Articles by Tom W. Bell 
Tom W. Bell teaches as a professor at Chapman University School of Law, in Orange County, California. He specializes in intellectual property and high-tech law, topics on which he has written a variety of articles. After earning his J.D. from the University of Chicago School of Law, Prof. Bell practiced law in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., served as Director of Telecommunications and Technology Studies at the Cato Institute, and joined the Chapman faculty in 1998. For fun, he surfs, plays guitar, and goofs around with his kids.
Want to read about a market-based institution that can improve on copyrights and patents? Check out my paper, “Prediction Markets for Promoting the Progress of Sciences and the Useful Arts,” 14 George Mason Law Review __ (2006) (forthcoming). You can download a copy here. The abstract:
Copyrights and patents promote only superficial progress in the sciences and useful arts. Copyright law primarily encourages entertaining works, whereas patent law mainly inspires marginal improvements in mature technologies. Neither form of intellectual property does much to encourage basic research and development. Essential progress suffers.
Prediction markets offer another way to promote the sciences and useful arts. . .
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Entrepreneur and engineer Burt Rutan has won high praise, and rightly so, for developing private spacecraft. When it comes to developing space policy, however, his appreciation for private solutions flames out. In his interview by Ted Balaker, recently published on Reason Public Policy Institute’s website, Rutan unveiled his next mission for the spaceline industry: A journey to Planet Regulation.
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Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a. “Instapundit”) reports that the New York Times may start requiring readers of its website to pay for that privilege. I’ve got not objection to that as a general matter; I’m no copyright commie. But I’m not sure I’d welcome the probable consequences.
Prof. Reynolds predicts, “the Times would lose a lot of influence if it made this move, since it would only be talking to the true believers.” Perhaps so. I’d have to see some figures about how much of the Times’ readership reaches it only via the web before I’d put money on that prediction.
I will risk this prediction, however: The Times would start wielding copyright law against pesky bloggers. In the past, the Times has published editorials and stories somewhat sympathetic to copyright reform. Consider, though, what would happen if it started charging for access to its website.
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On Sept. 21, 2004, California’s Governor Schwarzenegger signed Cal. Penal Code § 653aa [PDF format]. That new law criminalizes the unauthorized electronic distribution of a sound recording or audiovisual work by a sender who fails to disclose his or her valid email address and the title of the work. If laws were meals, this one would rank with Thanksgiving Dinner at the Salvation Army: A largely symbolic gesture, well-intended but poorly executed, to temporarily satiate the beggars at the door. In other words, California lawmakers have given a big fat turkey to the Hollywood lobby.
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Need something to celebrate? The web just fended off another attempt at regulatory choking, this time by activists trying to impose on websites the “reasonable accommodation” requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). You can thank Access Now v. Southwest Airlines, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 20060 (11th Cir., Sept. 24, 2004) [PDF format], for that win. Take it easy on the champagne, though; another assault looms.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.