Against Monopoly

Against Monopoly: The Mass Collaborative Artistic Re-envisioning of Films: A study in (legal) contrasts

%26lt;b%26gt;Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated%26lt;/b%26gt; is a mass collaborative artistic re-envisioning of George A. Romero's 1968 cult classic, Night of the Living Dead. International artists and animators were invited to select scenes from the film and reinvent them through their artwork. The full and complete re-imagined work is currently available: %26lt;a href="http://www.notldr.com/next/main.html"%26gt;http://www.notldr.com/next/main.html%26lt;/a%26gt; %26lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Living-Dead-Duane-Jones/dp/B003GUGB8G"%26gt;http://www.amazon.com/Night-Living-Dead-Duane-Jones/dp/B003GUGB8G%26lt;/a%26gt; A similar artistic endeavor was performed with %26lt;b%26gt;Star Wars%26lt;/b%26gt;, but the %26lt;b%26gt;Star Wars Uncut%26lt;/b%26gt; website lists a message which %26lt;a href="http://www.starwarsuncut.com/watch"%26gt;states%26lt;/a%26gt;: "We have a fully edited version of the movie produced, but we are working through the legal issues in order to bring that to everyone as soon as possible." Why is this? Simple - One film is in the public domain, and the other isn't.

Against Monopoly: Copyrighting Cocktail Drinks??

Conor Friedersdorf over at Andrew Sullivan's much-trafficked blog points to "an interesting post about craft cocktails and the impulse to protect certain recipes as intellectual property" as well as the reaction to the concept from a third blogger.

Read all about it and get the discussing links here:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/09/keeping-government-out-of-cocktails.html

Patent: Paul Allen Files Patent Lawsuits Against The Entire Web (Except for Microsoft )

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed a patent lawsuit that is breathtaking in scope - even by the ridiculous standards of modern patent claims. Defendants include Google, Apple, Yahoo, Netflix, Facebook, AOL, eBay, Youtube, Office Depot, OfficeMax and Staples. He alleges the companies violated patents owned by his now-defunct idea lab Interval Research. As Wired reports: %26lt;blockquote%26gt; The four patents at issue allegedly cover basics of online commerce, including recommending products to a user based on what they are currently looking at, and allowing readers of a news story to see other stories based on the current one. Two other patents relate to showing other information on a web page, such as news updates or stock quotes. %26lt;/blockquote%26gt; Obviously, the less-than-clarifying %26lt;em%26gt;Bilski%26lt;/em%26gt; decision from the Supreme Court isn't deterring him. Read more details (and see a copy of the lawsuit itself) at Wired.com here: %26lt;a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/paul-allen-patent-lawsuit/"%26gt;http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/paul-allen-patent-lawsuit/%26lt;/a%26gt;

Was Napster Right?: Germany

We %26lt;a href="http://www.againstmonopoly.com/index.php?perm=593056000000003400"%26gt;previously mentioned%26lt;/a%26gt; Eckhard H�ffner research showing how absence of copyright in Germany led to more rather than less output there than in England. This is being picked up by other blogs, %26lt;a href="http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2010/08/27/what-everybody-knows/"%26gt;here is a post on Kevin Smith's%26lt;/a%26gt; blog. (Thanks to Ruth Lewis for the tip)

IP in the News: NYTimes finds more IP news but doesn't report its consumer cost

The New York Times now carries a lot of stories that are of interest to anyone concerned about the high cost of intellectual property protection. The first story today is a debate over who is right AARP or the industry. AARP says the cost of branded drugs rose 8.3% in 2009 %26lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/business/25drug.html?ref=business"%26gt; link here%26lt;/a%26gt;. Last year the industry complained that the figure was based on wholesale prices, not the retail prices consumers actually paid. Responding to that criticism, AARP switched to retail and still got a big increase. The industry countered that they should use the consumer price index figure which includes generic drug prices--which showed a much lower price increase and argues that the US has the lowest prices for generics in the world. Of course, all of this back and forth is irrelevant; the high prices for the branded drugs reflect the monopoly that drug patents give the companies a fact never mentioned in the Times story. That monopoly power allows the companies to raise prices at a time when the economy is in recession and other prices are barely rising. It is also a time when many are unemployed and have a harder time making ends meet; particularly if they are ill and require those drugs. The other story relates to e-books and a quarrel between Random House, the publisher and the Wylie literary agency %26lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/business/media/25random.html?_r=1%26pagewanted=print"%26gt; link here%26lt;/a%26gt;. The quarrel began because Wylie started publishing e-book versions of 13 classics, previously published in hard copy by Random House. Because e-books are newer than the publisher's contracts with the authors and not always covered by its terms, Wylie felt free to enter the e-book business in them. Random countered by refusing to deal with Wylie in future. The two sides have now agreed, with Wylie ceasing to distribute the 13 e-books. No other terms were published. Send not to know who pays. Clearly it is we consumers and copyright once again loses its reason for being as an inducement to innovate. These books have long been in existence and can have little to do with the incentive to write more for aging, moribund, or dead authors, given that copyright extends for the life of the author plus 70 years.

Was Napster Right?: Tangled over their own laws

Really, %26lt;a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patti-millett/pirates-not-liable-for-vi_b_692944.html"%26gt;this is pretty funny%26lt;/a%26gt;.

Intellectual Property: Inventor to Harvard to Aileron to Roche--Who wins?

Duff Wilson writing for the The New York Times link here, tells us about a deal between Roche, the Swiss drug giant, and a start-up, Aileron, which engages in research involving peptides that are "stapled" to another chemical and can be delivered right into the offending illness cells where they may deliver cures without damaging the body elsewhere a magic bullet. The gee-whiz tone of the article will sell stock and improve the chances that boards will approve the drill little different from most promotions.

What struck me, however, was that Aileron holds patent rights to the stapled technology from Harvard University and its associated Dana Farber Cancer Institute. So now creating a patent monopoly, granted according to the constitution to individuals ostensibly to encourage innovation, becomes a way to make the university richer than it already is. Harvard is the same place that lost millions from its fat endowment when its then president Larry Summers began giving directions as to how it was to be invested and guessed wrong. Aileron will get a potential minimum gain of $25 million and a maximum of $1.1 billion if Aileron's projections work out. The article doesn't tell us what Harvard gets, beyond the original patent license fee of an undisclosed amount. Or whether the original research was funded by Federal Government research grants as is common or what the individual scientists involved get. A lot seems to be missing from this story.

Against Monopoly: Lewis Hyde's "Common As Air"

The NY Times has a review of the latest book arguing for less restrictive copyright regimes.

Read it (the review) here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/books/review/Darnton-t.html?pagewanted=1 and _r=2 and ref=science

Piracy: NYTimes magazine reviews the Asian knockoff business

Brand name product piracy has long been with us and continues to grow if one is to believe the New York Times magazine section %26lt;a href="%26lt;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22fake-t.html?ref=magazine%26pagewanted=print%26gt;"%26gt; link here%26lt;/a%26gt;. The story focuses on sneakers produced in huge quantities in South China where the product range is broad and the copies range from very good to shoddy. The author, Nicholas Schmidle, has got both Chinese producers and the US feds to talk to him about how the business works. He shows how good the copies are in a series of photos; it would take a professional enforcer and a photographic memory to see some of the differences. But they seem to sell. Indeed the copyright holding makers are reluctant to complain too loudly, for fear of souring the market for all, legitimate and not. %26lt;img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/08/22/magazine/22fake-span/22fake-span-articleLarge.jpg"%26gt; %26lt;img src=" http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/08/22/magazine/22fake-1/22fake-t_CA0-popup.jpg"%26gt; %26lt;img src=" http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/08/22/magazine/22fake-2/22fake-t_CA1-popup.jpg"%26gt; %26lt;img src=" http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/08/22/magazine/22fake-3/22fake-3-popup.jpg"%26gt; As a one-time economic counselor in our embassy in Seoul Korea bsck in the days when Korean pirates were rampant, I found it was really hard to get the cops to close the pirates down. They were small businessmen providing jobs at a time when Korea was very poor. All this changed when Korea got rich enough to want IP law enforced to protect its own export goods. But I suppose now the name brand producer is Korean while the pirates are Chinese.

Copyright: Times supports copyright mod on orphaned works that won't pass or help

Today's New York Times editorial page takes up orphaned works covered by copyright, keying off on the bequest of recordings by jazz masters to the National Jazz Museum in Harlem %26lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22sun3.html?ref=editorials"%26gt; link here%26lt;/a%26gt;. The problem is identifying the performers and finding them to offer them compensation under the current version of the copyright law. Without that, they won't be reproduced and the works widely distributed. The Times solution is an amendment to the law which would make it possible after a good faith search and undertaking to pay should the performer surface. The Times notes the bill is unlikely to pass and wrings its hands. What it really needs to do is point out that performance copyright is valid for the life of the performer plus seventy years, an absurdity given the constitutional provision that copyright is ostensibly designed to promote innovation -the current value of such a right beyond twenty or so years is virtually worthless if discounted by an appropriate interest rate- unless you are Walt Disney interested in preserving its control over the image of Mickey Mouse et al. No wonder the current law is known as the Disney Relief Act. In the meantime, the consumer pays in higher prices or the work is unavailable.