Floyd Abrams, the noted First Amendment lawyer, submitted a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the recently introduced PROTECT IP Act.  In his letter he shares his view that the legislation is consistent with the First Amendment, reaffirming his earlier analysis offered in February. He writes: “This legislation does not impair or overcome the constitutional [...]

The United States economy in the 21st Century will be driven by creatives both native and immigrant, as a rich social and economic network fostering creativity draws creators and fuels further creativity. So argues David Brooks today in The New York Times. America will be a “crossroads nation,” he said, due to several factors, including [...]

WASHINGTON — Happy World IP Day! The ten-year old holiday, launched by the World Intellectual Property Organization, has been celebrated for the last five years by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) with a conference on Capitol Hill. Today’s was possibly the best yet, despite the fact that I moderated a panel there with a [...]

It’s a good thing copyright is not a person, because three hundred candles on a cake would likely be a fire hazard. But when you divide three hundred candles across the 11 million Americans working as creators or other contributors in copyright industries, that only leaves 0.0000272 candles per person. Anyhow, kudos to U.S. Senate [...]

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 [...]

One of the wonderful things about the U.S. Constitution is that it gives lawmakers and judges discretion in application of law. Even strict constructionists have to admit that their interpretation of original intent is in fact an interpretation. I mention this to address the varying interpretations of the Progress Clause — the origin of current [...]

Is our so-called “remix culture” really a new Renaissance of learning and cultural progress? Certain thinkers such as Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler knock vigorously on that door but are wise enough not to walk through. Plenty of bloggers and blog commenters, however, show no fear in ecstatically breaking through that thought barrier. In this [...]

This is a busy week in Washington on the health care front, but IP issues keep popping up as well, like yesterday’s hearing on the dangers of P2P to another hearing yesterday, the confirmation hearing for David Kappos, the IBM veteran up for U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director. He noted in his testimony that [...]

Kudos to USTR Ron Kirk (my second praise for him today) and his team for last week’s update on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations. I was traveling then but I’ve had a chance to read the summary they issued on the negotiations, and I think all of us in the creative community should feel [...]

In the Critiquing Copyright Canards piece, the eighth myth was that “Copyright is not a property right.” I understand that some long for a commons culture, and thus oppose all property as did Robert Owen, the founder of the failed Utopian community New Harmony in Indiana. They, naturally, will resist copyright as a property right. [...]