal a UPS track to start a delivery service "stifles entrepreneurship" but of course it is an empirical question. In the case of patents the evidence is in: patents stifle innovation. Only evidence can refute evidence - theoretical arguments, feelings, and analogies are irrelevant.

If you want to know what the world would be like without IP: look at the criminal world where they can't easily sue each other for patent and/or copyright violation. Is there software innovation in that world? The virus producers are innovating faster than the anti-virus vendors. Sadly, absence of IP doesn't seem to hold them back. Of course they copy each other like crazy...but what is really interesting is this. Quite the opposite of trade secrecy (which they do have access to) they are open sourcing their code development, giving their secrets away for free in hopes of benefiting from others' innovation.

The Federal Research Public Access Act

Dean Baker writes in the blog of the The Center for Economic and Policy NYResearch link here responding to a New York Times opinion column written by Cary H. Sherman the "chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents music labels." link here

Baker has much the better in the argument, pointing out that the Times has printed industry propaganda on more than one occasion.

Here are two paragraphs from his piece: "The real issue here is that copyright is an archaic property form that it is no longer practical to enforce in the Internet Age. Serious policy people should be looking to develop alternative mechanisms for financing creative and artistic work. Unfortunately, the organizations that ostensibly represent creative workers are not very creative. It is impressive that the NYT allows a piece from the industry to appear with apparently no fact checking. Two days earlier it had a similar column complaining about the failure of SOPA. Given its dominance of the NYT's opinion pages, it is understandable that the RIAA would be upset about the growth of independent voices on the Internet."

Mike Masnick chimes in link here with much the same criticisms.

Of course we need to allow negative values of "beneficial".

Alex Laird's petition.

Larry Seltzer writes a provocative piece in Byte entitled "Is this Patent full of crap?" (link here)

The ideas are those of patent lawyer Andrew Schulman, but the story is full of insight on a patent lawyer's thinking and offers real clues into why the patent system is such a mess--complexity compounded, full of precedents that ordinary humans will find puzzling at best.

This encourages innovation?

Recommended reading.

The real state of affairs in the music industry.