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. [...]

Still plugging away at these copyright myths, but only four to go, two of them below. In the first post I addressed the canard that copyright stifles artists and that the purchaser of a work is the one with controlling rights. In the second I focused on the myth that copyright stifles innovation and addressed [...]

BERLIN, GERMANY — Ideas, fortunately, cannot be copyrighted. Ideas, however, are very important in the debate over copyright. Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig knows that, and is back with yet another book urging the reduction of rights of creators. This self-appointed pied piper of copyright dilution has given us a preview of his new [...]

Did you know that thanks to the digital age, we can all share in a great collective, enjoying each other’s creative works without concern as to whether they’re produced because the motive is one of receiving praise from the collective? (See Benkler 2006 and numerous other works by kibbutz-minded professors.) When a commercial creative work [...]

Well, we’ve been down this road before.
What is fair use? According to the American University Center for Social Media, fair use can be defined as follows:
Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it.
Okay, we’re already off on the wrong foot. Most of that [...]