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 [...]

We’ve all heard that print newspapers are dead, that people like me who like to spread a newspaper across a breakfast table are dinosaurs. News at your fingertips on the web is where it’s at, we hear, and circulation and web traffic data would seem to support that. To respond, newspapers have proven aggressive in [...]

Earlier this year Congress passed a Higher Ed reauthorization bill that, among other things, encouraged colleges and universities receiving federal support to develop plans to target illegal downloading and uploading of creative works on university networks and to promote legal alternatives, a move we promoted and praised. This issue has been ongoing at the state [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

SANTA MONICA, CA — How can you host a conference 200 yards from the beach and expect people to attend your indoor, windowless sessions? Well, DCIA did okay today with their P2P and Video Summit, and I suspect Digital Hollywood will hang in there as well the rest of this week. I’ve spent a lot [...]

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 [...]

As readers of this blog likely know already, yesterday President Bush signed into law the PRO-IP Act of 2008. We were quick to praise the President and the White House, who joined with an overwhelmingly bipartisan coalition in Congress in support of this important legislation.
Early next year the new president should be appointing an [...]