Articles by Solveig Singleton 
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Years ago Jim Delong started to write a book on property rights–the physical ones. His publisher insisted on discussions of intellectual property. He resisted. Surely, he thought, these things are very different. But he reports his surprising conclusion that the significance of the differences for policy is less than is often thought. Intellectual property, like physical property, must be protected, for the good of consumers and everyone else, doing as little harm as possible. As for the details, “tech” and “content” each raise valid concerns and the results of experimentation and give-and-take impossible to foresee. But a functioning market is in everyone’s interest.
During his tenure at CEI, he debated these issues often with Fred Smith. At first I was on Fred’s side, my own views on IP strongly influenced by Tom Palmer. Over the years, though, I began to see the issue as more difficult than my philosophy could answer by reference to the standard repertoire, even Hayek and Leoni.
Questions about IP arise in a context of hard problems in philosophy of law, difficult questions of empirical economics, and the hard question of how closely law in an advanced economy must resemble primitive law. And a blinding pace of technological and economic change that makes throws existing legal institutions completely out of wack. Particularly enforcement, the aspect of law taken entirely for granted in most policy discussions. In this environment, what are the odds that we can derive the answers we need to practical problems from first principles and get it right the first time?
Thanks Jim. Come back and see us.
This site tracks the value of some “black market” goods from pirated movies to body parts and human trafficking. Missing: Murder for Hire, though Kidnapping is represented.
One ought to distinguish at least two types of markets represented here; a) those in which the goods being sold do indeed “belong” to the seller who wishes them to “belong” to the buyer. Markets for illegal drugs for example. “Belong” is in quotes because from a legal standpoint there are no “property rights,” rather, the rights are those that would exist at law just as with any other planted produce or chemical stew if it were not for regulatory bans. Then there is b) the rights in question have been wrested away unlawfully from a third person and appropriated by the seller, who then transfers them to the buyer. Human trafficking, for example, and piracy.
The EU continues to issue what one hopes are wild threats against Microsoft. Now EU antitrust authorities have revived the possibility of “structural remedies,” that is, breaking Microsoft up. This apparently because Microsoft is seen to be resisting compliance with earlier orders.
Interesting. What is the theory behind this? The focus of antitrust law is supposed to be consumer welfare (not, say, competitor welfare). So the earlier commission orders were supposed
My paper critiquing arguments contra copyright from the cumulative nature of knowledge is out.
So nmuch for the ‘new and improved’ GPL, by James V. DeLong, from CNET:
In the month since the release of the third draft of the Free Software Foundation’s GPLv3, much of the open-source community has been oddly incommunicado.
Slashdot and GrokLaw, the major homes for the community’s individual members, bulge with posts. But reaction from the corporate wing of the movement–starting with its semi-official spokesman, the Linux Foundation–is silence.
Why the companies hit the mute button just when one would expect a coordinated chorus of huzzahs is a matter for speculation, but here is a hypothesis: Maybe because after two years of drafting, redrafting and re-re-redrafting, the product finally went to the corporate general counsels, and these folks promptly went ballistic over the ambiguities, uncertainties and risks.
Predictions about life in the year 2000, from the year 1900. Including:
On Package Delivery .
.. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.
My summary and analysis of this important patent case, and that of Josh Sarnoff is up on SCOTUS.
The past couple years have seen a whole new focus by policymakers on violence in media, from the recent refocusing of the FCC on violent video to the violent video game ban in California.
All this implicates what is and ought to be bedrock free speech law. Setting aside the narrow, carefully drawn exceptions for soliciting and inciting crime–which require fairly direct involvement
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