Navigation

Tag Archives | IP

Ayn Rand Institute Lets Us Read Some More Rand!

By on September 2, 2008 9

Ayn Rand ARI has once again taken some baby steps into the 21st century by making available online a few more of the works they’re supposedly trying to promote, including Rand’s essays “The Objectivist Ethics” (probably her most important article), “Introducing Objectivism,” “An Answer for Businessmen,” “Man’s Rights,” “Collectivized ‘Rights’,” and “The Nature of Government” (this last is Rand’s only serious discussion of anarchism) as well as some Rand audio files (lectures and interviews).

Addendum:

I just noticed that, despite the absence of any warning to this effect, the online text of “The Objectivist Ethics” is not complete; it’s just the first few pages of the article. I haven’t checked the others yet, but beware. And if it still needed saying: DON’T TRUST ARI.

Pictures From the Revolution

By on August 28, 2008 4

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I’ve been to Indianapolis twice recently: last month for a Liberty Fund conference on Zora Neale Hurston, and last weekend for another Liberty Fund conference, this one on Landes and Posner’s Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law, and held at Liberty Fund’s own offices (and incidentally the first Liberty Fund conference I’ve been to where as many as a third of the participants were nonwhite – a nice change from the usual complexion, pun intended).

As I’ve mentioned before, nearly a third of Liberty & Power’s bloggers were at the first conference. I’ve now gotten the photos developed; these aren’t the highest-quality scans, but they’ll have to do:

Keith Halderman, Mark Brady, me, David Beito, Jonathan Bean, Wendy McElroy
L to R: Keith Halderman, Mark Brady, me, David Beito, Jonathan Bean, Wendy McElroy

Keith Halderman, Mark Brady, me, David Beito, Jonathan Bean, Wendy McElroy
ditto

Mark Brady, Wendy McElroy, David Beito
Just the anarchists (other than me): Mark Brady, Wendy McElroy, David Beito

As for the second conference, a few random notes:

When I mentioned that although the early Tarzan books are out of copyright, they’re still restricted because ERB’s estate holds the trademark to the characters, Tom Bell (check out his online book Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good) mentioned that he thought a recent case involving Daystar Technologies rules out using trademark to protect copyright – in which case the ERB business model may be in serious trouble. Anyone else with IP expertise (Stephan?) have any comments?

Milton Thompson (who happens to be the lawyer-agent for Star Trek’s Avery Brooks) mentioned that the performers he works with are less and less interested in controlling copyright and are relying less and less on IP in their business models.

I was delighted to learn that Liberty Fund will be publishing a new translation (by Dennis O’Keefe, translator of Constant’s Principles of Politics) of Molinari’s Soirées. (Though this isn’t necessarily a reason to abandon my own translation-in-progress – if the term “progress” really applies to a project that hasn’t been updated since 2003 – since it would also be nice to have a version available without copyright restrictions.)

Immanuel Kant’s Howdy Duty Show

By on June 18, 2008 1

Actually this has nothing to do with Kant, it’s just a grab bag of random stuff:

Hurray for the Belgians! Not only did they pioneer market anarchism (with Molinari and de Puydt), but they also pioneered the internet. (Conical hat tip to LRC.)

helmet of liberty - don't sit on me Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel: an enjoyable piece (and how many American politicians could write so well?), but a bad analogy: choosing whether to impose a constraint on oneself and choosing whether to impose a constraint on others are not liberty/security trade-offs in anything close to the same sense.

Farther north, left-libertarian science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod points out a few problems with Christopher Hitchens’ atheist manifesto.

And on this side of the Atlantic: the joys of bureaucracy.

Also take a look at the percentage of the united states that is subject to federal land monopoly.

Finally, two items about the skewed perceptions of the Associated Press: first, they think they have the authority to make IP restrictions even tighter than the government’s; second, they think a species isn’t extinct when biologists say so; it’s only extinct when bureaucrats say so. (So the AP hierarchy is: science; above that, the state; above that, the AP.)

More IP Censorship

By on May 21, 2008 4

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

The purpose of copyright, according to the Constitution, is to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” Exactly how interfering with freedom of education is supposed to do that is a bit of a puzzle.

Particularly egregious is the argument that noncommercial copying is really commercial copying because if it weren’t provided for free, then a lot of people would probably be willing to pay for it. One could use the same argument to prove that all sex is prostitution.

Unwelcome Opacity

By on February 20, 2008 6

locked book A great badness has entered the world; or rather, a great goodness has left it. (Well, Augustine would say those come to the same thing.) I notice that Amazon.com seems to have entirely eliminated its “Look Inside” and “Search Inside” options.

When did this happen? Why did this happen? Anybody know?

The Radiance that Streams Immortally from the Door of the Law

By on January 28, 2008 0

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

$500 and change will buy you a copy of this massive treatise in which two of my articles on Greek philosophy of law appear.

DiogenesOr you can read them online for free here:

Socrates and Socratic Philosophers of Law

Hellenistic Philosophers of Law

Two caveats:

1. The first article is co-authored with R. F. Stalley, whose take on these matters is quite different from mine. He wrote essentially all the material on Socrates (with the exception of the paragraph beginning “A somewhat different solution,” which is mine) while I wrote essentially all the material on Xenophon, the Cynics, and the Cyrenaics. He’s not responsible for what I say about the Socratics, and I’m not responsible for what he says about Socrates.

2. I did not (to the best of my possibly imperfect recollection) sign any copyright agreement forbidding me to post these articles, so I’ll assume I’m free to do so unless I hear otherwise. But it’s always possible that the publisher will make me take them down; so read them now while you can.

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes