As some reader may know, Michele Boldrin and I have been working on a book about intellectual property, titled "Against Intellectual Monopoly." There we make the case that without the artificial protection of patent and copyright competition functions best, and that patent and copyright do little or nothing to increase innovation and creation. Since they do plenty of other harm: we conclude that it would be best to do away with the entire mess. If you are interested in the details, we've just released the latest version on line at http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm.

The book is to be published (yes under copyright...but under our contract there will continue to be a free version available online) by Cambridge University Press - probably to appear in about a year's time.

Alan Cox, a Linux kernel developer, is reported to have filed for patents on some DRM technology (link here). Hopefully, it can be used to preclude others from imposing DRM restrictions on the public. With bated breath, we wait to see if the patents are granted.

Interesting strategy to limit the growing bane of the digital consumer.

Carlo over at techdirt has an interesting comparison of DSL service in Japan and the US (techdirt link here). The Japanese regulators in 2000 forced state owned “NTT to unbundle its local loop, didn't let it drag its feet and stymie competitive carriers, and didn't let NTT get the law chiseled away by lobby groups and lawyers.” The FCC which regulates these matters in the US, was almost totally ineffective so that competitive service was largely unavailable, and what there was was of lower quality, and more expensive.

Lucky us.

Microsoft Office 2007 is due out on January 30 and is favorably reviewed by Walter Mossberg for the Wall Street Journal, even while taking note of the shortcomings (link here). He likes the change in the radically new interface, is ambivalent about the new file formats which cannot be read in older Word versions without free conversion software, and then notes that the learning curve is steep, even for someone as computer expert as he. The much-cheaper but still expensive household version of the new Word lacks Outlook which must either be purchased separately or as part of the more expensive Standard version. His bottom line is, it helps business users but not the home user. Read the whole review for more details.

From where I sit, it is hard to see how this is worthwhile for most of us. In other words, it is standard Microsoft strategy to extract more money from us by creating obsolescence in the market place without really significant product improvements. Go for the free office suite, Open Office, downloadable at OpenOffice.org, which uses most file formats and is powerful at formating. It has made steady improvements to keep the program compatible with MS Office and no doubt will continue.

IP Bots roam the Internet searching for malfeasance. Just imagine if such efforts were directed for social goods. Delaney, Kevin J. 2006. "Copyright Tool Will Scan Web For Violations." Wall Street Journal (18 December): p. B 1. "Privately held Attributor Corp. of Redwood City, Calif., has begun testing a system to scan the billions of pages on the Web for clients' audio, video, images and text -- potentially making it easier for owners to request that Web sites take content down or provide payment for its use. The start-up, which was founded last year and has been in "stealth" mode, is emerging into the public eye today, at a time when some media and entertainment companies' frustration with difficulties identifying infringing uses of their content online is increasing. The problem has intensified with the proliferation and increasing usage of sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube, which lets consumers post video clips."

Jim Luke and I are going to get together in the lobby lounge of the Swissotel at one pm for about an hour to talk about intellectual property. Anyone who is interested in joining us, please drop by.

The New York Times has an editorial today severely criticizing the American patent system (link to NY Time article). It is short, so here is the whole thing.

Pay to Obey

The broken American patent system has a knack for sanctioning the ridiculous. In the latest example, businesses are receiving patents for devising ways to obey the law the tax code, to be more specific. What's next, a patented murder defense?

As Floyd Norris reported recently in The Times, the broad category known as business-method patents (like patenting the idea of pizza delivery rather than the pizza itself) has expanded once again. Now it includes the legal ways that accountants and lawyers help their clients pay less tax.

Once the Patent and Trademark Office has granted one of these patents, everyone who uses the same legal shelter even if they draw the conclusion based on their own interpretation of the tax code will be subject to lawsuits and even injunctions against using the method at all.

Defenders of these tax-strategy patents argue that they won't affect the average person's struggle with the 1040 form each April. The easy stuff should be rejected under the usual standard that requires patents to be novel and not obvious. Tax-strategy patents, they argue, are more geared toward the complicated tax returns of rich people.

While we don't normally rush to make it easier for the rich to pay less tax, the precedent is a bad one. People should be treated the same under the law, and shouldn't have to pay a licensing fee for the privilege. Congress needs to make spurious patents easier to challenge across the board, and should consider clarifying what may be patented. Recent technological advances raise questions about how patents apply to genes and life forms, or what standard should cover old business models on the Internet.

Patents are supposed to encourage innovation, rewarding the individual for the greater good of society. But excessive or overly broad patents can slow business activity to the pace of cold molasses. And we sure don't need something else to worry about on tax day."

The New Economist blog questions whether textbook prices charged by Amazon in the US are a ripoff. It reports that the same texts are considerably cheaper in the UK. American buyers can save too, by ordering there, even after paying expensive postage (link to new economist.)

The blog is based in turn on a careful study which finds that books for general audiences seem to be competitively priced across countries, but texts are not, as measured by prices at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. (The study can be found at here) It concludes, “The average hardcover textbook price is roughly 50% higher in the United States than in the United Kingdom, and in some cases the US price is as much as double the UK price. This is counter to the conventional wisdom that consumer goods are cheaper in the US than in Europe. We argue that cost factors cannot explain differentials of this magnitude, hence price differences are almost exclusively demand-driven. We discuss several explanations for why demand may differ across countries. We also discuss why price differentials have persisted in the internet era and speculate on whether this is likely to continue."

The study further elaborates: "Differences in the college education culture in the two countries may ultimately be the most likely explanation for textbooks price differences. In the United States the textbook is an integral part of college education. In most courses instruction centers around a single textbook that covers most of the material and includes exercises and practice problems. The textbook is the main reference for students and it is usually labeled as "required" for the course. In the UK, textbooks are not used in the same way. Students are usually given a list of books that are meant to be study aids rather than mandatory textbooks. Thus students feel much less of an obligation to buy particular books, meaning that willingness to pay for textbooks is lower than in the United States. We feel that the central role of the textbook in US college instruction may be the primary source of price differentials."

Elsevier has made a fortune with excessive costs for its journals. Here is a protest about its envolvement in the arms trade link here

From time to time, a few people take actions about excessive journal prices. Here is one example.

Shapiro, Gary. 2006. A Rebellion Erupts Over Journals of Academia. New York Sun (26 October).

The nine members of the editorial board of the Oxford University-based mathematics journal Topology have signed a letter expressing their intention to resign on December 31. They cited the price of the journal as well as the general pricing policies of their publisher, Elsevier, as having "a significant and damaging effect on Topology's reputation in the mathematical research community".

But according to Elsevier's Web site, in 2007 the cost of a single year (six issues) of Topology, in all countries except Europe and Japan, will be $100 for individuals and $1,665 for institutions.

Founded through the vision of the Oxford topologist J.H.C. Whitehead in mid-century, Topology has an "illustrious history" with "some of the greatest names of 20th century mathematics" among its editorial and honorary advisory editorial board members, the editors wrote in their resignation letter, dated August 10. "Elsevier's policies towards the publication of mathematics research have undermined this legacy".

Board resignations have occurred at other Elsevier publications, such as the Journal of Logic Programming and the Journal of Algorithms, and also at a variety of other publishers such as Kluwer and Taylor and Francis." "One editor of Topology, John Roe, whose specialty is the relation between geometry and differential equations, said the rising cost of journals has concerned academics, not just mathematicians, for a long time." "To those who favor free online access to scholarship, mass resignations of editors are "declarations of independence," a research professor of philosophy at Earlham College, Peter Suber, said. Usually, he said, an editorial board "has a long track record of failed negotiations with their publisher. The typical scenario is the editors resign, form a new journal at a lower price, and the old journal hires new editors".

A Lehigh University mathematics professor, Donald Davis, who moderates an online algebraic topology discussion list, said, "University library budgets are no longer adequate to subscribe to all the journals they used to." The Head Librarian of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences Library at New York University, Carol Hutchins, said, "The degree of choice is shrinking" and cited reasons such as the consolidation of publishing firms.

"Elsevier's prices are very high," said an emerita mathematics professor at Barnard College, Joan Birman, who resigned a few years ago from the board of an Elsevier journal, Topology and Its Applications. She said her feeling was, "We do the work, we check each other, we referee the articles, edit and typeset them and send them to the publisher, which slaps them between two covers and charges a huge amount".

A professor at New York University, Sylvain Cappell, who is an editor of Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, published by John Wiley & Sons with the Courant Institute, said in addition to bundled subscriptions, journals have complex subsidiary rights and other concerns: "You would need a staff as large as the publishing houses to keep track of that".

It appears that Red Hat stock is in freefall now that Oracle announced that it would offer identical services at 50% the cost. I don't know enough to understand how much Red Hat contributes to the open source movement, but I am suspicious that anything good can come from Red Hat tactic.

I await enlightenment for more informed sources.