As Michele indicates in the previous post, we are looking for compelling examples (about three) that we can use in a book introduction to draw in the average reader - convince them that IP is a problem they should be concerned with. In the comments on Michele's post, Michael suggests that it would be helpful if we discuss some candidates. Here goes:

AIDS drugs in Africa

the invention of television (Sarnoff stole it from Farnsworth)

Diebold using the DMCA to cover up the fact their voting machines don't work

the Canadian (?) farmer sued because genetically modified crops got on his property

mp3.com put out of business by RIAA lawsuit

replay TV sued out of existence

destruction of the Italian pharmaceutical industry when patents are introduced

story of the movie Tarnation - cost 0 to make, $400K for music rights

near shutdown of Blackberry network

Quattro pro "look and feel" lawsuit - Lotus versus Borland

why DAT never caught on (due to legally mandated DRM)

why HD DVD probably will never catch on - delayed until obsolete by DRM disputes

the Sony Betamax case

RAMBUS's use of a submarine patent to blackmail the memory chip industry

theft of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell

obstruction of the industrial revolution by James Watt

movement of the chemical industry from England/France/US to Germany/Switzerland due to strong UK type patent system - story of red dye, story of delivery of chemicals to US by U-boat during WWI

This is not about the last crime of some bad monopolist but, rather, it is about disclosing it.

David and I are back to the writing desk, reworking out the Against Intellectual Monopoly book to make it into a more readable one. More precisely, we may be up to writing yet another book, completely different from the one we completed last year, even if on the same line. The idea is to write something really simple, much shorter, with a narrative structure instead of an argumentative one and with dramatic examples of why IP is damaging, instead of statistical tables and case studies.

Hence the request for help and advice. Obviously, there are hundreds of possible examples, many of which this blog has been documenting since its inception. But many of these examples, while important, are too technical, subtle, and "nerdish" to make the average reader of a trade book perceive the seriousness of the matter and its relevance as a public policy issue. In this new book that's what we want to achieve: transmit the dramatic aspect, make the reader aware of how damn serious the whole issue is, for them individually and for milions of people around the world. Hence, we need a few good, well chosen and somewhat capturing examples.

Which cases would you guys consider as paradigmatic of the way in which IP may hurt society? Which stories come to your mind when thinking of a "movie" on how bad IP can get and how badly it can affect people? That's the question. Thanks

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights is suing to overturn the the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation patents on stem cells. The organization site gives the URLs for the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times articles.

The former is especially good

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/nw/?postId=6583 http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/nw/?postId=6573

As I've indicated in other posts 1 2 I'm skeptical about laws concerning network neutrality. Needless to say, although I agree with Larry Lessig about a lot of things, we don't see eye to eye on this, and I don't like being lumped in with

entities that either never got the Net, or fought like hell to control it telecom, and cable companies.

I think Felten has this right - locking things in with regulation is likely to do more harm than good. It isn't that I want the internet dominated by telecom and cable companies - but the fact is that they have to compete except over the last mile. So the solution isn't net neutrality and more government regulation, but fighting for less regulation and more competition over the last mile.

Ed Felten brings attention to a good op-ed by Tim Lee pointing this out. Despite the ridiculous claims of the large telecos that it is horribly expensive to wire the last mile, the fact is that it is the monopoly granted by local (and generally corrupt) goverments to the telecos and cable operators that prevents entry. Roger Noll has this right: it is wireless that is probably going to break the back of the last mile monopoly. So at the Federal level let's stop worrying about the side issue of net neutrality and fight to open up a lot of spectrum for wireless.

Thanks to Jim Harper who pointed me to the latest offering at the Technology Liberation Front. I got a kick out of it for reasons that will be obvious if you read the post. To whet your appetite for the original

You downloading wussies, sitting in your dorm rooms listening to the Tool song that you downloaded, you have no idea what the total Tool experience is like.

David gave me permission to flog my new book, Railroading Economics: The Creation of the Free Market Mythology (Monthly Review Press). Although the subject is not intellectual property, its relevance for this blog is the story it tells about the development of economics during the late 19th century.

The same people who created laissez-faire economics, such as John Bates Clark, insist that markets could not work for industries with high fixed costs. In particular, railroading at the time was a major industry in US. So these economists wrote textbooks arguing in favor of laissez-faire, especially with regard to labor markets, while at the same time promoting a Schumpeterian line about leniency toward oligopolistic industry.

In fact, Schumpeter seems to have cribbed much of his analysis from these economists, although all of them may have just been following the dominant German tradition -- dominant in the sense that the major figures among the young economist at the time all studied in Germany.

Centering around this railroading story is a thumbnail sketch of the economic history of the United States.

If any of you get the chance to look at the book, I would appreciate a dialogue.

Addendum: Michael is still learning how to use the posting system, so in response to Tim's request in the comments, here is the Amazon link for the book in clickable form [Posted by David.] .

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_27/b3991401.htm

Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's first chief technology officer, has a plan for Intellectual Property. First he gathers leading scientists and patent attorneys to brainstorm and come up with ideas that his company, Intellectual Ventures, can license to others. They plan to produce nothing but patents. You know what comes next.

The company also offers to "immunize" corporations from patent suits for a $50 million fee. The company will go around and buy patents before other patent trolls do, thereby "protecting" the clients. Others, of course, will have to face the consequences of not having ponied up the $50 million.

Does the word "blackmail" have any relevance here?

Thanks to Michael Powell for pointing out the wonderful Patently Silly site reminding us of the great unique, non-obvious, and useful inventions our patent examiners have created monopolies over.

CleanFlix will take your dvd and replace it with another that removes all the dirty language. Needless to say they got sued for copyright violation and lost. There is a bunch of good commentary about this, I'm just going to link to it:

Ed Felten

Tim Lee (he has a series of updates as well)

You can traceback other posts from there. The bottom line - no one seems to think this is a particularly good idea, although it may be the correct interpretation of the law. For myself, I'm wondering how the judge's view of copyright law

The argument [that CleanFlicks has no impact or a positive impact on studio revenues] has superficial appeal but it ignores the intrinsic value of the right to control the content of the copyrighted work which is the essence of the law of copyright.

squares with the U.S. Constitution which allows these monopolies solely

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts

His view is that people are more likely to create things if they can control the subsequent content of the work? That seems absurd.

I noticed that the AP had a spate of what appeared to be MPAA/RIAA press releases about the horrors of piracy in China and Russia. I was going to post on this, but Mike Masnick beat me to the punch, so I'll just link to his post, and limit my comment to "what he said."