Any veteran of Capitol Hill knows that some of the shortest legislative language can lead to some of the most dramatic reversals of law. Pick a random statute, add or remove the word “not,” then imagine the consequences.
It is important to keep this inverse relationship between text and impact in mind when reviewing draft legislation [...]

The Property Rights Alliance (PRA) has outdone itself with the 2010 International Property Rights Index (IPRI) Report, which once again highlights the close coordination of strong rule of law and physical and intellectual property rights in a nation’s economic success. The latest data shows those countries in the top quintile on those yardsticks have an [...]

I came across a breath of fresh air today from the academic community — a professor who takes offense at the notion that unauthorized infringement of a creator’s works should be viewed as some kind of a just social movement.
U. of California at Berkeley Law Professor Peter S. Menell has authored a short work titled [...]

While snowbound this week I read some pieces in The Washington Post about condescension. The first author wrote a piece titled “Why are liberals so condescending?” He maintained that liberals are “committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but [...]

It would appear to be a victory. Last week, we here at the Copyright Alliance reported on a brazenly infringing web site, a site that encouraged people to upload professional images over which they held no legal rights. These images were then published on the site in magazine form. The magazine was called Pilfered Magazine, [...]

I’m sounding like a broken record (kids, ask your parents, an audiophile or a club DJ what a record is), but one can’t ignore the focus President Obama and his Administration is placing on the importance of enforcing intellectual property law, in particular ensuring trading partners adhere to their commitments on IP enforcement in their [...]

Start with a web site that posts high-quality, professional-level visual arts works, with the intention of making them available easily and for free to all. Then imagine that it actively encourages people to upload works that are not theirs, but just “found” online. Then imagine it pokes creators in the eye by calling the monthly [...]

Congrats to the coalition of self-described “consumer groups” that have sent letters to the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission urging the federal government to step in, strip audiovisual content creators of their rights, and force all of their content online available to any distributor at prices set by someone other [...]

Three cheers to the Obama Administration for hosting Tuesday at the White House a key jobs summit, one involving the jobs of creators and their collaborators in creation. The Associated Press quoted the host of the event, Vice president Joseph Biden, as saying of copyright piracy:
“This is flat unadulterated theft, and it should be dealt [...]

I just came from a compelling event hosted by a think tank, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. ITIF was promoting a paper released today by technologists titled “Steal These Policies: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy.” The paper is a must-read; let me summarize the event, which had a very important theme — namely, that [...]