The NFL has a rule to limit TV screens to 55 inches at public viewings. The league makes an exception for venues like bars and restaurants that regularly broadcast sporting events. But churches that dare to let their parishioners watch the mayhem on the big screen are coming under fire. Presumably, the league is not protecting intellectual property, but want parishioners to go to bars instead of churches on Sunday.

Alter, Alexandra. 2008. "God vs. Gridiron: As Church Super Bowl Parties Are Busted by NFL." Wall Street Journal (2 February): p. W 1. link here

Copyright lawyer and blogger William Patry tackles "The Natural Rights Issue" as it relates to copyright in a January 18 post:

Claims that copyright involves human rights or is a property right are based on the theory that copyright is also a natural right -- a right that exists independent of legislative enactment, even if there are legislative enactments.

This is the theory alright, but it was blown out of the water in a notable essay by Tom G. Palmer, "Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? the Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects". Howard B. Abrams had already proved that copyright was not part of the commom law in his 1983 Wayne Law Review essay, "The Historic Foundation of American Copyright Law: Exploding the Myth of Common Law Copyright."

In the United States, copyright is not a natural right, since the Supreme Court has said so twice, first in 1834 in Wheaton v. Peters, and then in 1932 in Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal.

Mark Brady e-mails me that what the SCOTUS rules doesn't make it right or wrong, even if they are correct on a particular issue. He asks if Patry is "implying that slaves didn't have natural rights until the Thirteenth Amendment?" and notes the "huge difference between natural rights that transcend constitutional and statute law and those particular natural rights that the Supreme Court in its infinite wisdom chooses to recognize at any given point in time."

The problem here is that William Patry seems to imply that natural rights are what the SCOTUS says. But government-granted monopolies (such as copyright) are hardly consistent with the natural right to use one's own property in the first place, and were in violation of such rights long before the SCOTUS--which itself is a government monopoly--came into existence.

He continues:

Yet, rhetoric based on a natural rights basis for copyright are behind all the claims that those who use copyrighted works without permission are thieves or pirates. If copyright is instead a limited privilege that parcels out limited control to copyright owners, one might view issues differently.

Copyright violates the natural rights of non-rights holders to use their property in non-invasive ways, such as making and/or selling copies of their own tangible property. The thieves and pirates are the copyright owners themselves, and their legislative and judicial branch enablers and executive branch enforcers. The "limited privilege" they are granted by the State is a monopoly that runs roughshod over the rights of other people. So yes, we do view issues differently, and in a very different way from how Mr. Patry does.

He closes with a sendup of Tom Bell's book:

Professor Tom Bell has a draft of a book that takes on these issues and many others, called "Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good," available here. There is a lot of good thinking and research, and I encourage others to read it.

Well, there's something we can agree on!

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.

David Pogue posts responses to his earlier post on the results of his survey of the responses of the young to copyright protection link here and here. The comments again make the point that the young think they don't need to obey copyright restrictions, particularly since they are so complex that most people can't figure out when they are violating them. They also understand that the artists can make money by other means that CDs, like live performances, and that the prices charged by the record companies are grossly high.

Brad DeLong posted this today and it is fitting link here:

(Ooops--it seems to have disappeared, but I copied and put the URL and time of day when it was posted at the end, so it must have been there)

Perhaps the Best Argument for the Destruction of the Music Companies Ever Made

DymaxionWorldJohn

Cogitamus: The Music Industry's talking points: "Hey, we're obsolete.": via Matt, the RIAA gives consumers holiday advice:

Watch for Compilations that are "Too Good to Be True": Many pirates make "dream compilation" CDs, comprised of songs by numerous artists on different record labels who would not likely appear on the same legitimate album together.

So, if you see an album with all of your favourite artists on it, performing the songs you love, for the love of God don't buy it -- it's probably pirated!

, this is their press release. And in it, they explicitly state that pirates are putting together products that people want more than the legitimate variety. This, of course, is why teenagers should be sued in to penury, rather than something as revolutionary as the music industry putting together its own compilations that people want to buy.

Source: Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal Address : http://delong.typepad.com/ Date Visited: Tue Dec 25 2007 12:09:56 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

As reported in the New York Times, a judge in the Niagara Falls, New York, city court, more or less went beserk when a cell phone rang in his court. After threatening to jail everyone in his presence (except of course the court emloyees) unless the owner of the phone 'fessed up, he impertinently inquired of the defendant in front of him, Reginald Jones, if he knew who owned the phone. When the perplexed Mr. Jones answered that he did not, the judge scuppered his plan to release him, set his bail at $1,500, and ordered him into custody.

Here is the story.

The judge is going to be removed, so there is some semblance of justice here.

In a free market court system (see David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom; William Woolridge, Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man; and Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty), the judge would be fired and good luck to him obtaining work as a judge again. And it wouldn't require a government commission to do it--at taxpayer expense, thank you.

David K. Levine points out in his comment to "Intellectual Ventures Patent Globaloney" below that non-producing patent trolls such as Intellectual Ventures are free to sue infringers of their patents, but aren't subject to countersuit.

There is another class of patent holders that can't be sued, as the Wall Street Journal points out today in "Critics Take Aim at California's Patent Shield" .

These are state entities that hold patents, such as the University of California. They are protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which protects them from legal liability. They can sue but can't be sued. As the Church Lady used to say, "Isn't that special?"

In a case brought by Biomedical Patent Management against the state of California for non payment of royalties on a patented invention, the trial court judge criticized the fact that the U. of C. can reap the benefits of the patent system without the possibility of liability for infringement. Private universities don't have this advantage.

A representative of a software industry association says that these state entitites are competitors against private firms.

Unfortunately, the discussion has degenerated into parsing the 11th amendment and the question of whether states can be sued.

The judge in the biomedical case could have struck a blow for freedom by pointing out that Biomedical's patent violated the liberty of competing inventors, while potentially raising prices to consumers.

In the meantime the U. of C. and other state entities will go on hiding behind the doctrine of sovereign immunity. As Mel Brooks put it, "It's good to be the King." Or at least to hide behind his throne.

The fight over fair use of copyrighted video material is getting more complicated. The Big Content side of the argument wants to use a cheap way, filters, to determine copyright violation, leading to an automatic take-down notice which it wants the You Tubes of the world to obey. The Public Interest groups argue that fair use under that system will get lost and proposes freer and more flexible guidelines. You can read more about the differences here and here .

No sign yet of who is likely to prevail. Too bad no one comes out for doing away with copyright on the grounds that it is monopolistic and a bane of creativity.

After WW II the proprietary drug industry developed a blockbuster model supported by the patent system. Global markets and monopoly rents fueled these firms' stock prices for years, despite the growth of generic competition. But its model is becoming unglued. As blockbusters come off patent, the revenues and earnings from these drugs are becoming more difficult to replace. Some drugs have failed and have been scrapped. Pfizer's recent decision to scrap its hoped-for insulin inhaler blockbuster Exubera after investing more than $2 billion developing it was unprecedented, according to the Wall Street Journal. The patent system itself is under political and legal pressure.

So now these firms are going back to the drawing board and seeking ways to innovate their way out of the mess. Outsourcing, long the bane of the industry, is coming into vogue. Marketing is also being rethought. Big pharma spends one-third or more of its revenues in the U.S. on marketing compared with less than a fifth on R&D. Are sales reps and ad agencies really that innovative?

In addition to changing their R&D focus to encompass personalized medicine and other innovative techniques, proprietary firms are diversifying into generics, diagnostics, biotechnology, and other areas. In diversifying their portfolios, they are hedging their risks, but also increasing their chances of finding new innovations and markets.

Call it the Goldman Sachs model. That firm has prospered by having a good management team, by innovating, and by venturing into new markets. If one market get into trouble, it's so diversified and well managed that it can keep chugging along, innovating as it goes.

The Economist reports in "Beyond the Pill".

Comcast has come under criticism, first for having slowed its broadband users' large file transfers in apparent disregard of their service contracts and more recently for lying about it link here. They seem now to have been caught. They were not the ones restricting usage, but they had hired another company to do it for them link here. In judging this, one needs to remember that Comcast is at best a duopolist in markets with few or no other companies offering broadband .

The one positive fallout of this is that it has revived the campaign for legally enforcing net neutrality. Consumers are simply not sure that they can get a fair shake from competition in these markets.