The marketplace of ideas
Intellectual property, despite the name, doesn’t quite work like regular property. A look at intellectual property markets highlight problems with a pure free-market approach that aren’t necessarily visible with other markets.
Escaping the Kindle lock-box is now easier for authors and publishers
Purchasing books on the Kindle has always struck me as a bit of a Faustian bargain: once you enter the Kindle ecosystem and purchase some books, those books are forever locked to Amazon’s e-reader. Now Amazon has made it easier for small-scale publishers and authors to opt-out.
A dispute over the rights to e-book editions
That publishers and authors (or their estates) should be arguing over rights to production electronic editions is no surprise. This sort of dispute is a standard part of contract law, and comes up anytime a new market not anticipated in a contract opens up. Can traditional publishers fend off this move through litigation and forceful contract negotiations? Or will we see increasing alternatives to traditional publishers in the e-book realm?
Should there be no copyright for academic publications?
Worth reading and considering is a new draft article by Professor Steven Shavell that proposes abolishing copyright on academic works.
Openness and the social web
A recurring theme for me is the difficulty of keeping markets “open,” in the sense of empowering customers and users with information and choice, while still permitting businesses to grow and innovate.
BlawgIT's introduction to "fair use"
Brett Trout has a useful introduction to “fair use” up on BlawgIT. The goal is to help you “spot the issues” and avoid some common urban legends. Recommended.
Disruption and change in publishing
Michael Nielsen wrote a stellar piece dealing with disruptive changes that doom old business models: newspapers and science publishers, to mention his examples. He does a particularly good job at explaining how this could happen even without anyone doing anything wrong or stupid.
Judge Posner: Expand copyright to protect newspapers?
Judge Posner recently suggested that copyright law might need to be expanded to protect the news industry, including barring linking to copyrighted content or paraphrasing it.
RSS Feed
click on x to hide
