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 [...]

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 [...]

I hope all readers answer “no” to the question above, but in policy recommendations, we often are told that the answer is “yes.” In particular, we are told that if technology makes something inevitable, we must all not just adjust to it but embrace it. Technology is about improvement, about bettering the world. Short-term disruptions [...]

One of the great success stories of the digital age has been the growing app industry. For as long as there has been software, there have been clever entrepreneurs who have developed a nifty game or tool and marketed it directly to the public, but in the smart phone era professional possibilities exist like never [...]

Like all creative industries, the photography industry is undergoing significant change. Technologies have been of benefit to professional photographers by easing legal distribution and creating new models for licensing, and have helped them to better express themselves in their art. But technologies have also enabled infringement of their works, and have created avenues for less [...]

WASHINGTON — It can be easy to underestimate the importance of another’s intellectual property rights, even when you fiercely protect your own.
There was an interesting exchange today at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global IP Center Summit. During Q&A of a panel of copyright and patent industry leaders, an entrepreneur named Friedrick Schweitzer stood up [...]

Rapid advances in technology have been occurring since the Renaissance, and yet sometimes the greatest advocates of advancement fail to predict where science will go. In the 19th Century Lord Kelvin was a father of modern physics, identifying absolute zero, naming kinetic energy, and setting in motion the identification of the second law of thermodynamics. [...]

UCLA Law Professor Doug Lichtman has a new essay (posted by The Media Institute) and podcast on a topic that seems obvious on its face: Everyone Hates DRM. That is mostly true, at least from a consumer standpoint. But that doesn’t mean it still isn’t relevant in today’s society, and I Lichtman understands that as [...]

WASHINGTON – The above headline shouldn’t have to happen. In my panel yesterday here at CISAC’s 2nd World Copyright Summit, I dismissed the false dichotomy of “Hollywood v. Silicon Valley,” but it keeps popping up. This morning CISAC had Consumer Electronics Association CEO Gary Shapiro debate National Music Publishers Association CEO David Israelite. It will [...]