Copyright and patent laws protect the expression of an artistic work and the formulation of an idea. Intellectual property rights are the basis for privately funded innovation, allowing companies that succeed in the marketplace to recoup their research, development, and marketing costs. Read more on intellectual property at CEI.org.
Imagine a state in which the public records retrieval process is so convoluted that the government needs to publish a user manual explaining how to apply the public records law works. You would assume that the state would make this manual freely available online, right?
Not in Oregon. In that state, the printed how-to manual for accessing public records is available for $25, a fee they claim helps them cover the printing costs.
Apparently it’s still 1992 in Oregon, and widespread public…
Intel alleges that its due process rights were violated by a massive $1.45 billion fine recently imposed as a result of a one-sided antitrust investigation that excluded evidence of its innocence. It says that a biased investigation by the European Commission violated the European Convention on Human Rights. Despite its title, the Convention protects not just humans but also “non-governmental organisations” like corporations, as its text and many court rulings confirm.
I think Intel has a strong case. But some commentators have…
The web is all aflutter in the debate over handset exclusivity. Harold Feld of Public Knowledge describes in a recently posted video how exclusive deals prevent competition between handsets and raise prices. Wayne Crews and Ryan Young of CEI have fired back, pointing to a handset market with literally dozens of competing devices.
The notion that exclusivity necessarily precludes competition is simply absurd. Apple’s deal with AT&T is precisely the opposite of monopoly. Far from cornering the market on smartphones, Apple has openly refused…
Apple's 1984 "Big Brother" ad
An article over at Ad Age brings up an angle on the whole auto industry bailout probably not considered much before. The fact that a yet-to-be-appointed “car czar” will have control over a multibillion dollar advertising budget for the big three. Under the guise of “oversight,” this would effectively “Create World’s Most Powerful Marketing Exec[utive].”
The draft rescue plan for Detroit sent to the White House by Congress yesterday calls for the appointment of a “car czar”…
Eli, in answer to the blog post you phrased as a question, the argument from the individual you heard, echoed by other Big 3 execs, is not a valid point in support of a bailout.
Their claim that consumers won’t buy from an automaker in bankruptcy is a specious argument. Yes, some won’t, but many consumers also are not going to buy cars from companies perceived to be so weak that they have to beg for a bailout from the government. A…
In the debate about bailing out the Big 3 automakers, it is said that we just can’t allow a bankruptcy. Despite the fact that Chapter 11 bankruptcies have taken place for retailers such as Circuit City and many airlines such as U.S. Airways, autos are said to be different because of the duration of time that people hold on to their cars for.
Horrific senarios are painted of consumers not being able to get parts for their automobiles if manufacturers…
Like everybody else in town, we’re pondering the implications of the transition to the Obama Administration for various policy areas here at CEI. On the technology/Internet front, CNet’s Declan McCullagh has a superb overview today.
On the high-technology front, president-elect Obama has indicated he’d appoint a Chief Technology Officer. The role seems federal-government-focused: The tech “czar” would manage government technology policy with respect to matters like cybersecurity, privacy and Internet policies–basically securing governement networks and keeping government agencies on the cutting…
A U.S. district judge got it right yesterday when he refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Universal, ruling that copyright holders should take into account fair use prior to issuing DMCA takedown notices. The dispute arose last year when a woman received a takedown notice over a YouTube video featuring a kid dancing to a Prince song owned by Universal.
Over at Ars, fellow TLFer Tim Lee has a good overview of the issue in which he explains how the various legal arguments played out. EFF, which…
Ars reports on a strange move by British ISP Virgin Media. Facing pressure from the government to cut down on P2P downloading (I guess we can forget net neutrality), Virgin has apparently agreed to use Deep Packet Inspection to monitor its users’ downloading activity and to pay record labels for those downloads.
As I just reported, the UK (and the rest of Europe) does not have the same level of safe harbor protections as the US. But ISPs just provide the pipes. Turnpikes shouldn’t…
My colleague Courtney Long and I have been posting about a series of contradictory decisions regarding whether eBay should be held liable for the fraudulent actions of its sellers. French courts held the online auction company liable for some of its users’ sales of fake Louis Vuitton purses, but a US court ruled that eBay was not liable for sales of fake Tiffany-branded items.
Apparently, the disagreement isn’t just between the US and Europe - the peril of facing multiple regulatory jurisdictions that all…
We’ve previously reported on government-coerced censorship of websites in France, New York, and California. Now Italy is doing it too. This time, it’s not child porn the country is targeting, but The Pirate Bay, a torrent-finding website. Whatever the merits, or lack thereof, of the site, Italy shouldn’t just ban it entirely. If the site is illegally infringing on copyright (more likely, it’s just enabling its users to infringe), take it to court - don’t coerce ISPs into blocking access to…
Yesterday, I posted on a new technology, called Selectable Output Control, that will allow customers to get movies on their TVs only a few weeks after they’re released in theaters. But the FCC currently does not allow it and the Commission may not grant the MPAA’s petition for a waiver of the regulation. Today, my colleague Ryan Radia responded with a more thorough analysis of the issue at the Technology Liberation Front.
Ryan summarizes the problem:
Consumers are willing to pay to watch new…
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals just handed a victory to Cablevision, a provider of remote DVRs. Unlike regular DVRs, which store your recordings on a hard drive in the DVR, remote DVRs store your files at an offsite location. The practice had been challenged under copyright law. The Second Circuit, however, sensibly held that any copyright violations would be the responsibility of the user.
This is a good general principle that overzealous copyright fiends should keep in mind: providers of technologies…
CNET has a great piece on Facebook’s role in the Scrabulous battle. For those unfamiliar with the case, Facebook is a social networking site that allows developers to post widgets that it calls “applications” for users to use on Facebook. One of them was the incredibly popular game Scrabulous, which Hasbro claimed ripped off their board game Scrabble. So, Scrabulous backed down and modified their program, re-releasing it as Wordscraper.
At CNET, Caroline McCarthy asks the important question why Facebook left Scrabulous…
Rather than trying to fight individual violators of copyright, the MPAA is creating a website with links to legitimate movie sources, like local movie theaters, iTunes, Netflix, etc. It just goes to show Cord Blomquist’s point that copyright holders will need to move towards new models of distribution to adapt to changing technology.
Ars has a good discussion of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s recent switch in policy towards software patents. Before, the USPTO would issue patents willy-nilly, causing massive lawsuits and stifling competition amongst software makers. Now, the USPTO is moving towards a more moderate policy, increasing scrutiny of patents to make sure they’re really original. The USPTO should be applauded for its attempt to strike a healthy balance between encouraging innovation and ensuring competition, not lamented.
The Law of the Sea Treaty just won’t go away. Ronald Reagan attempted to kill it a quarter century ago. But it’s still with us. In the Washington Times I warn the Senate to look carefully before leaping into the bureaucratic monstrosity.
Cord Blomquist has an interesting post at TLF about the Google-Viacom lawsuit. He points out that forcing YouTube to take down infringing material will just push the material to other sites. Cord notes that when he was unable to find infringing material on YouTube, he was easily able to find it using a simple Google search.
This got me thinking: What if Google were held liable for the infringement it finds? What is the line between doing a YouTube search and a Google search?…
My colleague Sam Glaser and I have been discussing this article at Ars about take-down notices for fair use. Apparently, Universal’s practice has been to send take-down notices for all use of copyrighted material, whether or not the fair use exemption applies to the material. Universal claims that it cannot determine what use is fair and seeks to assert its rights to material, then figure out whether the use was exempt later. It does not want to be prevented from sending…
You might remember the controversial Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which in 1998 retroactively extended copyrights that were set to expire (to life of the author plus 70 years) before they had a chance to enter the public domain. By extending the copyright of works that were about to enter the public domain, Congress in effect signalled a policy of granting copyrights in perpetuity.
Now, the EU is doing the same. Ars reports that the EU is set to retroactively expand…
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