Dan Mitchell reports in the New York Times that Lawrence Lessig is shifting his focus to combat the influence of money on politics, which yields bad laws and not just the bad laws governing intellectual property link here. Lessig himself is in print link here and he has a YouTube posted link here . "Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide," he wrote in his blog. "In the United States, listening to money is the only way to secure re-election. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars."

Steven Shapin writes entertainingly in the New Yorker about our futuristic vision of innovation on which we impose several layers of mistakes link here. He goes on to consider how much we depend on old technology. A striking example was that we went to war on the ground in Afghanistan on horseback, following up on B-52 bombing runs, after being highly dependent on horses and mules in World War II. He draws heavily on "The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900" (Oxford; $26), by David Edgerton, a well-known British historian of modern military and industrial technology. New or old , the defining characteristic of current technology is whether it is useful.

He then calls our attention to "technological palimpsests," old technology that gets reshaped and refurbished to perform new uses and how dependent we are on it and how important the role of maintenance is in keeping our economy running.

This is a clever off-beat view of innovation, entailing a re-evaluation of what is really important in how we live our lives, fundamentally questioning how important innovation really is, and indirectly, the cult of intellectual property. Read it and change your mindset.

I'm leaving for Europe shortly, so don't have time for a long post, but there is a lot of news, so I'm going to put up a few links - check Slashdot, they are following these stories

Peer Patent Review: Looks like the voluntary patent peer review is underway for real. You may recall I've had some skepticism of this, but now we will see.

Secondary Copyright: I think this is a good thing: a court has given publishers that buy material from freelancers more control over the content, allowing them to use the material electronically without separate royalty payments. But I just looked at it briefly.

Maybe some of our readers can fill us in on what is going on with some of these developments.

There is a nice interview with the president of Ultimate Fighting Championships (Dana White) in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, on June 7th, in the Sports section. This sport now seems to be bigger (in terms of revenue) than both boxing and WWF. Who came up with the idea? According to White: "this thing started in 1993 when a bunch of TV guys wanted to answer the question, "What fighting style is best?" Would a boxer beat a wrestler? And so on .... These guys never knew they were creating a sport at all. They just sort of fell into it." Innovation here proceeded as it often does -- through good luck.

There is a story up on the NYT web (link here) about a new IP controversy in which a sports blogger, Brian Bennett working for the Courier Journal of Louisville, KY, was ejected from the press box of the Louisville vs. Oklahoma State baseball game for discussing game action during the game in his live blog.

The NCAA contends that their television and radio contracts prohibit any alternative live communication of game action during a game, and that they were therefore justified in ejecting Bennett. The Courier Journal maintains that they were within their First Amendment rights in reporting on the news of the game.

While the litigation over this will likely be complicated, I would hazard an opinion that under existing copyright law, this will likely be judged fair use, based on what the lawyers call a "negative harm, implied consent" situation. Blog accounts of a game are not even close substitutes for the televised view of the action, or even running radio accounts, since the blogger has to slowly (relative to game action) type up his account of what is happening. On the other hand, a blog account that indicates a game is getting exciting has the potential to motivate otherwise uninterested parties to turn on their TV or radio and join the game. This is equivalent to a rave book review, which, in turn, is the basis of the "negative harm, implied consent" fair use doctrine.

Of course, fair use does depend on the circumstances. If this were a cricket game, blogging it might well be a contract violation.

In any case, this is one to watch, so stay tuned.

All of us Google-search users know that it is free for us and profitable from advertising. Most of us don't know that the advertising is handled by a subsidiary, AdWords. Google-AdWords has now teamed up with Salesforce.com to follow up on ad responses by keeping track of sales leads. Much of the communication involved uses Google mail and can use the Google online word processor and spreadsheet.

The Economist describes the relationship thusly link here: "Like all AdWords customers, they can then choose keywords ("car repairs", say) and bid to have small text links displayed next to the results of any web search for that term. They pay only when users click on the advertisement and are taken to the advertiser's website. At that point Salesforce's service kicks in [if they are among its subscribers], collecting information about the user which then pops up on the Salesforce page of the advertiser's sales team, allowing them to follow up and sell something."

Speculation arises that success will be followed by a buyout. Another natural monopoly challenges Microsoft's.

The Economist reports that countries with major health problems are overruling international patents and switching to locally made generic copies at a fraction of the price link here. "Last month the World Health Organisation passed a resolution supporting compulsory licensing. America objected vociferously, but other rich countries supported the motion." Countries invoking compulsory licensing include Thailand and Brazil, with India, Malaysia and Kenya, making noises about doing so. The Economist notes that these are not poverty stricken countries, to which the generic exceptions are supposed to be limited.

Drug companies are upset, arguing that while compulsory licensing is legal, TRIPS rules allow it only under limited circumstances, such as national health emergencies, and only after they try and fail to negotiate prices with firms.

Benefitting from compulsory licensing is the generic-drugs industry (as well as the consumer, at least in the short run, depending on whether it reduces research on diseases afflicting poor countries). Canada encourages domestic firms to produce copycat drugs for precisely this reason. But their costs are so high that such exports cannot hope to compete with the cheaper pills produced by India. Countries unable to produce generics competitively are allowed to import them.

This story isn't over. Big Pharma is so profitable that it is hard to shed tears for it. Moreover, they haven't been all that eager to develop drugs for poor countries' diseases to date. They have instead been shamed into supplying poor countries when they have already developed the drug for the rich--like AIDS drugs. But the world would be unwise to wait for it to develop drugs for diseases confined to poor areas. Another way has to be found, like the Gates and Buffett initiative.

June 9's edition of the Economist has several interesting articles concerning IP. A short one discusses how Skype, podcasts, and broadband have transformed teaching of foreign languages link here. With Skype, you can get a native speaker on line to correct your mispronunciation, at native wages. With podcasts, you have the language lesson recorded, and can listen and repeat while driving or gardening or what have you. Broadband makes access to both really cheap.

Having struggled learning several languages myself, this is the most flexible and attractive development I've heard of. It still depends on doing the work though, so you have to want to learn it.

Mike Masnick has a thought provoking piece on new business models for musicians and music companies link here. Live concerts are still where the money is, while CD sales are slowly tanking. He cites two examples, tying priority access to concert tickets to purchasing an iTune and an earlier post of his, handing out USB drives with new music on them at a concert link here. That latter post mentions still another gimmick, selling CDs by having them change color as they are played.

So the music business is changing, the RIAA members are hurting, but the musicians are adapting and the consumer benefits. Good news all around.

In case you haven't been over to the Volokh Conspiracy this week, you are missing out on some great discussions, including -

James Madison's original views on IP.

The continued debate over misguided attempts to equate 'intellectual property' with real property as well as the early references to 'literary property'.

Sir William Blackstone's views on Copyright and Patents.

Good stuff for your reading pleasure.