Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library, confronts them and argues that we should summon the willpower to overcome them.

He submits that: "'Despotism and priestcraft' have an antiquated ring to them, but the danger of restricting access to knowledge is as great today as it was two hundred years ago."

Read the rest here:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/oct/04/library-without-walls/

From a representative of a large multinational to the inventor of graphene: "We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it's really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us."

The Daily Caller has an excellent article on the portrayal of intellectual property rights in the movie "The Social Network." Here's a quote:

"The Social Network" should also be celebrated for casting an intellectual property dispute as its central conflict and in doing so, chipping away at the legitimacy of modern intellectual property protections.

You may enjoy

the illustrated history of piracy.

Highly recommended reading here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/oct/05/free-online-content-cory-doctorow

A great line from the new film The Social Network.

Lawrence Lessig gives a very insightful review of the film and explains how, in spite of it still being a solid film, writer Aaron Sorkin managed to miss the mark in crafting an even better (and ultimately, more honest) one.

It helps if you've already seen the film to fully appreciate the review which can be read here:

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/78081/sorkin-zuckerberg-the-social-network?page=0,0

I've argued in the past that we should both get rid of patents and the FDA. Without the FDA, the problem of having to reveal the secret of a new product in order to get approval is gone. And the FDA does more harm than good anyway. This would seem to confirm that. It's hard to imagine that any benefit from their having kept unsafe drugs off the market will justify their preventing the development of new antibiotics in the face of increasing bacterial resistance. In this case the road to hell may literally be paved with good intentions.

From: Mullins, Daniel On Behalf Of Merrill, Steve Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 4:38 PM To: Mullins, Daniel Subject: First Public Meeting of the Committee on the Impact of Copyright Policy on Innovation in the Digital Era

Dear Colleague:

We have scheduled the first meeting of the NAS-STEP committee to develop a research agenda on the impact of copyright law and policy for Thursday & Friday October 14-15, 2010, at the Academies' Keck Center, 500 Fifth St., NW. We invite interested parties to present their views on the committee's task in an open session Friday from 8:30-Noon in room KC 100. We encourage presentations that identify priority issues in copyright policy that the committee should consider addressing. Some but by no means all of the possibilities are enumerated in the project prospectus attached, including * limitations and exceptions to copyright including fair use * secondary liability for infringement * technology mandates * statutory damages and * access to publicly supported scientific research

To discuss this invitation and/or schedule a time on the agenda, please contact me at an early opportunity. Project sponsors will be given their preference of time to the extent possible.

Sincerely,

Stephen A. Merrill, Ph.D. Executive Director Science, Technology, and Economic Policy The National Academies 500 Fifth Street, N.W. KC574 Washington, DC 20001 Tel. 202-334-1581 Fax 202-334-1505 Mob 202-731-1782 Email smerrill@nas.edu Web www.nas.edu/step

This is why I think government mandated DRM isn't merely bad policy, but crazy policy. On the other hand, if companies are foolish enough to want to lose all their customers by putting DRM in their products, well there thankfully isn't yet a law that mandates companies sell only things people want to buy. I don't give advice on buying stocks, but Microsoft surely doesn't have much of a future.