As a strong believer in property rights both real and intellectual, and a fervent supporter of the free market — what’s happening on Wall Street right now isn’t a failure of the market, it’s the result of the collapse of distortions and bypasses of the market — I was optimistic when I saw an article [...]

I always love talking about free markets, and miss daily hallway conversations on that subject from my think tank days. So I was delighted to come across a new publication (PDF) by the Washington Legal Foundation in which the Honorable Dick Thornburgh, now with K & L Gates, discusses the state of intellectual property in [...]

I’ve heard some peculiar arguments against intellectual property over the years, and two of them have been at events sponsored by the Cato Institute. The first was two or three years ago, when Cato hosted a conference featuring then-UCLA Economics Professor David Levine. In his dissection of copyright, he defended the notion of pirated motion [...]

I’ve waited two days to write about President-Elect Barack Obama because it seemed, well, rather silly to localize this tremendously historic, emotional and moving event with an examination of copyright policy. I still feel silly, but Obama started working on his transition first thing Wednesday morning (well, actually news reports said he started with breakfast [...]

An interesting blog posted today discusses the ironies surrounding the work of Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the HOPE image that has been widely circulated during the Barack Obama campaign. Apparently, Fairey has become upset because some people have sold his posters – which he donated to the Obama campaign – on Ebay, thus [...]

One of the Copyright Alliance’s academic advisors, James Gibson of the University of Richmond, had a perceptive editorial in The Washington Post today on the recent deal between Google and the publishers over the Google Book search service. Here was our reaction on the morning of the announcement, and here is Professor Gibson’s analysis.
Bottom line [...]

SANTA MONICA, CA — Every time I come to this show, I hear more technologists eager to make deals with copyright owners, legal deals rewarding both parties. Yes, one big obstacle remains — to date, returns from online distribution of creative works haven’t approached that of traditional models. But improvements are being made in that [...]

More scholarship out today on the role of performing rights organizations (PROs) in the digital marketplace, and it’s worth reading. “Creative Industries in Transition: New Directions for the Digital Era — The Songwriters’ Performing Rights Organization Imperative and Copyright Law for the Electronic Media Marketplace” debuted today at a symposium sponsored by the George Washington [...]

My oh-so-clever use of question marks in that headline is meant to convey that I find the very “battle” to be both absurd and non-existent, not unlike the so-called “copyright vs. innovation” battle. In both cases the subjects go hand in hand, in fact are symbiotic. But rarely are they portrayed that way.
This particular rant [...]

How do you stop a viral spread of false information, for example the myth that Senator Barack Obama is a Muslim or that a tooth left in Coca-Cola will dissolve overnight? Well, the fact is, you don’t. That’s the problem with these myths, they’re like Jason from “Halloween” – they won’t die.
That brings me [...]