Writing in the Washington Post, Kim Hart notes that Imeem.com has made a go of its music sharing business by illegally sharing copyrighted music and building up a substantial following so that one copyright owner, Warner Music, decided to buy a piece of Imeem and make its entire catalog available for streaming (not downloading) link here. Warner found it an inexpensive way to advertise and increase demand for downloads. It also shared in Imeem's revenue from advertising on its website.

Part of Imeem's attraction is its role as "an online community where millions of fans and artists discover new music, videos, and photos, and share their tastes with friends." Hart reports that companies wishing to follow Imeem's illegal path are less likely to displace those first to market and to encounter more serious opposition from copyright owners who can look to increasingly expensive enforcement.

For example, "Sonific, an online service that allows users to stream music to blogs or personal Web pages, is trying to strike licensing deals with large record labels to expand its music library, which now has about 250,000 tracks from smaller, independent labels. But Gerd Leonhard, the site's founder, said it cannot get the interest of labels because of its relatively small pool of 100,000 users."

My first reaction to this story is that the web made copyright irrelevant. But in the end, we still have the problem that copyright gives the first or early to market suppliers an enormous advantage, for which the consumer pays. It effectively limits competition.

Economic Logic has had this week a series of posts on free goods, including some of my favorites. I frequently listen to Pandora, an incredible internet radio that learns what to play from your preferences, for free. Also, I do all my work with open source software (perl could have been added) and open source operating systems, the only exception being Matlab. Finally, Economic Logic mentions RePEc, that I use all the time as well...

The provision of goods for free tends to lead to monopolies, but as they cannot extract any rent, for once it is not bad.

Two new names for businesses:

For a soft drink line:

Eliot's Spritzers

For a perfume line:

Client No. 9

Inquiring minds want to know.

Interesting book forthcoming - Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk by James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer.

First chapter can be read here.

I'm still not convinced by their obvious desire to link the concept of patents with real property, but the authors seem honest and upfront about examining the problems with the argument. Plus, some of their proposed reforms of the patent seem spot on - especially the notion of doing away with the judicial monopoly of the D.C.-based Federal Circuit that allows it (and only it) to interpret U.S. patent laws. This is a huge mistake that doesn't often get a lot of attention.

The Patent Troll Tracker site take-down is explained, with interesting references to other sites link here . Its patent lawyer author and his employer, Cisco, are being sued by two patent lawyers for defamation. Techdirt, my source, thinks the case is without merit, but that may be of little weight for Cisco. Comments at the site pursue that question at length. There remains, however, some faint hope that the Tracker may return to the web. For now, we can all mourn his absence.

An "illegal" Mexican immigrant, Adriana Torres-Flores, whose children were born in the U.S., spent several days in an Arkansas jail without food, water and a bathroom, and with a shoe for a pillow. The bailiff forgot about her over the weekend. Her crime? Selling her own property in the form of "pirated" DVDs and CDs. Here is the horrible story.

One of the untold (or too little told) stories about the monopoly formerly known as intellectual property is the assault on liberty (or "civil liberties," for those who think that liberty comes from or is guaranteed by the State) that comes with it.

Fed up with the State already? Here's an intellectual antidote. It's not subtitled "The Libertarian Manifesto" for nothing.

Forbes Magazine's online edition has a long article relating the well-known litany of stupid patents that the USPTO has granted, from those Jack-O-Lantern lawn leaf bags to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It seems the message is finally starting to make inroads into the business commmunity.

Tyler Cowen has some links at Marginal Revolution.com to an article by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf and a reply by Stan Liebowitz, who is critical of their research.

Here is Liebowitz's homepage, which has the reply. He has a link to copyright issues.

He also has a spreadsheet allowing you to play God with copyright. What are the underlying assumptions he uses? Are they sound (in the sense that logicians use the term--i.e., empirically true and logically valid)?

The Center for the Analysis of Property Rights and Innovation, which is located in the School of Management, at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he teaches, is pro-copyright. But that means anti-property rights, as I understand the term.

When I wrote about abolishing business method patents yesterday, I missed the possibility that there was a half-way house (halfway to ending all patents), ending software patents. That goal has its own advocacy group, announced just a few days ago link here. And money. That seems doable. Take a look at the webpage for a better idea of how they propose going about it. It won't happen soon, but "know hope".

Brad Stone writes on business method patents in Bits, the New York Times blog, reporting that those who dislike them see a chance of discrediting the whole category in a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit link here. The usual grounds, that these patents are vague or obvious and lead to endless litigation and tie up the patent office, are cited. In a contrary view argued by Gregory Aharonian, the problem for the optimists is how to define a business method patent to distinguish it from "real" patents, here.

It seems to me he has a strong point and the only way to rid us of these cases is to get rid of all patents. What are the prospects of that?