One of my posts from years back on another blog:

Reflicted

When I was a youngling in rural Louisiana, we would often use the pejorative, colloquial term “reflicted,” as in, “Oh, shut up, you’re so reflicted!” It was a synonym, roughly, for “retarded” or stupid.

Other colloquialisms from my home state:

• silver dime, meaning, a dime (one time when I was a checkout boy at a supermarket, this black guy, when I was giving him change, kept asking me to give him “silver dime,” and, as I used to collect silver dimes, started fishing through the cash drawer, looking on the edge of the dimes, searching for a pure silver one. Finally he pointed at a regular dime, and I realized, he meant a dime by “silver dime”. What a non-silver dime is, to him, I have no idea.)
• This calls to mind the time the black lady handed me a nickel and two dimes and asked me for a “solid quarter.” After looking at her with the deer-in-the-headlights look for a second, I realized she meant just a quarter. I think two dimes and a nickel must be a “non-solid” quarter.
• The blacks would also ask me to slice them up half a pound of “pepper sausage,” by which they meant salami. I got to be good at interpreting their colloquial expressions, like the way they pronounced shrimp (“swimpses”).
  • I hereby apologize for relaying this story and for remembering the racial aspect.
• In Louisiana they say this, when they see that one of their friends is pregnant: “Who’s dat baby for?” Which means, “who is the father of your child?” The answer would be of the form, “It for John.”
• They also say someone “caught a heart attack”
• grocery shopping is “makin’ groceries”. The Schwegmann chain capitalized on this with a campaign “Makin’ Groceries–Schwegmann Style”
• They end sentences with the personal pronoun for emphasis, like so: “I need to get me some boiled peanuts, me.”
• “If” is used for emphasis. As so: A says, “Man, is dat chick HOT or what?” B would respond, “If!” meaning “Yes!” My theory is that this was someone’s adaptation of the Spanish usage of the word “si” for both yes and if (there is some Spanish influence there).
• “Skiing” means water skiing. If you want to refer to the other kind, you have to say “snow-skiing”.
• I once saw a flier for a “PENTECOSTAL REVIAL.” The typo made me feel much more secure in my lack of thumperness.

See also other biographical pieces here, e.g. Alan D. Bergman, Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story (2025) and How I Became A Libertarian, LewRockwell.com (Dec. 18, 2002). And Where I’ve Changed My Mind.

I wasn’t always a woolly-eyed anarchist. In 1989, I was still clinging to minarchy, trying to find ways to justify it. Hence, my article Freedom and Government, The Wonderland Times (underground LSU student newspaper), vol. 1, no. 6, July 5, 1989. I think I could see even then that minarchy made no sense; hence the tortured attempt to justify the current American state.

Shortly after that I gave up the attempt to justify minarchy and went all the way to full-fledged anarchy (as I describe in How I Became A Libertarian). Now, my views are better illustrated with Fig. 2 of that article, of the figure below.

From Jayel Aheram’s photostream: a rat named….

Mises Kinsella

Aharem Mises Kinsella Rats

I named her after Ludwig von Mises and Stephan Kinsella.

[From my Webnote series]

I’ve often commented that the state is good at nothing except destruction–stealing, killing, breaking things. But it occurs to me that this may be wrong: that the state may also be good at one other thing. The reason it’s good at destruction–far better than a private criminal, say–is because it is institutionalized (see Rummel; Liberals on Rehnquist: Hypocrite Criminals in our Midst; Spooner’s comments about the highwayman in No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority, Section III). It is seen as legitimate, and thus is able to get away with far more, on a far more systematic and continuing basis, than mere private criminals. Why is this? Because it is able to deceive the people into believing it is legitimate. I.e., the state is also very good at propaganda. I am not sure why this is so, since the state is bad at everything else (except destruction). Perhaps it is simply the case that if and to the extent criminal gangs are able to persuade people that they have legitimacy, they become states and become able to commit institutionalized crime. In any event, thank goodness the state is not even better at propaganda!

As Mark Thornton notes,

Without efficiency or morality to back it, socialism is then revealed as merely a parasitic state using the carrot of political favors and the stick of violence to live off its host. Ultimately, the state uses propaganda of many forms to sustain an ideology that prevents the host from relieving itself of the parasite, and in class we had a wide-ranging discussion as to propaganda of the US government.

For more on the state’s use of ideological propaganda, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Banking, Nation States and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order,” Review of Austrian Economics 4 (1990): 62 et seq., reprinted in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, pp. 86-87; idem, “The Economics and Sociology of Taxation,” in idem, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, pp. 64–65; also my post Swinkels and Hoppe on the Tacit Support of the State.

This is why it’s important to mock and laugh at the state:

Earlier this year I was on a panel (discussed here) with Hoppe and DiLorenzo. In response to a question about the prospects for liberty, I noted the importance of economic literacy, in part to deflate the mistaken belief on the part of decent people that the state is necessary and legitimate. Without the tacit support of the state’s legitimacy, it could not exist. And this is why it is important to laugh at the state.  Hoppe agreed, saying he has actually considered featuring a libertarian comedian at an upcoming  event, and DiLorenzo explained that one reason he often mocks the state and its media cheerleaders is for this very purpose–he gave the example of ridiculing Rachel Maddow in a recent LRC post where he referred to her getting her “panties in a knot”. We need to show these people as buffoons and clowns and to make people take them less seriously. (See also the Mises Daily article Laughing at the Regime.)

Laugh at the State, Mock the Regime.

So: laugh at them, mock them, ridicule them, jeer them, scoff. Do not take them seriously.

From LRC 2007:

Swinkels and Hoppe on the Tacit Support of the State

Oldie from LRC, about Bill Bradford (R.I.P.) on rights:

Bradford of Liberty on Rights

From my comment to my post New Book: Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Economic Growth (archived comments):

Stephan Kinsella Peter, good point. Here’s another way to think about the incoherence of IP (and of pro-IP “arguments”): I’ve pointed out many times the hypocrisy of IP advocates, who denigrate the need for scarcity as a criteria for property; they say that intangible, non-scarce “creations” are “just as much” property as are real things. In fact, some say they are MORE fundamental than rights in lowly material things–Rand and Galambos say this; Tibor Machan even implies it. Yet, when they want to enforce rights in IP they want to use physical force, against physical things–the body or property of the IP “infringer.” Why the need to stoop down into the lowly physical world to enforce these IP rights, if IP “things” are “ontologically” “types of things” that “can be owned”?

Consider a world without scarcity. Scarcity means rivalrousness–the possibility of conflict. So a world with no scarcity is hard to imagine exactly but it could be one in which people are sort of ghostly; or, one in which people are super-invulnerable and have the ability to create at will whatever objects they want, in the blink of an eye. A world so that no one can force others to do anthing, or harm them, or “take” anyting from them. If I see your “car” I can conjure up one for myself–yours is not taken. Etc.

Now, in such a world–and don’t call it absurd, since the IP advocates assure us that things other than scarce things are ontologically “real” too–the IP advocates would still say that there are property rights in intellectual creations. Right? If I create a painting, then if others duplicate it without my permission they are “trespassing.” But how would such a right even in principle be enforced, in a non-scarce world? You could not use force to stop the infringer. You could not penalize him. You could not “take” any of his property as “damages.” So IP would be completely unenforceable in a world without scarcity.

In other words, IP needs a world of scarcity in order to exist. Yet IP proponents claim that IP “objects” have independent existence, that scarcity is not necessary, etc. They even claim IP is more primary than property in lowly material things. Ridiculous.

Published: February 5, 2010 11:03 AM

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Wow, this is some story. HT to philosopher Quee Nelson, one of Duston’s descendants.

The Badass of the Week
Hannah Duston

Despite what Riverdale Elementary School’s annual First-Grade Thanksgiving Day Class Play might have you believe, early Colonial America wasn’t all one giant super happy mecha fun time made out of maize, delicious roasted turkey breast, and Pocahontas teaching John Smith the meaning of friendship and cooperation by baking pumpkin pies and putting out on the Sabbath ? it was a sick, murderous hellhole of suck where freezing temperatures and near-constant warfare meant death was an omnipresent threat every time you stepped foot outside your crappy, poorly-insulated, makeshift shelter.  On the one hand you had the Puritans ? crazy, whacked-out European religious zealots intent on exerting their inflexible will over the New World one Smallpox-infected blanket at a time.  Standing opposed to them were the Native Americans, who voiced their displeasure at this tactic by winging tomahawks into peoples’ faces, murdering their families, and torching their settlements to cinders.  Living in a frontier town in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a young woman named Mrs. Hannah Duston was caught in the middle of this raging death-sanity, and when she was swept up in the tide of senseless violence that ravaged the Northeast in the seventeenth-century, she made a name for herself as a completely insane-o-bot madwoman who was absolutely not to be fucked with for any reason.

In March of 1697, Hannah Duston’s tiny farm was attacked by a marauding band of Abenaki Indians (alternate sources say they were Mohawks, who are widely believed to be among the most badass and ruthless of all the North American Indian tribes).  The battle-raging warrior braves attacked Hannah’s husband Thomas while he was out working in the field, but he managed to run back to the farmhouse and warn his wife of the impending raid.  Unfortunately, Hannah was unable to escape ? she had just given birth to a child a couple days prior, and wasn’t in any condition to be moved at this time.  Hannah, her nursemaid, and her newborn stayed behind, and she encouraged her husband to get the fuck out of there and flee with their eight other children while they still could. [continue reading…]

Lew and Heroic Burgers

[From my Webnote series]

As noted here, “Ayn Rand’s newsletters used to end with a “Horror File” of monstrous but true quotations.”

Along those lines, it’s time to collect some choice trademark horror stories in one place. The main post will be here, on the Mises Blog, but I’ll cross-post the initial post here too. But look there for updates (or to add suggestions in the comments). (Update: I might as well also list here similar examples from patent, copyright, and even trade secret. See below.)

Trademark

As noted in Trademark versus Copyright and Patent, or: Is All IP Evil?, it’s not only patent and copyright that are unlibertarian and unjust. Modern trademark law is as well. I deal with tradmark rights on pp. 58-59 of Against Intellectual Property, and also in some detail in Reply to Van Dun: Non-Aggression and Title Transfer (esp. pp. 59-63). In my view, extensions of trademark law–rights against “trademark dilution” and cybersquatting, etc.–are obviously invalid. Further, federal trademark law is problematic since it is not authorized in the Constitution.

But even if federal trademark law were abolished, as well as modern extensions such as rights against trademark dilution, even common law trademark is problematic, for three primary reasons. First, it is enforced by the state, which gets everything wrong. Second (see First), the test of “consumer confusion” is usually applied ridiculously, treating consumers like indiscriminating idiots. Third, and worst of all, the right at issue is the right of the defrauded consumer, not the competitor. Trademark law ought to be reformed by abolishing the right of trademark “owners” to sue “infringers” (except perhaps as proxy for customers, when consent can be presumed or proved–as I discuss in this interview: Free Talk Live Interview on Reducing IP Costs (Jan. 20, 2010)), and treating this as a case of the customer’s right to sue a vendor who defrauds him as to the nature of the good purchased. Some might argue that this is only a minor change, but it is not: such a change would make it clear that “knockoffs” are usually not a violation of anyone’s rights: the buyer of a $10 “Rolex” is almost never defrauded–he knows what he’s getting. Yet by giving an enforceable trademark right to the user of a mark, he can sue knockoff companies even though their customers are not defrauded and in fact are perfectly happy to buy the knockoff products.

The other fallacy is the view at work here that there is no such thing as reputation, or even identity, absent trademark law. But this is incorrect. Of course people and firms can have reputations even if trademark law is nonexistent. All that is required is that people be able to identify other people and firms, and communicate. Pro-trademark arguments often implicitly assume that this is not possible, absent state-enforced trademark law, which is ridiculous.

In any event, on to a collection of trademark outrages for the horror files (some of these are also listed in Reducing the Cost of IP Law):

• Lululemon’s Costco lawsuit is a MESS (trade dress)
• Court Orders Dean Guitars to Stop Production of Various Models After Losing Legal Battle Against Gibson
• Court Says U Of Southern California Only One Who Can Use USC; Sorry U Of South Carolina
• Who Dat? America’s National Football League causes outrage over catchphrase ban
• What’s Next–Trademarking Language? Don’t be *Ridiculous*!
• South Butt David versus North Face Goliath
• Lou Carlozo, Teen’s charity name draws the McIre of McDonald’s, Wallet Pop (Jan. 17, 2010) (McDonadl’s claims Lauren McClusky’s use of “McFest” for the name of a series of charity concerts she puts on infringes its “McFamily” brand)
• Budweiser trademark dispute (see also Chip Wood, A Bully-Boy Beer Brewer, Straight Talk (Oct. 16, 2007))
• 9th Circuit Appeals Court Says Its Ok To Criticize Trademarks After All, Against Monopoly (Sept. 26, 2007)
• Kinsella, Trademarks and Free Speech, Mises Blog (Aug. 8, 2007)
• idem, Beemer must be next… (BMW, Trademarks, and the letter “M”), Mises Blog (Mar. 20, 2007)
• idem, Hypocritical Apple (Trademark), Mises Blog (Jan. 11, 2007)
• ECJ: “Parmesian” Infringes PDO for “Parmigiano Reggiano,” I/P Updates (Feb. 27, 2008)
• Mike Masnick, Engadget Mobile Threatened For Using T-Mobile’s Trademarked Magenta, Techdirt (Mar. 31, 2008)

Patent

Taken (in part) from my article Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way, Appendix: Examples of Outrageous Patents and Judgments:

Examples of (at least apparently) ridiculous patents and patent applications abound (more at PatentLawPractice):

• Epson boobytrapped its printers
• Amazon’s “one-click” patent, asserted against rival Barnes & Noble;
• Cendant’s assertion that Amazon violated Cendant’s patent monopoly on recommending books to customers (since settled);
• The attempt of Dustin Stamper, Bush’s Top Economist, to secure a patent regarding an application for a System And Method For Multi-State Tax Analysis, which claims “a method, comprising: creating one or more alternate entity structures based on a base entity structure, the base entity structure comprising one or more entities; determining a tax liability for each alternate entity structure and the base entity structure; and generating a result based on comparing each of the determined tax liabilities”;
• Apple’s patent application for digital Karaoke;
• the suit against Facebook by the holder of a patent for a “system for creating a community for users with common interests to interact in”;
• the “absurdly broad patent [issued to Blackboard] for common uses of technology if that technology is employed in the context of education” (see also Patent Office Rejects Blackboard E-Learning Patent One Month After It Wins Lawsuit, Techdirt (Mar. 31, 2008);
• Compton’s (now Encyclopedia Britannica’s) patent that “broadly cover[s] any multimedia database allowing users to simultaneously search for text, graphics, and sounds — basic features found in virtually every multimedia product on the market”;
• Carfax’s patent on a “method for perusing selected vehicles having a clean title history”;
• Acacia’s patent for putting a unique transaction number on a receipt;[26]
• Pat. No. 6,368,227, covering swinging sideways on a swing;

The Supreme Court, in the 1882 case Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 US 192, itself lists examples of patents issued to “gadgets that obviously have had no place in the constitutional scheme of advancing scientific knowledge … the simplest of devices.” These included

• a particular doorknob made of clay rather than metal or wood, where differently shaped doorknobs had previously been made of clay;
• making collars of parchment paper where linen paper and linen had previously been used;
• a method for preserving fish by freezing them in a container that operates in the same manner as an ice-cream freezer.
• rubber caps put on wood pencils to serve as erasers;
• inserting a piece of rubber in a slot in the end of a wood pencil to serve as an eraser;
• a stamp for impressing initials in the side of a plug of tobacco;
• a hose reel of large diameter so that water may flow through the hose while it is wound on the reel;
• putting rollers on a machine to make it movable;
• using flat cord instead of round cord for the loop at the end of suspenders;
• placing rubber hand grips on bicycle handlebars;
• an oval rather than cylindrical toilet paper roll, to facilitate tearing off strips.

Below are a few notable or recent examples of large, significant, troubling, or apparently outrageous injunctions, damages awards, and the like:

• In Stent Patent War, Boston Scientific Caves (Again), Agrees to Pay Johnson & Johnson $1.725 Billion to Settle Three Cases;
• Qualcomm has been enjoined from importing chips that help conserve power in cell phones (discussion; latest developments). See also Eric Bangeman, ITC to Bar Import of New Handsets in Patent Dustup, ars technica (June 7, 2007); Nokia’s Patent-Licensing Case against Qualcomm Dropped by Dutch Court, engadget (Nov. 14, 2007); Broadcom Wins Major Injunction against Qualcomm, engadget (Dec. 31, 2007); ITC Upholds Ruling, Reiterates that Nokia Didn’t Violate Qualcomm Patents, engadget (Feb. 29, 2008).
• Texas-Sized Patent Win, Texas Lawyer (Feb. 21, 2008). A New Jersey doctor was awarded $432 Million as a “reasonable royalty” against Boston Scientific for infringing his “Method and Apparatus for Managing Macromolecular Distribution.”
• Smartphones Patented … Just About Everyone Sued 1 Minute After Patent Issued, Techdirt (Jan. 24, 2008).
• Farmer David Reaps What He Has Sown: A Patent Suit, Patent Baristas (Feb. 13, 2008) Even though “the practice of saving seeds after a harvest to plant the next season is as old as farming itself,” patents prevent farmers from saving patented seeds.
• Apple, Starbucks Sued over Custom Music Gift Cards, AppleInsider (Feb. 20, 2008) A Utah couple sue Apple and Starbucks over their “‘Song of the Day’ promotion, which offers Starbucks customers a iTunes gift card for a complimentary, pre-selected song download.” The suit is based on a patent on a “retail point of sale for online merchandising” which allows customers to buy a gift card from a brick-and-mortar store and then go home and redeem the card online.
• Apple Sued Over Caller ID on the iPhone, Techdirt (Feb. 27, 2008). The patent is on “matching up the phone number of an incoming call with a local contact database to display who is calling.”
• The new 802.11n Wi-Fi standard (which promises to significantly increase Wi-Fi speed and range) is in jeopardy due to patent threats. See Bill Ray, Next Generation Wi-Fi Mired in Patent Fears, The Register (Sept. 21, 2007).
• SanDisk Sues 25 Companies for Patent Infringement: “Suits have been filed against 25 companies by the SanDisk corporation this week, as the company looks to stop businesses from shipping products it alleges are infringing on its work. SanDisk has filed suits against everyone from MP3 player manufacturers to USB hard drive creators. The list of defendants is staggering, and MacWorld notes if Sandisk succeeds it could have repercussions outside of the courtroom.… The court … complaints could affect the prices and availability of products made by companies targeted in the suit if SanDisk wins and the companies are barred from importing products into the U.S.”
• Patent Office Upholds Tivo’s “Time Warp” Patent, EchoStar Not so Happy, engadget (Nov. 29, 2007); see also Tivo Inc. v. EchoStar Communications Corp. (S. D. Tex., Dec. 2, 2006); and TiVo Wins on Appeal: Permanent Injunction against EchoStar to be Reinstated, Patently-O (Jan. 31, 2008).
• Jacqui Cheng, U R SUED: Patent Holding Company Targets 131 Companies over SMS patents, ars technica (Nov. 13, 2007).
• The International Trade Commission (ITC) may ban imports of many popular hard drives that “are alleged to infringe on patents owned by California residents Steven and Mary Reiber related to a ‘Dissipative ceramic bonding tool tip.'” Jacqui Cheng, Hard Times for Hard Drives: US May Ban Popular Imports, ars technica (Oct. 11, 2007).
• The VoIP phone service Vonage may be put out of business by patents. Sprint recently won a patent case against Vonage in which $69.5 million was awarded in damages. Sprint had planned “to ask the court to permanently ban Vonage from using its patented technology,” but the case was subsequently settled for $80 million. However, in a separate patent lawsuit between Verizon and Vonage, the jury found that Vonage had violated three Verizon patents, and awarded Verizon $58 million in damages plus ongoing royalties. Vonage claims it has developed workarounds for two of the patents. See Kim Hart, Sprint Wins Patent Case Against Vonage: Reston Firm Awarded $69.5 Million in Second Blow to Internet Phone Company, Washington Post (Sept. 26, 2007); Peter Svensson, Vonage Settles Patent Suit with Sprint, BusinessWeek (Oct. 8, 2007). Latest: Vonage Settles with Verizon, Owes Up to $117.5 Million; Vonage, Nortel Call a Truce — No Cash Changing Hands, engadget (Dec. 31, 2007).
• Kinsella, Revolutionary Television Design Killed by Patents (2007).
• BlackBerry’s manufacturer, RIM, was forced to cough up $612.5 million after NTP used patent law to threaten to shut RIM down.
• Microsoft was on the receiving end of a $1.5 billion jury verdict for infringing an MP3 patent held by Alcatel-Lucent (which was recently overturned).
• After Kodak sought more than $1 billion in damages from Sun Microsystems for patent infringement, Kodak finally settled for $92 million. (And according to one colleague, the verdict resulted “in the immediate shutdown of Kodak’s entire instant photography division, with the immediate loss of 800 jobs. And, some say, the eventual failure of Polaroid due to lack of any real competition to keep them on their toes!”)
• In another recent case, Freedom Wireless obtained a $150 million damages award against Boston Communications Group, Inc., which at the time had revenues of only about $100 million. In this case, the judge also refused to stay the injunction issues against BCGI (and by extension, its customers) pending appeal.
• Smith International was forced to pay Hughes Tool Company $204.8 million for infringement upon Hughes’s patent for an “O-ring seal” rock bit, which led to Smith filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (this was in 1986, when $200 million was considered a large patent verdict).
• As of March 2003, the top 5 patent infringement damage awards ranged from $873 million (Polaroid v. Kodak, 1991) to $204.8 million (Hughes Tool v. Smith International, 1986). The top 5 patent settlements ranged from $1 billion to $300 million. Damage Awards and Settlements, IP Today (March 2003); see also Gregory Aharonian, Patent/Copyright Infringement Lawsuits/Licensing Awards. Sadly, a $200 million verdict seems normal nowadays. The recent $156 million patent-infringement verdict against AT&T, for example — which could possibly be trebled by the judge — now looks like small potatoes.
• Other recent cases include a $1.67 billion patent infringement verdict in favor of Johnson & Johnson against Abbott; a $400 million settlement paid to Abbot, by Medtronic, regarding stent devices; and a $716 million settlement paid to Johnson & Johnson by Boston Scientific (cardiac stents again).

Copyright

Some of these are also listed in Reducing the Cost of IP Law:

• When is cosplay a crime?, Planet Money, July 17, 2025
• Atlas Hefts: The Sequel!
• Disney makes day care centers remove Mickey Mouse murals (2)
• Miles Davis Tattoo Suit Pits Copyright Against Body Autonomy; A Photographer Is Suing Tattoo Artist Kat Von D After She Inked His Portrait of Miles Davis on a Friend’s Body; Guy Who Did Mike Tyson’s Tattoo Sues Warner Bros. For Copyright Infringement; Maori Angry About Mike Tyson’s Tattoo Artist Claiming To Own Maori-Inspired Design
• RIAA Wants $1.5 Million Per CD Copied, Slashdot (Jan. 30, 2008);
• Ford Slaps Brand Enthusiasts, Returns Love With Legal Punch, AdRants (Jan. 14, 2008) (Ford Motor Company claims that they hold the rights to any image of a Ford vehicle, even if it’s a picture you took of your own car);
• Jacqueline L. Salmon, NFL Pulls Plug On Big-Screen Church Parties For Super Bowl, Washington Post (Feb. 1, 2008) (NFL prohibits churches from having Super Bowl gatherings on TV sets or screens larger than 55 inches);
• Internet pirates could be banned from web, Telegraph (Feb. 12, 2008) (British proposal to punish individuals who illegally download music by banning them from the Internet); John Tehranian, Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap, Utah L. Rev. (forthcoming; SSRN);
• Cory Doctorow, Infringement Nation: we are all mega-crooks, Boing Boing (Nov. 17, 2007);
• Court Says You Can Copyright A Cease-And-Desist Letter, Techdirt (Jan. 25, 2008);
• Kinsella, Battling the Copyright Monster, Mises Blog (June 19, 2006);
• dem, Copyright Kills Amazing Music Project, Mises Blog (Jan. 2, 2008);
• idem, “Fair Use” and Copyright, Mises Blog (Aug. 17, 2007);
• idem, Copyrights and Dancing, Mises Blog (Feb. 20, 2007);
• idem, The “tolerated use” of copyrighted works, Mises Blog (Oct. 27, 2006);
• idem, Copyright and Birthday Cakes, Mises Blog (June 16, 2005);
• idem, Heroic Google Fighting Copyright Morass, Mises Blog (June 2, 2005);
• idem, Copyright Gone Mad, Mises Blog (Apr. 14, 2005);
• idem, Copyright and Freedom of Speech, Mises Blog (Nov. 8, 2004).

See also:

• Joost Smiers & Marieke van Schijndel, Imagine a World Without Copyright, International Herald Tribune (Sat. Oct. 8, 2005);
• Jessica Litman, Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age, 75 Oreg. L. Rev. 19 (1996);
• Kinsella, Copyrights in Fashion Designs?, Mises Blog (Sep. 27, 2006);
• Kinsella, Britain’s Copyright Laws, Based on a 300-Year-Old Statute, Desperately Need Reshaping for the Digital Age, Mises Blog (Nov. 2, 2006).
• For a humorous parody of copyright abuses by the RIAA, see CD Liner Notes of the Distant Present, Something Awful (Jan. 3, 2008).

Trade Secret

Even trade secret law, the least objectionable of the four main types of IP, has been corrupted by the state.

• • Silicon Valley cops raid Gizmodo editor’s home, take four computers
    • IP Means you MUST Buy that iPhone

[Mises; AM]

The new book Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Economic Growth, by
Christine Greenhalgh & Mark Rogers, looks interesting:

What drives innovation? How does it contribute to the growth of firms, industries, and economies? And do intellectual property rights help or hurt innovation and growth? Uniquely combining microeconomics, macroeconomics, and theory with empirical analysis drawn from the United States and Europe, this book introduces graduate students and advanced undergraduates to the complex process of innovation. By addressing all the major dimensions of innovation in a single text, Christine Greenhalgh and Mark Rogers are able to show how outcomes at the microlevel feed through to the macro-outcomes that in turn determine personal incomes and job opportunities.

From a quick skim of ch. 1 (available here), it appears to adopt a mainstream approach–finding out whether there is market failure or a public goods problem (see Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “Fallacies of the Public Goods Theory and the
Production of Security,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property for criticism of the concept of “public goods”), and then asking whether we can fix it with some kind of state invervention. The same old “the market is not perfect, so let’s let the thugs with guns have more power” song and dance.

But at least they recognize you have to take costs into account (see my Reducing the Cost of IP Law; There’s No Such Thing as a Free Patent; Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation; and What Are the Costs of the Patent System?):

In addition, understanding whether these monopoly costs of IPRs [intellectual property rights] are less than the benefit to society emanating from the spur that IPRs give to innovation will provide a major theme for parts II and IV of this book.

My guess: they’ll conclude that some IPRs can help address the market failure/public goods issues and give rise to some kind of net benefit, but not our current IP system; so then we’ll have a laundry list of “reforms” that would tweak the current laws to reduce the cost enough so that there is a net benefit. Just a hunch. Unfortunately, at $45 even in e-book format, I don’t think I’ll read it until it comes out at a more reasonable price.

[Mises; AM]