Congressional Hyperbole Used To Urge Bush To Accept A Copyright Czar

from the and-so-it-goes dept

We've already seen that the Bush administration has said that it really doesn't want the "Copyright Czar" that Congress has been trying to give the White House. However, as the bill sits on his desk to sign, it appears that plenty of folks are trying to pressure Bush into signing it (he has until Tuesday to veto or it automatically becomes law). We already noted that the US Chamber of Commerce was using totally ridiculous and made up numbers about job and dollar losses to get Bush to sign, and now it appears that various politicians are sending ridiculously hyperbolic letters to the White House to push for signing the bill as well (thanks to Jim Harper for alerting me to this).

Let's start with Senator George Voinovich, who actually claimed that signing this bill "would be a fitting achievement and legacy." Now, I don't care what you think of the present administration, but you'd have to be pretty disconnected from world events to think that adding a copyright czar will ever be considered a part of Bush's "legacy." Somehow, I would imagine that there is a long list of other things that will most likely be on his legacy list before anyone gets around to a totally unnecessary copyright czar.

Then there's Rep. Lamar Smith, who ran the intellectual property subcommittee in Congress before the Democrats and Howard Berman took over. However, Smith and Berman -- despite being on different sides of the aisle, have pretty much identical views on intellectual property, so it's no surprise that he would tell the President that signing this bill is "not merely desirable, but necessary." Necessary, huh? For what? That seems like a pretty strong claim without an iota of proof. That's because it's not "necessary" at all. In fact, about the only thing it's likely to do is to hold back the more innovative business models the economy needs by propping up one industry's obsolete business model.

Then we've got Senator Arlen Specter, who complains that vetoing this bill could lead to "fallout" with trading partners, concerning the equally awful ACTA treaty. That makes very little sense. Both this bill and ACTA were basically written by the same lobbyists, and both serve to do the same thing: prop up a broken and obsolete business model of the American entertainment industry. Vetoing the bill is unlikely to have any serious international ramifications, other than from countries tha might stand up for themselves and push back every time the US demands they strengthen IP laws just to protect a few American businesses who refuse to innovate.

Filed Under: arlen specter, copyright czar, george voinovich, intellectual property, lamarr smith, white house

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Explains How Intellectual Property Damages Innovation

from the and-another-one dept

Over the last year or so, there have been a bunch of excellent books that have come out highlighting many of the issues we talk about here on a regular basis. The latest may be The Crime of Reason and the Closing of the Scientific Mind, written by Nobel Prize winning physicist, Robert B. Laughlin. I became aware of the book thanks to the fact that he'll be speaking at the Cato Institute this week about the book, for those of you in the Washington, DC area.

It's funny, because when we point to all the economic research on intellectual property and innovation, we've been told that economists know nothing. In fact, one critic of our site has claimed that even Nobel Prize winning economists aren't worth paying attention to -- and the only Nobel Prize winners who matter are those in the hard sciences. So, I'm sure those critics will be interested in the conclusions of Laughlin, who notes that the strengthening of intellectual property laws has harmed the ability to share knowledge and to innovate. He's quite worried about how it's impacting research and development.

Newly aggressive patent practices are increasingly violating a principle that has been with us since Roman times and is built into our societies at many levels, including our religions: the laws of man flow from the laws of nature and are subservient to them. Patenting nature is transparently immoral. So is patenting reason, since reason and nature are one and the same. Thus, the current problem with patent law is more serious than the bellyaching of a few jaded engineers. It's a crisis of legitimacy.

So, now we can add a Nobel Prize winning physicist to the list of critics of the patent system, along with a few Nobel Prize winning economists.

Filed Under: innovation, intellectual property, nobel prize, patents, physics, robert b. laughlin

Lebanon Claiming Only It Owns Hummus, Falafel, Tabouleh And Baba Gannouj

from the make-it-stop dept

Another day, another ridiculous intellectual property lawsuit. Along the same lines as various regions in France declaring that only they can sell "Champagne" or Greece being the only one allowed to offer "feta," a group in Lebanon is claiming that various popular middle eastern foods such as hummus, falafel, tabouleh and baba gannouj are property of Lebanon and Lebanon alone. In fact, the group is planning to sue Israel for "stealing" its food. They're actually claiming that this could be a violation of a "food copyright" (something that doesn't actually exist). Specifically, the group says that since Israel sells such foods, it's taking "tens of millions of dollars" away from Lebanon, where those foods should be bought. This, folks, is what happens when you build up a society around the idea of "owning" infinite goods.

Filed Under: baba gannouj, falafel, food, food copyright, hummus, intellectual property, lebanon, tabouleh, trademark

Plagiarizing Speechwriter Pushed For Stronger Copyright Laws

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Why is it so often that we find those who strongly push for certain types of draconian laws are later found to be guilty of violating those laws? The latest is a mini-scandal in Canada, involving a plagiarized speech. Now, I've pointed out before that I'm actually all for plagiarizing politicians. However, as Rob Hyndman points out, it turns out that the guy who copied the speech, one Owen Lippert, wrote a book on intellectual property, where he pushed for much stronger intellectual property rules to be included in trade agreements. Of course, it's worth pointing out that plagiarism and copyright are related, but not the same -- but you would think that someone who believes so strongly in more stringent intellectual property laws would be a lot more careful about potentially doing anything that shows a disregard for intellectual property.

Filed Under: canada, intellectual property, owen lippert, plagiarism, politics

House Follows Senate In Giving The President A Copyright Czar

from the priorities,-people dept

While failing to do much of anything (other than fingerpointing) to deal with the economic crisis we're facing, the folks in the House did spend some time easily passing the ProIP bill that the Senate passed last week. So, now we just have to wait for the President to sign it, and the entertainment industry gets their own person in the White House whose job it is to prop up their business model. Hell, if Wall St. gets one of those, why not the entertainment industry?

Filed Under: copyright czar, intellectual property, white house

Latest Study Highlights How Damaging Intellectual Property Has Been To Biotech

from the more-evidence dept

TorrentFreak alerts us to the latest in a long line of research that highlights just how damaging the intellectual property system has been to innovation. This isn't new, of course. We've been pointing to tons of research on this subject for years, but it's great to see some more to add to the pile. And this isn't just a couple of folks with an opinion either -- but a seven year study, involving a large interdisciplinary team of folks examining all aspects of intellectual property, with the main focus being on the biotech industry. The report hits on a few key themes we've highlighted over the years:

The current era of intellectual property is waning. It has been based on two faulty assumptions made nearly three decades ago: that since some intellectual property (IP) is good, more must be better; and that IP is about controlling knowledge rather than sharing it. These assumptions are as inaccurate in biotechnology – the field of science covered by this report – as they are in other fields from music to software.

The full report is a good read. It's well researched and documented, and points out that listening to IP lawyers alone, or just looking at IP laws is a huge mistake in analyzing the overall impact of IP:

An analysis of IP laws alone gives a distorted understanding of how IP facilitates innovation and dissemination. Such an analysis must be complemented by an understanding of business and governmental practice as well as the public and private institutions and entities that create, grant and govern IP.

There's plenty more in the report, and it's all footnoted, and some of the additional research is new to me and will be fun to explore over the next few weeks.

However, while the report's description of the problems is dead on, the report runs into trouble when it gets to the "and what do we do about it" section. It talks a lot about "new IP" which is vaguely defined, and involves a lot of wishy-washy statements about trust and collaboration and openness. It basically suggests that a bunch of different parties all have to start acting differently but doesn't necessarily explain why or how that will work. That seems... difficult, and a tad idealistic. This is really too bad, given how solid the earlier part of the report is. It's almost as if the group putting together the report saw all the problems, but couldn't come up with really concrete solutions. That's unfortunate, given that plenty of folks have shown real world examples of how the system can work just fine by simply removing IP from the equation, and watching the business models that result. Overall, this is an excellent addition to the literature in looking at the problems, but comes up short when it gets to the solutions side of the discussion.

Filed Under: biotech, harm, innovation, intellectual property

When Microsoft Sends Its Legal Dept. To Give Quotes On Product Launches, Something Is Wrong

from the that's-not-development-any-more dept

We've noted the very clear shift in patent strategies at Microsoft over the years -- from a company that hated patents to one that now views them as central to its mission, and often uses them to threaten competitors. However, you want to know when things have really gone too far? It's when the company is sending out the legal department to provide press quotes on a "product launch" that is tied to a technology licensing deal. As Matt Asay points out in the link here, in a story about Novell launching Linux on a Windows virtualization offering, there are two quotes from Microsoft employees -- and both appear to come from the legal department rather than a product role. What used to be an innovative company working on new stuff is apparently turning into a legal firm trying to put tollbooths on innovation. It's sad.

Filed Under: intellectual property, licensing, patents, product launch
Companies: microsoft, novell

Senate Panel Approves Bill To Make The Justice Dep't Hollywood's Private Police Force

from the travesty-of-justice dept

We were just talking about how a huge number of public interest groups had explained to the Senate why the new Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act was a such terrible idea since it would add a Copyright Czar in the White House and let the FBI file civil charges against people caught infringing on copyrights. After all, there's simply no logical explanation for why the FBI should be propping up the obsolete business model of an industry that refuses to change with the market.

However, it appears that public interest groups don't fund campaigns like the entertainment industry does. The Senate Judiciary Committee has gone ahead and approved moving the bill forward by a 14-4 margin, basically handing over Justice Department resources to Hollywood to protect its business model with no real justification.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy's explanation is pretty stunning in its ignorance:

"We all know that intellectual property makes up some of the most valuable, and most vulnerable, property we have. We need to do more to protect it from theft and abuse if we hope to continue being a world leader in innovation."

Can someone send him a copy of Against Intellectual Monopoly so he can understand how nearly every part of that sentence is wrong. First off, intellectual property, despite the name, is not "property" at all. It's also not "vulnerable" except if you mean that there are better business models out there for dealing with. He gives no convincing reason why we should "protect" it, other than a factually untrue statement about "theft," when infringement and theft are two totally different things and should be dealt with in two totally different ways. Finally, studies have shown that the more "protected" IP is, the less innovation results, so his final clause is simply backwards. This bill will serve to limit American innovation, and open up more foreign innovation instead. But, as long as it means the RIAA doesn't need to innovate...

Filed Under: copyright czar, intellectual property, patrick leahy, senate

Mattel Apparently Learned Nothing From Hasbro's Scrabulous Disaster

from the doing-the-same-thing-repeatedly... dept

As you recall, Hasbro's decisions on how to deal with upstart Scrabulous backfired badly. The company first threatened Scrabulous, then tried to do a deal with them. When that failed it (finally!) built its own Facebook Scrabble and then sued Scrabulous. Rather than working to Hasbro's advantage, this backfired in a huge way -- pissing off plenty of people who swore never to use Hasbro's version of the game. And then it was just a matter of days until the Scrabulous guys came out with a new game that was close to Scrabble, but different enough to likely avoid all copyright and trademark claims.

Now, Hasbro only owns the rights to Scrabble in the US and Canada. Mattel owns the rights elsewhere. Now, seeing that Mattel had the distinct advantage of seeing how much backlash there was against Hasbro for its actions, and how poorly Hasbro's own Facebook Scrabble was received, you might think that Mattel would try a different path. Nope. Mattel has now forced Scrabulous offline outside of the US as well. To be fair, the guys from Scrabulous overplay their reaction as well. It's not that shocking. After all, this is how companies react these days. Rather than going with the faux outrage, why not just release WordScraper and get people to sign up for that, rather than any "licensed" version of Scrabble?

Filed Under: intellectual property, lawsuits, promotions, scrabble, scrabulous
Companies: mattel

Congress Moves Forward With Plan To Make Universities Copyright Cops

from the first-ISPs,-then-colleges dept

For a little over a year, there have been stories about how the entertainment industry has been pressuring Congress to make universities responsible for stopping copyright infringement on their network. This got a lot of attention late last year when Congress tried to tie such a mandate to a provision granting financial aid to students. In other words, the threat was that if universities didn't act to stop file sharing, their students wouldn't be eligible for financial aid. This got plenty of attention, and the bill never passed. The most interesting part of it, though, was that much of the reasoning for the bill was driven by MPAA claims that 44% of all illegal file sharing took place on college campuses.

There was just one problem with that: the number was completely wrong. Earlier this year, the MPAA admitted that it had made a small mistake, and the number was actually something like 15% (and even that could be argued).

You might think that would allow our Congressional representatives to focus their attention on something a bit more important -- but with super low approval ratings, the people they actually represent matter a lot less than their biggest campaign donors. So, of course, the bill to turn universities into copyright cops is back once again. It is somewhat toned down, but will still require universities to basically be the mouthpieces of the entertainment industry, repeating their propaganda and ignoring that the problem is the industry's obsolete business models rather than any legal issue.

However, as you read William Patry's post on this above, you see that the MPAA is also positioning the legislative history on the law so that next year or so, they'll be able to come back and insist on mandatory filters at universities. Basically, it looks like the MPAA tried to bite off too big of a chunk when it pushed for this law last year, so this year, it's taking half a bite, but getting everything ready to get the rest of what it wants next year.

Filed Under: congress, copyright, copyright cops, intellectual property, mpaa, universities
Companies: mpaa