IPcentral Weblog: May 2007 Archives

May 2007 Archives

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05.31.2007

Farewell

May 31 is my last day at PFF, and this is my last entry on IPCentral.Info.

It has been a tremendous pleasure to participate in this blog, seeking diverse, cogent, and entertaining ways to pound the point that intellectual property rights and markets are crucial to all of us, that problems created by the onslaught of IT technology are problems shared by the entire community, not just by the content producers, and that getting the legal, policy, and technological institutions right will result in a cornucopia of creative riches. (Whereas, getting them wrong . . . . )

Solveig, Noel, and others will keep the torch burning.

The usual relocation emails will go out soon with full information, but I will be Special Counsel with the DC office of the Denver law firm of Kamlet Shepherd Reichert (where former PFF President Ray Gifford is a partner) and Vice President and Senior Analyst at the Convergence Law Institute, a nascent organization about which you will learn more as soon as we give it legal and Internet corporeality. Here is a preview.

My new email will be jdelong@ksrlaw.com. Emails to PFF will also be forwarded.

Best to all,
Jim DeLong

posted by James DeLong @ 11:00 AM | General

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Innovation, IP, and Entrepreneurs

Act Online released a video to celebrate the recent World IP Day.

posted by James DeLong @ 9:21 AM | General

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More High Art Courtesy of the Public Domain

It's "Garden of Earthly Delights" Action figures! (you know, that weird Bosch thing).

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:59 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Art

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That EU "Innovation" Thing

When my spouse and I were new, new parents and my son was a very new baby, we had some theories about what we "ought" to do. Assorted books and mentors had cautioned us, for example, never to just "let him cry," ever. To get him to sleep we were to stand by him and rub his back, speak softly to him, and on and on. To make a very long story very short, our little guy finally settled down only when we became so utterly sleep-deprived that we abandoned our most cherished theories and focussed on what actually worked--including, sometimes, letting him wail for a few minutes. For a couple of over-educated parents, letting go of the theories was a big deal.

The EU seems to be in the same sort of pickle we found ourselves in. They are wedded to assorted theories of competition, openness, innovation, and an expansive role for government that just are not bringing results. There are examples around the world of successful frameworks for innovation to which they could look. But the EU seems to be the sort of charming, civilized, superior box that it is hard to think outside of. Cut taxes? Free the labor market? Not they. Around and around the box, like so many hamsters clad in little black berets, they pursue Microsoft...

Ian Harvey's "Creativity Destruction," in the WSJ (subscription required) assess the situation thus:

Continue reading That EU "Innovation" Thing . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:40 AM | Antitrust , International , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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Pirates of the Charles River

A planning notice on last weekend's Harvard Free Culture Conference noted:

On Friday May 25th, Disney launches “Pirates of the Caribbean, at World’s End”, a movie about a diverse community coming together to fight the far-reaching and oppressive East India Trading Company to preserve their freedom-loving lifestyle (sound kind of familiar?). Free Software Foundation and Free Culture activists will be heading to the Boston Common theater . . . to help educate the movie-going public . . . .

The propaganda ju jitsu here is brilliant. Hollywood’s glorification of pirates does indeed undercut its efforts to brand illicit P2P file sharers “pirates.” Nor did the glorification start with Johnny Depp and PoC, either -- order up the 1942 classic Black Swan and prepare to be appalled at its depiction of rape, rapine, and murder as jolly good sport.

So the FCM logic seems to be that since Maureen O'Hara learned to love being kidnapped by Tyrone Power, Hollywood too should lean back and enjoy the P2P world.

Fortunately, that Black Swan style of thinking is rather out of favor these days, and it should go out of style with respect to creative content, too.

As National Review Onlinecolumnist observed, "Perhaps we need a refresher course in what pirates are."

Just as a carjacker steals your car, pirates steal your ship. A pirate ship would come alongside their victim, invade it, then kill and rape and throw overboard at random, keeping cargo and valuables for themselves. They had those skull-and-crossbones emblems for a reason. At one time, travel on the seas meant taking your life in your hands, and if that danger is rarer now, it’s because brave men still fight pirates. A small square white-on-black bumpersticker reading “Pirates are Mean” might be educational.
So the inference that the British government killed civilians in order to save merchandise from pirates is outrageous; governments killed pirates in order to save civilians, and it’s a good thing.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:30 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Open Source Software & Less Developed Nations

Past entries on this blog have occasionally charged that the promoters of open source software (OSS) are engaged in an enterprise that misleads and harms naïve developers in the less developed world. In particular, this point was asserted in connection with a visit to Brazil made in Brazil by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz a year ago.

It turns out that I missed a chance to cite an authority for my point – namely, Jonathan Schwartz himself. An interview in the June 2007 Linux Journal with Sun’s Chief Open Source Officer Simon Phipps contains the following passage:

Continue reading Open Source Software & Less Developed Nations . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 6:18 AM | International , Software

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"Is It Good for Open Source?"

At the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco last week, I was struck by the frequency with which panelists and commenters would ask with respect to some development or proposition: “Is it good for open source?”

Not, is it good for programmers, or customers, or the IT industry, or software development, or the world at large, but “good for open source.”

This anthropomorphization of open source seems passing strange. Open source is an approach to producing software, a method by which creators can make their work freely available while ensuring that others reciprocate, and in the view of its practitioners, it is a superior way of producing software.

But open source is a tool, and characterizing it as a test of value makes no more sense than asking whether something is good for electric drills.

Continue reading "Is It Good for Open Source?" . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 2:12 AM | Software

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05.30.2007

American Academy for the Advancement of Science: Still No Anti-Commons

The American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has released the second part of its research project on the effects of intellectual property protection on scientific research (I reviewed the first part here).

The new AAAS release, International Intellectual Property Experiences: A Report of Four Countries (May 2007) surveyed over 5000 scientists across the US, UK, Germany and Japan. The AAAS finds that intellectual property rights have not hampered scientific research, even in nations where the proliferation of patents has caused concern with some critics. This is a very significant conclusion. In scientific research, intellectual property rights can cover research tools (inputs) as well as the results of research (outputs). Thus intellectual property rights can affect the scientific process itself, rather than simply its product. The context of the research lends weight to the AAAS findings.

Continue reading American Academy for the Advancement of Science: Still No Anti-Commons . . .

posted by Noel Le @ 9:17 PM | Academia , International , Patents

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Interoperability and Licensing: Only For Those Who Can

In the technology industries, licensing is a form of knowledge-exchange and collaboration. Licensing plays a critical role as technologies grow more complex, and competition for innovation gets more intense. Firms must focus on what they're good at, and license from others what they're not. Yet, licensing is a simple concept- private contracting that induces flexibility into commercial transactions. For every innovation in the market, dozens or hundreds of different licenses cover the features-functions.

With the role of licensing in the technology industries, it is not surprising that Microsoft wants to leverage licensing agreements for greater interoperability between its technologies and FOSS technologies. Recent statements from a Microsoft executive, Horacio Gutierrez:

"The only way that's possible [interoperability] is for companies to really be open to licensing arrangements and building these bridges that people thought were impossible before, among different providers and among different software development models."

Cool, so everybody wins with interoperability through licensing agreements, right? Technologies would come together, consumers and Microsoft would benefit. FOSS firms would also benefit, but they face some challenges.

Continue reading Interoperability and Licensing: Only For Those Who Can . . .

posted by Noel Le @ 8:09 PM | Patents

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Site Tracks Black Markets

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.

Continue reading Site Tracks Black Markets . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 7:44 AM | Accounting , Counterfeit , Economics, Game Theory & Public Choice , International , Liberty and IP , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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05.29.2007