December 2007
The crumbs laid out for me by my feeds this morning have lead me to the brewing showdown between Daily Kos and Jonah Goldberg. Goldberg’s new book Liberal Fascism is certainly provocatively titled. The cover is no less a tweak. Goldberg talks about it with “Glenn and Helen” here. Kos’ Thomas Kalinowski proposes a Googlebomb [...]
Nothing like the holidays for catching up on one’s reading! Here, in no particular order, are things I should have pointed out to you already: The Fall 2007 Regulation magazine has some great articles. (Forgive me if they’ve been touted here already. I may have missed it.) “Considering Net Neutrality” is by TLF’s own Jerry [...]
Works of authorship originate in private, safely kept under common law protections. Once published, however, expressive works become data ferae naturae—wild and natural information. As such, expressive works roam and reproduce freely. They may get captured in fixed copies, caged in atoms or bits. But the public, once it has absorbed an expressive work, generally [...]
While rightly shuddering at specter of copyism, we should also recognize that the unauthorized use of copyrighted works can, if it does not go so far as to undercut authors’ incentives, increase social wealth. Consider, for instance, an impoverished entrepreneur relying on pirated software to start her business. Supposing that she could not afford to [...]
On the standard economic view of copyrights, as on the economic view of other monopolies, average revenue equals demand. Those two measures trace one and the same line. Why? Because for most products and services, consumption closely matches supply at the market-clearing price. Sales reveal consumer demand and, in the case of copyright and other [...]
Ike Elliott offers a great analogy: Tim asserts that copyright should be adequate protection for software, and that patents for software are harmful because they inhibit innovation. I find that argument far more fascinating. I found myself comparing software to music. Music is not patentable, but it is subject to copyright. So, at the risk [...]
Creating a work can cost authors a lot, whereas copying a work costs others very little. Absent copyright, then, authors might find it discouragingly difficult to recoup the costs of creating fixed expressive works. Authors might then underproduce expressive works, and the public consequently suffer. To avoid that policy tragedy, the Copyright Act empowers authors [...]
In my 2004 book, Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate over Media Ownership, I pointed out that mergers and acquisitions represent just one of many strategies media companies utilize to respond to consumer demand and new market challenges. Other strategies include spin-offs and line-of-business divestitures on the one hand, and new technological investments or [...]
This somewhat cryptic blog post at Wired reflects the delight of Roger Clarke that the Australian national ID card has been dropped by the incoming government. Clarke wrote an article in 1994 that is probably fairly regarded as the foundation of identitifcation theory. I expanded on his thinking in my book, Identity Crisis. In related [...]
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