What is hopefully the final version of Michele's and my book Against Monopoly is online. It is in production at Cambridge University Press and we hope will hit the bookstores this summer. In the meantime the first review is in and favorable. For the sake of disclosure the author of the review is one of our fellow bloggers here - Stephen Spear. The review is well worth reading not so much on account of the book, but because it gives a wonderfully clear and succinct statement of the case against intellectual monopoly.

A nice review Stephen. My understanding of the legal history of the Constitution is that the Copyright Clause is usually referred to as the Progress Clause, because it includes both patents and copyrights. Am I mistaken on this?

With each successive draft, the text feels a little less natural. As if the book's train of thought is interrupted at random points during narration.

It is hard for me to describe the feeling accurately and impossible for me to show a concrete example, so this comment is probably worthless to you.

I was just hoping somebody else could tell me that I'm not imagining things. Does anyone have a similar experience?

There still remains an inaccuracy in your use of the terms "Open Source" and "Free Software."

Both terms refer to the same kind of software, that is, software that everybody is free to use, modify, share, and fork without permission from the author.

The difference is not in the meaning of the terms but in the ideology of the people that use them. Free Software advocates think proprietary software is a bad idea in general. Open Source advocates do not necessarily think proprietary software is evil, and that all of it should be replaced by Free / Open Source Software. Rather, they believe that there are *some* cases where it is better to have FOSS than proprietary software.

While Free Software advocates are more likely than Open Source advocates to use a license like the GPL, preventing others from making derivate proprietary products, it is not true that "Free software is not only open source, but is released under a license such as the GNU General Public License (GPL) which allows modifications and distribution only when the source code to those modifications is made available under the same license."

Software released under a non-copyleft license such as the MIT license is also Free Software.

In chapter 2, there appear two paragraphs. One ends with "so we can gain considerable insight into how the "legitimate" industries might operate in the absence of copyright by examining the pornography industry." The one right after that ends with "so we may see the current stage of the pornography industry as a model of the "legitimate" industry without copyright."

To me, these sentences look disturbingly similar. It almost looks as if one paragraph was intended to replace the other, and by accident, both got left in. Perhaps it is a matter of style.

Chapter 4, "word" in "Relatively speaking - that is: relative to a word where the monopolist does not price discriminate" might have been intended to read "world"

Hm, in the rest of the book, I discovered no sentences or words that looked especially disturbing, and also the feeling of unnaturalness quickly went away. Perhaps I simply wasn't used to the style. I reread the first couple of pages, to make sure, but an uneasiness, unfortunately, reappeared. I wish I could put my finger on it. Perhaps it's the balance in sentence length.

Anyway, AIM certainly leaves me to wonder how it is still possible to say a good word in defense of the current patent and copyright system. I am very hungry for some criticism of AIM (if at least as a possibility proof), and I definitely enjoyed the quotes of some critics added in the new edition. The book successfully diffuses virtually any sensible argument in favor of IM, in my opinion, but of course I was already convinced.

Interesting book; I'm still working my way through it, but you've definitely caught my attention. I hope it isn't the final version, though! Some editing is in order.

Things I found: p. 35 "lead, in 1902, to a..." should be "led..." p. 36 South Park is two words, not "Southpark" p. 38 outdated description, as all major labels now sell DRM-free MP3s p. 43 (Ch. 2 footnote 4): double negative ("we do _not_ think [...] makes _little_ more sense")

Also a couple times so far, you've described the landscape as it was in 2002-2003, then said, 'Since we've taken so long to write this book, the situation we just described has changed in the following ways:...' This can be jarring. I'd suggest you instead prefix the 2002-2003 situation with "When we started researching this section in 2002, ..." so the writing is all set in the present.