Dana Thomas goes after high-fashion counterfeit handbag producers and sellers link here. "As soon as a handbag hits big, counterfeiters around the globe churn out fake versions by the thousands. And they have no trouble selling them. Shoppers descend on Canal Street in New York, Santee Alley in Los Angeles and flea markets and purse parties around the country to pick up knockoffs for one-tenth the legitimate bag's retail cost, then pass them off as real."

He argues that most people think the counterfeit trade is harmless but it 1) is run by criminal syndicates also in drugs and child prostitution, 2) "may have helped finance the 1983 World Trade Center bombing," and 3) is made by child labor. All bad. His solution is greater enforcement and persuading people not the buy the knock-offs.

Thomas doesn't seem to think that most buyers are fooled by the counterfeit into thinking it is the real thing. The price difference and the seller's facilities attest to that. Enforcement doesn't seem to work and it is very expensive trying to catch all those little entrepreneurs. So we need to persuade the public not to buy.

In favor of the counterfeit trade is an argument that it actually helps the "legitimate" industry. David points out that the fashion industry would be greatly harmed by fashion patents (posted on 08/23/2007 07:49 AM at http://www.againstmonopoly.org/) Wouldn't a consumer boycott or over active enforcement of trade marks in handbags do the same thing by removing the stimulus of competition to improve designs and create new design trends?

An earlier post by John highlights the move in Congress to extend copyright protection to the fashion industry. The mere fact that there is no problem to solve - innovation in fashion is thriving after all - appears not to be a consideration. A recent article by Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman in the New Republic points out it is worse than that: the most likely effect of extending copyright protection to the fashion industry will be to kill innovation in the industry. They explain why:

By allowing the copying of attractive designs, current law fits well with the industry's basic mission--to set new fashion trends and then convince us to chase them. And the trend-driven copying of attractive designs ensures that those designs diffuse rapidly in the marketplace. This, in turn, makes the early adopters want a new style, because nothing is less attractive than seeing your carefully chosen clothes on the backs of the hoi polloi. In short, copying is the engine that drives the fashion cycle.

Schumer's bill would kill that engine.

Everything you need to know right here .

Fopp and Tower Records have closed within the last year.

The four major record labels are undertaking cost cutting measures to save their businesses. Are they just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic?

Prince doesn't rely on sales of CDs. Instead he makes live performances, sells his music in ring tones and ads, sells perfume, and who knows what else. He recently gave away free copies of his latest CD, "Planet Earth," all in the name of building his brand name and fan base.

Here is the New York Times article "The Once and Future Prince" .

William Patry has an interesting blog post on the Statute of Anne and some recent research by a PhD student, Rufus Pollock, who maintains that an optimal copyright period is around 14 years.

However, his claim that

Mr. Pollock's paper is unique for looking at the larger picture, i.e., that is production costs and how those costs impact on the extent of incentives required.

overlooks the work of Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, including their book.

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.

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.