Articles by Solveig Singleton 
Solveig Singleton is a lawyer and writer, with ventures into ceramic sculpture, photography, painting, and animal welfare work. Past venues for her policy work include the Cato Institute (mostly free speech, telecom, and privacy), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (mostly privacy and ecommerce), the Progress and Freedom Foundation (mostly IP). She is presently an adjunct fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation and is working on a new nonprofit venture, the Convergence Law Institute. She holds degrees from Cornell Law School and Reed College. Favorite Movie: Persuasion. Favorite Books: Dhalgren; Villette; Freedom and the Law. Favorite Art: Kinetic sculpture--especially involving Roombas. Most obsolete current technology deployed: a 30 yr. old Canon AE-1. Music: these days, mostly old blues, classical guitar, Poe, Cowboy Junkies, Ministry. Phobia: Clowns.
My DRM piece was noted in a piece on fair use and DRM. I am among other things critiqued for referring to information as a “product” and the end user as a “consumer.” For Pete’s sake! The article adds some more substantive claims about fair use, which I’m happy to respond to. But before I get there, enough of the deconstruction already!
Quite a lot of energy is being expended in various circles thinking about what language is used to frame various debates in copyright. It’s not that the issue isn’t worth thinking about at all–language can be used in tricky ways and carelessly, so that the underlying concepts are obfuscated. But for the most part, if the concepts are the problem, fiddling with the language won’t fix it. Some people use the concepts of efficiency and marginal cost pricinghttp://weblog.ipcentral.info/archives/2006/08/the_marginal_co.html in ways
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There’s a whole genre of libertarian thought about things that can and can’t be property. Other people, for example.
Then we get to intellectual property arguments. Can ideas and images be property? Some say no, because it amounts to making a claim on a thought in someone else’s head. I don’t see why not, so long as the right is defined in such a way that one stays out of other’s heads, and focuses on their behavior (making copies for example).
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When I was growing up, my parents Harper’s subscription seemed to go on in perpetuity. Occasionally it would have an article of interest to me; I remember one short story in particular, about a chap who became a mouse when he meditated, and decided to stay that way. But for the most part it was all dense grown-up stuff, like choral music and art history.
I never grew in to an appreciation of Harper’s, I’m afraid. I comment on a recent essay here.
Marc Hauser’s new book is Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. A review notes:
Marc Hauser’s groundbreaking book advances a new theory of moral judgment, synthesizing a great deal of work in neuroscience, psychology, and ethology, as well as the author’s own recent experimental work. Hauser aims to demonstrate that morality is innate in the way that language is innate
This sounds like it needs to be on my list to assist with further musings on natural law. Hat tip John Rutledge.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.