The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property Law — Randolph May and Seth Cooper of the Free State Foundation look at some of the philosophical underpinnings that drove the inclusion of copyright and patent protection into the United States Constitution. According to May and Cooper, the origin of the right is explicitly Lockean, while the protection of the right is explicitly Madisonian. An engaging and enlightening read.
Where to Watch — A new site that lists authorized online services where you can watch movies and television.
America’s New Oligarchs—Fwd.us and Silicon Valley’s Shady 1 Percenter — Joel Kotkin of the Daily Beast pens a devastating critique of the new tech giants and the economic and cultural effects they are inflicting, yet at the same time enjoying immense popularity among the public. A must read, with Kotkin concluding that ”today’s new autocrats seek not only market control but the right to sell access to our most private details, and employ that technology to elect candidates who will do their bidding. Their claque in the media may allow them to market their ascendency as “progressive” and even liberating, but the new world being ushered into existence by the new oligarchs promises to be neither of those things.”
Watch Paul Williams Open up about Working with Daft Punk — Songwriter, and ASCAP CEO, Paul Williams is always fascinating to watch, especially when he is talking about the craft of writing songs. Here he discusses his collaboration with Daft Punk on the song Touch off their new album Random Access Memories.
Petition of the Day: Intercollegiate Broadcasting System v. Copyright Royalty Board — SCOTUSBlog this week named the appeal in Intercollegiate Broadcasting System as its petition of the day. As you may remember, Intercollegiate appealed a ratesetting determination to federal court a while back, adding a claim that the Copyright Royalty Judges were unconstitutionally appointed. Last year, the DC Circuit held that they were, but remedied this defect by nullifying the limitations on the Librarian of Congress’s removal authority for Royalty Judges. Intercollegiate has appealed, arguing that this remedy was insufficient to cure the constitutional defect.
When Freedom of Expression and Copyright Meet — The Afro-IP blog takes a closer look at a report called The Right to Share, released a month ago by an organization called Article 19. In it, the organization purports to examine the interaction between copyright law and freedom of expression, though the Afro-IP author “found some of it a bit hard to swallow.” She looks in more detail at particular areas of the report, noting especially that it heavily relies on US and UK based law and principles, to the detriment of more Continental and African based views.
The Dollars and Sense of Intellectual Property — Adam Mossoff has a much better review than the one I wrote earlier this week about Laws of Creation: Property Rights in the World of Ideas.
How Chairman Goodlatte Could Stop the Ennui of Learned Helplessness — Yesterday, of course, was the first in a series of comprehensive hearings on copyright law, which I’ll be writing about sometime next week here. But until then, Chris Castle shares his thoughts on how one of the ideas bandied about, a copyright small claims court, may be useful in helping small and independent creators by making the DMCA takedown procedure more effective in accomplishing its original goal of minimizing the harm of online piracy.
a new book by Brett Martin coming out in July. The book details the recent shift in television storytelling toward darker and highly creative dramas, embodied by such shows as the Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad. It is an innovation driven not by algorithms and data centers, but by “men who typed for a living.”