Economic
and Game Theory
Intellectual Property News
Winners and losers from piracy:
If you have been to the movies lately, you have probably seen the MPAA anti-piracy video. The party line is that piracy hurts the ordinary working employee. Economics shows clearly that Southpark has it right: in fact the ordinary employee has little to fear - it is the highly paid employee who is at risk. For details, click here.
[Posted at 08/30/2004 03:20 PM by David K. Levine 
]
Licensing:
It should go without saying - but in response to a query asking permission to link to something on my site I have now made explicit that all (non-password-protected) material on this site may be freely linked to and copied by stating Creative Commons licensing terms on the front page. It is probably the case that simply making material freely available over the internet implies the right to reproduce them and link to them; the courts have not yet definitively ruled on this. The password protected areas raise an interesting conceptual copyright issue. Since I haven't volunteered to make them available to you, you have no legal right to them - copyright is irrelevant. Copyright is my right to control how you use my material after I make it available to you (by sale or otherwise). Elimination of copyright doesn't mean it should be legal for you to take things from me without my permission.
[Posted at 06/29/2004 09:22 PM by David K. Levine ]
More DRM:
CNET News is reporting that the copy protected album Contraband by Velvet Revolver is topping the U.S. charts - the first DRM protected CD to do so. Bear in mind that this is the copy protection that can be disabled by holding down the shift key on your keyboard while inserting the disk. Has it had a big impact on piracy? I was able to download working MP3 copies of the songs on the album from gnutella in less time than it would take to drive to the store, buy the CD, and drive home. They have, apparently, managed to annoy some Apple customers with the DRM though.
[Posted at 06/18/2004 12:03 PM by David K. Levine ]
Cory Doctorow on DRM:
A nice talk given by Cory Doctorow to Microsoft assesses the technology, ethics and economics of digital rights management. This quote summarizes things nicely
"No Sony customer woke up one morning and said, 'Damn, I wish Sony would devote some expensive engineering effort in order that I may do less with my music.'"[Posted at 06/18/2004 11:21 AM by David K. Levine
]More abandonment:
Brad DeLong seems to have gotten this backwards. There is an important difference between keeping your data on someone else's computer/using someone else's domain, and using open source software. If the person storing your data or controlling your domain disappears - you are in trouble. Brad seems to think this is a problem with open source software: if the programmer disappears the you are in trouble. But there are two kinds of open source software: software which simply makes the source available, and free software, as in the GNU, BSD or MIT licenses. In the case of free software, anyone, without permission of the owner, can pick up the project. This provides some insurance against the disappearance of the original owner. In the case of software that is nonfree - whether or not it is open source - if rights for further development cannot be negotiated with the original owner, either because he/she is unwilling, or simply can't be found, there is no legal modification of the software that can take place - and then you really are in trouble. The most widely used open source software - Linux, Apache and Mysql (all used on this machine) - are free software. The widely used PHP program (also used on this machine) is (in its current version) open source but not free. Java is neither open source nor free. One of the goals of the Creative Commons License is to make sure that copyrighted material does not become unavailable or unusable if the owner abandons it; Larry Lessig's proposal to once again require copyright renewal is designed to serve the same purpose. Changes in copyright law that have made copyright automatic and eliminated renewal create an enormous problem with abandoment, because unless the owner makes explicit provisions, abandoned creations become unusable by anyone. Unfortunately, these modifications of the copyright law serve no useful economic purpose - it appears in fact that they are designed to protect large businesses which can cover the fixed cost of finding and negotiating copyrights from competition from small businesses that cannot.
[Posted at 06/16/2004 06:15 PM by David K. Levine ]
Abandonment:
One of the problems with copyrighted software is that if the copyright holder disappears no one can legally take over maintenance of the software - potentially leaving the paying customers with unusable data. One of the competitive advantages that open source software [more precisely free software as in GNU, BSD license] has, particularly for small firms, is that it provides the customer with a guaranteee that they can take over maintenance of the software. The abandonment problem is a real one. In a different context it is in the news today where a complex series of events resulted in the disappearance of 3000 websites, including in some cases, years of data. Even if the data is eventually returned, they will return to a different web address, meaning that any readership accumulated at the old address will be lost. A similar event took place when CNET purchased mp3.com and dumped years of accumulated music. The bottom line is - for the individual protection of "intellectual property" does not take place through copyright - it takes place by making sure that you keep copies of your own data and that you own your own web addresses.
[Posted at 06/15/2004 09:05 PM by David K. Levine ]
Theory at work:
(via Tristan Zajonc) How much of an advantage can a one-day head start be? There is plenty of evidence that English authors in the 19th century made money on their American sales, even though they did not hold valid copyrights here. Apparently in the 21st century a one-day head start publishing the 9-11 report is considered a real plum by publishers.
[Posted at 05/25/2004 06:44 PM by David K. Levine ]
Read the latest on intellectual property:
Drafts of the first four chapters of Michele Boldrin's and my new book Against Intellectual Monopoly is available online. Information about my public lecture at Chinese U. Why "intellectual property" is not property. Check out the new IP
Bibliography. More stuff about intellectual property and intellectual monopoly (with Michele Boldrin).
[Posted at 05/24/2004 09:34 PM by David K. Levine ]
Hot economics on the internet:
Economic Theory News lightly screened listing of the latest research in economic theory, NAJ Economics peer reviewed publication on the web
[Posted at 05/23/2004 02:14 PM by David K. Levine ]
A subtle bias:
Why
"intellectual property" is not property
[Posted at 10/01/2003 04:05 PM by David K. Levine ]
