Intellectual Property around the tubes

Helpless Mainstreamers Grappling with Intellectual Property (Stephan Kinsella):

A recent CNET video on “Intellectual property rights vs. journalism” shows a Stanford University’s Innovation Journalism conference on June 7, with a panel discussion by various mainstreamers discussing the quesion “Is intellectual property protection a threat to journalism?” The lack of libertarian principle and sound economics has these commentators floundering as they discuss various cases where IP infringes free speech and freedom of the press. Lacking any principled approach they retreat to legal positivism, talking about how the Constitution protects both freedom of the press and speech as well as IP rights, so some “balance” must be made. Without Austrian economics and libertarian principle, even well-intentioned people, who sense that something is wrong, are helpless before the state’s propaganda and onslaught of legal positivism.

Copyright as a Moral Hazard (Jeffrey Tucker):

You can tell that intellectual property rights are not real property rights just from this very interesting item on BoingBoing, a report on round one of the Google vs. Viacom case. With real property rights, people do not usually go around actively violating their own rights in order to collect from innocent defendants. I’m not even sure I understand how that would work in a case of real property rights. But in this Viacom case:

Filings in the case reveal that Viacom paid dozens of marketing companies to clandestinely upload its videos to YouTube (sometimes “roughing them up” to make them look like pirate-chic leaks). Viacom uploaded so much of its content to YouTube that it actually lost track of which videos were “really” pirated, and which ones it had put there, and sent legal threats to Google over videos it had placed itself.

Why would Viacom have done that if the company really believed that these postings were hurting its business? Perhaps they believed they would help the business: promoting its product and creating an opportunity for legal blackmail.

Was Napster Right?: Is this what they mean by analog hole? (David K. Levine):

Having trouble with DRM on your ebooks? Try this site. The problem with DRM is it encourages piracy. It can always be removed - but it can be a hassle. So: if you are going to distribute it widely it is worth the effort - and if you take the trouble to do it yourself you are so pissed off that you feel a strong temptation to share it. Irritating your customers hasn't proven a winning business model in the past.

Ideas vs. Execution Shows Why Competition Is A Good Thing (Mike Masnick):

Similarly, just because there are so many companies in a market, it doesn't mean any of them are really executing well (...) In fact, this succinctly reiterates a whole bunch of the points that we've discussed repeatedly over time. First, there's a big difference between ideas and execution. Just because others are in the market (and even well established), it doesn't mean you can't do a better job. It also highlights the difference between invention and innovation, where invention is just coming up with something new, but innovation is really bringing it to market successfully. Facebook and Google are both great examples of innovative companies who didn't really "invent" their initial markets.