IPI Policy Blog

Apparently the folks over at Engadget sponsored a conference in New York this past Sunday, and of course they did a panel on copyright policy. Of course they did.

But balance wasn’t apparently high on the agenda. In fact, hearing from people who actually create, own, and market creative goods—the main stakeholders in copyright—apparently wasn’t on the agenda at all. Here was the makeup of the panel:

On Friday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) held its 2013 Global IP Summit at its headquarters in Washington, DC. The event was very well attended, at least through its highlight, the luncheon panel on patent litigation reform.

One highlight for me came early in the program when former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez made it clear that attacks on intellectual property rights are attacks on capitalism. You might could tell that this is a pet theme of mine from this recent blog entry.

During the patent litigation reform panel, it was clear that there is some subset of Rep. Goodlatte’s proposed legislation that pretty much everyone could agree upon, though of course such a subset of solutions would not please those who are fond of very broad definitions of patent “trolls,” and who would like to see it made much more difficult to uphold a broad array of patents. As Manus Cooney put it, “to the degree to which you make patent enforcement more difficult, you make patent trolling less risky.”

Yesterday, during testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen announced that their Internet Essentials program, designed to encourage broadband adoption among low-income families, has connected more than 1 million Americans to the Internet.

That's more than 250,000 families in a span of just over two years.

"That's more than the entire population of a city like San Francisco or a state like Delaware or Montana" Cohen said.

The Internet Essentials program offers low-cost broadband at $9.95 per month to families that qualify for the National School Lunch Program (and obviously who live in Comcast's service area). They also offer a computer for under $150 and computer literacy education.

Great example of a voluntary program, using no government funding. It's also the kind of program only a company with resources the size of Comcast's could pull off. So remember that when you hear people screaming about broadband companies being too large or too dominant. Big companies can also do big, good things.

Today, a new caucus was formed on Capitol Hill in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

"Friends of the Trans Pacific Partnership" was formed by Congressmen Dave Reichert (R-WA), Ron Kind (D-WI), Charles Boustany (R-LA), and Gregory Meeks (D-NY). Here's a link to the press release from Congressman Reichert.

As the TPP (hopefully) begins to draw toward a successful completion, it's good to see support for the agreement beginning to form on Capitol Hill.

Okay, so the good guys lost this battle. On to the next one.

With “this battle,” of course, I’m referring to the government shutdown over . . . what was it over again? Defunding Obamacare? Delaying the individual mandate? It seems like it was over three or four things before it was . . . over.

Look, you don’t win every battle. This one, we lost. We tried to take a hill, and we failed. You pick yourself up, you address your wounds, you assimilate the lessons, and you move on.

Some argued that we should not have charged this hill—that we knew there was little to no chance of success, and that we should not lead our troops into a battle without at least a decent chance of winning. Others argued that the fight was a noble one, the cause a just one, and that it should be taken on regardless of the chances of success, which turned out to be a kamikaze strategy. Regardless, it was a debate over strategy and tactics, not principle. A tactic or two was tried, they failed, and now we hopefully learn from it and move on without shooting too many of our own in the process. Because they’ll be needed for the next battle.

Our libertarian friends over at the Mercatus Center have set up a website that bashes the movie industry because it doesn’t release movies according to the schedule that the Mercatus Center thinks it should.

At least, that is the clear implication of the site.

What they do at the site is compare the most pirated movies for a particular week with the legal streaming availability of those same movies. Which isn’t even relevant, despite what Tim Lee thinks.

It IS interesting that TorrentFreak brazenly publishes a list of the most pirated movies. That’s pretty in-your-face behavior, considering that piracy is illegal. As you might guess, the most pirated movies are the most recent successful movies.

But it is utterly irrelevant whether or not a pirated movie is available for streaming. That’s because the release schedule and business plan for the movie is entirely the business of whoever owns the movie, and not anyone else. That’s an implication of property rights that libertarians ought to understand. You and your pirate friends do not get to decide what happens to my property.

My favorite tie is the London School of Economics tie. It’s purple, and my wife likes purple. Plus it’s got black in it, and I like black. No, I didn’t attend the school, but their tie is cool and I wear it.

I know it probably offends LSE grads that someone who didn’t attend the school wears the tie, but I’m about to offend LSE grads with this blog post far more than I do when I wear their tie.

That’s because the LSE dropped a big plop of barbecue sauce on their ties recently. Or, as I put it more colorfully in the title, they wet themselves.

If an institution wants a reputation for credibility and serious analysis, they shouldn’t put out a report like the LSE did in a week or so ago, “Copyright & Creation: A Case for Promoting Inclusive Online Sharing” [PDF].

The paper is yet another iteration in an effort by academics and others not involved in the music industry to define how the music industry should operate in the digital age, which most commonly and most emphatically involves not enforcing copyright. And, lately, in a more focused theme, that graduated response mechanisms should not be implemented.

The latest “wisdom” about the government shutdown is that the impasse is making the U.S. a laughing stock around the world. If there is any country laughing at the U.S., it’s either a hypocrite or it hasn’t looked at its own financial situation—or that of many other countries. 

Late yesterday, after House leaders said that their strategy will be to send separate appropriations bills to the Senate, President Obama derided the strategy as a "piecemeal approach" that he would veto as inadequate. Instead, he demanded a "clean CR" (continuing resolution) to fund the federal government.

This is truly stunning. The "piecemeal approach" President Obama dissed is regular order in Congress. The way Congress is supposed to operate is for thirteen separate appropriations bills to be debated, passed, and sent on to the other body. These thirteen separate bills fund the various departments of the federal government.

The most fundamental question in economics is not about math: It’s about philosophy and morality. And how you answer the question takes you down a path that is not only economic, but also philosophical and moral.

(Please bear with this brief economics discussion)

So what is this question? Whether the general public benefits from private ownership (and control) of capital.

Marx, of course, famously answered this “No” —the public does NOT benefit from private ownership of capital.  In fact Marx, who coined the term “capitalism,” said that private ownership of capital leads to abuse of the public because capitalists use control of their capital to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.  In this worldview, if private ownership of capital harms the public, it’s private ownership that is immoral, and theft becomes a moral, even heroic act. So Marxism does away with private ownership and control of capital and turns it over to the general public, in the assumption that the general public will better deploy capital in its own best interests.

According to a study released today by the European Patent Office (EPO), one-in-three jobs in the EU is dependent on the IP-intensive industries.

It’s a 144-page study, available here as a PDF. The press release is available here.

Carried out jointly by the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) acting through the EU Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights and the European Patent Office (EPO), the study finds that about 40% of total economic activity in the EU (some €4.7 trillion annually) is generated by IPR-intensive industries, and approximately 35% of all employment in the EU (77 million jobs) stems from such industries that have a higher than average use of IP rights. The report also finds that average remuneration in IPR-intensive industries is more than 40% higher than in other industries. 

Of course, this is no great surprise to those of us who understand that the modern, knowledge-based economies of the developed nations are very much dependent on their ability to imagine, create, and innovate, and then crucially to monetize those creations into economic activity.

And it’s completely consistent with what has been found by others who did similar such research with an honest look at the data, as opposed to those who set out intentionally to argue against IP protection.

Now, of course, we await the study by CCIA that claims that twelve-in-three jobs in the EU are dependent on fair use.

Admit it, we’ve all done it—This morning I was doing a web search on my own name. Normally there are no surprises, but that’s kinda why we do it, right? To see if there are any surprises? And when you have a last name like mine, odds are when you do a web search on your name, it’s you that comes up, not 500 other people with the same name.

Anyway, a surprise came up, and it was an unpleasant one: I found that a website called DocStoc.com is selling pirated copies of a book I wrote some years ago. You can buy copies of all sorts of pirated books on DocStoc, it seems.

This year’s International Property Rights Index, a project of the Property Rights Alliance, ranks the U.S. #17 for the protection of both physical and intellectual property.

The US score is thanks in part to its strong intellectual property protection system, and ranked second only to Finland’s IPR structure (which is also #1 on the overall property rights list.)

So this morning I see news of a release of a paper from a law professor in Australia who finds that graduated response enforcement, such as “three strikes” policies, doesn’t work.

And that’s as far as almost anyone goes these days in our information overload society. You see a subject line in an email that says graduated response doesn’t work according to a new study, and you tuck that little detail away in your mind. “I remember reading somewhere that graduated response doesn’t work” the little voice in your head will say 18 months from now when the topic comes up in a discussion somewhere.

And then Mike Masnick over at TechDirt and Tim Lee over at the Washington Post will gleefully blog that, according to this new study, graduated response doesn’t work. The echo chamber does it’s work. And that’s that.

So I decided to actually go to the trouble of reading the study. And not only that, but also reading a few other things the author has written, look into some of the author’s affiliations and assumptions, etc.  It takes time, of course. But I do these things as a service to you.