Interesting post by the sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow: Homemade Braille edition of Little Brother from Detroit public school teacher, in which he notes that he was sent a Braille copy of his young adult novel Little Brother, by a teacher of visually impaired students in Detroit. She had run off a Braille copies using her school's Braille embosser to supply to her students. The teacher noted, "What I could not enclose is the gratitude from my Braille reading students. For various reasons, most books in Braille are aimed at younger children. My students are all between the ages of 12 and 15 and have no real interest in reading a Kindergarten level book. I was finally able to give them something interesting, compelling, and, most importantly at their grade level."

What I was especially interested in was how Doctorow's use of the Creative Commons license contributed to this:

Patricia notes that she was able to do this only because the text of the novel is available as a free, Creative Commons licensed download (though US copyright law grants her the right to prepare a Braille edition of any book, the cost of doing so from a traditional printed book is prohibitive, and converting from a DRM-crippled ebook is technically difficult).

[StephanKinsella.com cross-post]

James Boyle, author of ‘The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind', weighs in on the matter at this link here.

(via Robert Levine) The invention of the phonograph was going to discourage people from going out to see live music. The introduction of music radio was a surefire way of killing record sales. "Home taping is killing music" screamed the magazine ads when the cassette tape was introduced to the marketplace.

From "Technology has the labels singing the blues, but artists are plugging into a new relationship with audiences," by Greg Kot in the LA Times.

The Economist asks whether health care reform in America could stop innovation in pharmaceuticals link here. The danger posited would be from price controls. It suggests no, based on a study that finds that price controls have actually promoted European drug innovation and that it has more innovation than the US and is drawing farther ahead of us.

This challenges the Phrma contention that US price controls would kill innovation link here. Its study identified the nationality of new drugs based on the head office of the developing company. But The Economist points out that companies have research facilities and markets in several countries so that the location of the head office of the innovating company should not matter.

The article also notes that Britain and Germany are exploring reimbursing companies based on drugs' effectiveness but doesn't address the issue of patents as a contributor to the cost of health care, instead suggesting price controls based on effectiveness would be a strong incentive for innovation and might help control the enormous increases in the cost of health care. That assumes the government agency administering the regulation isn't captured by the industry.

It is worth asking how the contemplated reforms in health care are going to control health spending and then to consider the role of monopoly, based on patents for drugs and on other measures, many under state or local control. The certification and pay scales of medical specialties which have limited the supply of primary care doctors as contrasted with specialists and the permissions to establish hospitals and other medical facilities comes to mind. Can anyone think of other monopolies prevalent in medicine?

For example, one was noted by Dean Baker who cites NPR's Planet Money piece on A Medical Mystery: Why Health Care Is So Expensive which focuses on the cost of medical devices like stents and instruments used in cardiac and blood vessel operations link here and transcript here. Baker then adds that NPR failed to mention the role of patents in making the cost of medical devices exorbitant.

It seems to me one of the most effective criticisms of our monopolistic system of health care and intellectual property is that until that system is reformed, we will not be able to control escalating health costs. That should be part of the current debate.

As previously noted here, I presented a speech in July at Mises University 2009 on "Intellectual Property and Libertarianism." The audio is available here and the video was just made available. It's below. As previously noted, this presentation was different than others I've done in the past on IP, partly because, as it for students, I tried to start from the ground up, and also to integrate the proper approach to IP with the essential principles of libertarian political philosophy. Thus part of the talk summarized my view of what libertarianism is, and then applied it to IP; this summary view of the libertarian framework was distilled from a more elaborated version, contained my chapter What Libertarianism Is, which appeared in the Hoppe Festschrift, Property, Freedom and Society. An article based on my speech is forthcoming in Liberty magazine.

[StephanKinsella.com cross-post]

As reported here:

AP: Speaking of technology, how has the band been affected by the digital turn the music industry's taken?

Cray: Not too many people get the million-selling plaques anymore and all that stuff like that. And a lot of bands survived just on selling records and didn't think about touring so much. And a lot of bands based their whole careers on just getting that one hit. But it has affected a band such as ours, but only in a different way. I mean, it would nice to have had the same kind of sales more recently as we had in the past, but we started playing in bars and as long as it's fun, we'll continue to do so.

[SK cross-post]

I was talking with Kevin Carson about the problems with the "contractual" model of IP "that so many people grab at in desperation" (for more on this see here and here). Carson said:

As Cory Doctorow put it, a computer is a machine for copying bits. If you put a cultural artifact into bits, it's going to get copied. And anybody whose business model depends on stopping people from copying bits is f*cked, plain and simple. As horrifyingly accurate a prediction as Stallman's "Right to Read" is of the copyfascists ideal world, I think it's about as plausible a threat as Khrushchev's plan to catch up with the West by 1970.

See A very long talk with Cory Doctorow, part 1; also Cory Doctorow, Microsoft Research DRM talk and Copying Is What Bits Are For.

[SK crosspost]

You can't make this stuff up.

As reported on Patently-O,

Earlier this week, the USPTO issued a design patent to Google that covers the "ornamental design for a graphical user interface [GUI] … as shown and described." Pat. No. D. 599,372. Design patent coverage is essentially defined by the images include in the issued patent. Here, the image looks roughly the same as the company's ubiquitous Google.com homepage. (See image below.)

To be clear, many patent professionals would argue that it is misleading to ever simply call this "a patent." Rather, it is a design patent. Design patents have severely limited scope, only cover ornamental designs rather than technological advances, and are very frequently found invalid when challenged in court. The USPTO has been granting design patent protection for screen shots and icons for many years. However, to my (limited) knowledge, none of those design patents have ever been enforced in court. ...

Dashed or "ghost" lines in the drawing indicate features that are not claimed. Thus, patent would be infringed by someone using an identical layout even if they replaced the "Google" mark with their own mark. You can note at the bottom that the design patent drawing is marked with a circle-c ©. That indicates that Google is also claiming copyright protection for this layout. In addition, in the design patent, Google indicates that it is also claiming trademark protection for portions of the layout and - perhaps - for the layout as a whole.

[SK cross-post]