Slashdot Mirror

Just noticed this post, sorry...

The other regions already do wait 6 months to a year. Not just for DVDs, but for release in theaters.

I'm not familiar with the details of how copyright operates globally (except that it's complicated and various), but I'm not too surprised by this. I do know that even in New Zealand (an OECD country) we've often had US TV programmes screened months after the US. My point is simply that we can't have price equalisation without those in poorer countries getting a bad deal (not to say that those in poorer countries don't get a bad deal already, not to say that the specifics of region restrictions are good as they are, just that price equalisation is not only not a solution, it actually precludes a solution).

Sadly, that is a daily reality. It is somewhat balanced by other countries (India for example) granting their pharmaceutical manufacturers permission to violate some patents on essential medications.

I thought price equalisation might have been the case with pharmaceuticals. I vaguely recalled hearing about discussions on allowing some of the poorest countries access to essential medications, so I wasn't sure how much it still applied. Exceptions for essential medications for the poorest countries would avoid price equalisation to some extent, and IMHO would be good to some extent, but would draw some arbitrary hard lines. It would leave problems for countries that are quite poor, but not quite poor enough to qualify as "the poorest", and for medications that are considered quite important, but not quite important enough to qualify as "essential". Again, my point here is just that it's not possible to have price equalisation without those in poorer countries suffering (regardless of what the situation is now).

Of course, there are plenty of not so rich people here in the U.S. that go without medication as well. To the point that statistically, they will die years sooner than wealthier people. Growing numbers are forced to buy needed medication on the black market. (You know the gouging is extreme when the black market is CHEAPER).

Again, I'm not familiar with the details, but I'm not surprised. With regards to copyright, we often pay a higher price in New Zealand than the US, despite (I believe) having a lower GDP per capita, and I wonder if this is due to a more unequal distribution of wealth. That said, even people who are quite poor in the US would be quite rich in, say, Ethiopia, so I think price equalisation between countries would create more unfairness than it would solve.

Copyright does do a great deal of damage. That's why at the beginning, it was kept short. The longer it grows, the more damage it does.

No disagreement there. The only serious attempt to calculate the economically optimal copyright term that I am aware of estimates about 15 years.
Pollock, Rufus (2009) Forever Minus a Day? Calculating Optimal Copyright Term.

Moreover, I'm not sure this analysis takes into account the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic worth. It seems to me that much of the worth of copyrighted works is extrinsic. IMHO, much of the value of MS Windows is due to the market share it has, not any particular technical merit, i.e. it's useful because it's popular, not because it's any good. Likewise it seems to me that at least some of the value of popular entertainment is due simply to its popularity--people watch, discuss, and make references to popular works in social groups, and sometimes actually form social groups around them, so access to these works is, to a greater or lesser extent, a requirement for participation in certain social interaction, and again, there is value in the work's popularity, regardless of the work's merit. This being the case, I'd expect the actual economically opt

While I agree that determining the optimal duration of copyright is a difficult problem, much like other similar questions in socity, I think you give up too quickly here. One way of approaching this problem is to see what effect previous extensions of copyright has had on the rate of production of new works. Since copyright duration has been changed several times, one has in effect been performing copyright experiments. These could also be performed in the other direction, to see which effect shorter copyright would have. But in order to reach a steady state situation, each experiment would have to last for a rather long time, making this approach very time-consuming.

Another approach is to attempt to model what makes people produce new creative works, and how beneficial each work is. This requires a lot of work too (probably lots of interviews and comparisons of productivity and usage in different fields with different levels copyright enforcement). But with a good enough model one can then make predictions for how productivity and benefit from works will change when copyright duration is changed.

Some work has been done in this direction, such as this article. That article skips the important empirical checks though, and so the assumptions going into the model are not verified, and most of them would lead one to overestimate the optimal duration. For example, the article assumes that 1. Works are only produced for monetary gain. 2. It is only possible to earn money from a work while it is copyrighted. 3. A smaller public domain due to too long copyright does not make it more difficult to produce new works. 4. Enforcing copyright has zero cost. Despite these unrealistic assumptions, the paper finds an optimal duration of 12 years. It seems very likely that more realistic assumptions would lead to a shorter optimal duration than that (in fact, it would not surprise me if the optimum is 0 years, i.e. that copyright does more harm than good).

And coincidentally, 15 years is the maximum duration that copyrights should last, according to the only proper study of economic incentives surrounding copyright of which I am aware.

We could use some more research on this, but it sounds okay to me.

What's lacking unfortunately is the hard work of quantifying the societal benefits as a function on e.g. patent duration. Which incidentally is the 99% perspiration to accompany the 1% inspiration (which all of us probably has anyway).

So Tabarrok's curve is a typical no-brainer (in both senses) as far as it has been worked out.

What's needed is an analysis along the lines of the one by e.g. Rufus Pollock (see http://rufuspollock.org/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf ) or the one described here: http://www.ipdigit.eu/2010/09/what-is-the-optimal-copyright-length/ Of course this is where political viewpoints enter the debate, as evidenced by the views of the Von Mises institute (see http://archive.mises.org/17319/optimal-patent-and-copyright-term-length/ ) who cite people that argue that patents don't contribute at all to spurring innovation (something that anyone who has ever pitched his idea to a VC with the objective of funding a startup will reject out of hand).

It's hardly a new point of view. Perhaps mr. Tarrock ought to do a better literature search before coming up with an existing idea and grandly naming a curve after himself.

Where did you get an outrageous number like 80 from? How about something sensible like 0-5 years, depending on the subject? Retroactive, of course. I think that's still a pretty long duration (5 years! That's practically an eternity!), but it would be a nice first step.

It is a bit scary that copyright keeps being extended without any empirical evidence to show that society would benefit from longer copyright. As far as I know, very little research has been done on the optimal duration of copyright. One paper I've found, which appears to be one of the most ambitious ones on this topic, still makes several unrealistic assumptions such as "Works are only produced for monetary gain", "No income is possible from works not covered by copyright", "Enforcing copyright has no cost" and "It does not get harder to produce new works when the public domain gets smaller", which all bias it towards longer copyright. Despite this, it finds an optimal duration of *15 years*, with your suggested 80 years being very strongly disfavored.

What exactly did you base your 80 years suggestion on?

PS. Hopefully this won't show up two times - this is my second time trying to submit it, but I had a connection problem the first time.

Where did you get an outrageous number like 80 from? How about something sensible like 0-5 years, depending on the subject? Retroactive, of course. I think that's still a pretty long duration (5 years! That's practically an eternity!), but it would be a nice first step.

It is a bit scary that copyright keeps being extended without any empirical evidence to show that society would benefit from longer copyright. As far as I know, very little research has been done on the optimal duration of copyright. One paper I've found, which appears to be one of the most ambitious ones on this topic, still makes several unrealistic assumptions such as "Works are only produced for monetary gain", "No income is possible from works not covered by copyright", "Enforcing copyright has no cost" and "It does not get harder to produce new works when the public domain gets smaller", which all bias it towards longer copyright. Despite this, it finds an optimal duration of *15 years*, with your suggested 80 years being very strongly disfavored.

What exactly did you base your 80 years suggestion on?

The real crime here is that Tetris is still protected under copyright.

Tetris isn't that old, you know.

Release 1984, I believe. Less than 30 years ago. Even those arguing for shorter copyright terms would probably be okay with that still being protected.

No, they wouldn't. See e.g. Dr. Rufus Pollock's research or the position paper of the European Greens/European Freedom Alliance faction in the EU parliament.

1984 + 20 = 2004, so the game would be Public Domain (as in expiration of the "commercial copyright") on January 1st, 2005.

So, how long ago was 1984? Let's see... TEN YEARS before Windows '95? Indeed, there WAS no Microsoft Windows in 1984: Windows 1.0 was from November 1985. No bell ringing? OK, how about the year of the famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial introducing to the world the Apple Macintosh with a whopping 128 kilobytes of RAM?

Yes, THAT is how long ago 1984 was!

The best serious work I've seen on this is a paper by Rufus Pollock, which you can read here. IIRC he figures it at about 15 years. I can't follow it, unfortunately, but he seems to be using real math.

I'd love to see more analysis on the subject. I have a gut feeling that the term should be about 25 years, shorter for some classes of works (especially software), with some classes of works not eligible (e.g. architecture), and with annual or bi-annual renewals, along with a registration system. But I'd gladly yield to something more rigorously worked out. So long as it produces the greatest net public good, I'm on board.

Optimum Copyright Period Decided by Math
Posted by Zonk on Friday July 13 2007, @03:26PM
from the everybody-wins dept.

An anonymous reader writes "So how long should a copyright be valid for? A Cambridge student has stepped into the discussion with a dispassionately calculated estimate of the optimal period a copyright should be granted. Ars' point of view: 'Neither the US nor the UK are in any danger of rethinking copyright law from scratch, but if they were looking for guidance in how to set up their systems, Pollock has it. He develops a set of equations focused specifically on the length of copyright and uses as much empirical data as possible to crunch the numbers. The result? An optimal copyright term of 14 years, which is designed to encourage the best balance of incentive to create new work and social welfare that comes from having work enter the public domain (where it often inspires new creative acts).' The original paper is available (pdf) online."

(emphasis mine)

Link to original article: Rufus Pollock, Cambridge University, "Forever minus a day? Some theory and empirics of optimal copyright.

Rick Falkvinge and his colleagues in European Parliament: help us, you are our (North America's) only hope!

The US and Canadian election systems are inherently undemocratic (if democracy = every vote counts); in Canada a minority party (this interview the Green Party leader states clearly that a 12 year copyright term "seems reasonable". Unfortunately for most Canadians, a vote for the Green Party is a vote that ends up in the trashbin.

That being said, I do endorse the copyright monopoly... as long as the copyright term is reasonable, and Rufus Pollock's "optimal" 15 years sounds like a good line-in-the-sand maximum, and as long as there are generous exceptions for private, non-commercial and research use. The exceptions make the draconian laws obsolete.

The reason for my opening line: any change in this Culture of Copyright can only come out of Europe.

Note and case in point: for fellow Canadians, please be aware that the Canadian government is planning to enter into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, which would "force" them to extend (!!!) copyright term by another 20 years. For background information and how to voice your opinion, see Dr. Geist's blog.

Rick Falkvinge and his colleagues in European Parliament: help us, you are our (North America's) only hope!

The US and Canadian election systems are inherently undemocratic (if democracy = every vote counts); in Canada a minority party (this interview the Green Party leader states clearly that a 12 year copyright term "seems reasonable". Unfortunately for most Canadians, a vote for the Green Party is a vote that ends up in the trashbin.

That being said, I do endorse the copyright monopoly... as long as the copyright term is reasonable, and Rufus Pollock's "optimal" 15 years sounds like a good line-in-the-sand maximum, and as long as there are generous exceptions for private, non-commercial and research use. The exceptions make the draconian laws obsolete.

The reason for my opening line: any change in this Culture of Copyright can only come out of Europe.

Note and case in point: for fellow Canadians, please be aware that the Canadian government is planning to enter into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, which would "force" them to extend (!!!) copyright term by another 20 years. For background information and how to voice your opinion, see Dr. Geist's blog.

One week of copyright is not much incentive to an author.

Depends on the work. A week is more than enough time for a daily newspaper, given that each issue will make most of the money it will ever make within mere hours of publication, and then be so much birdcage liner and fish wrapper.

If you're looking for data, I would suggest taking a look at the work of Rufus Pollock, who has been looking at this. I admit that the math is over my head, but this is really the sort of thing we need to be doing (perhaps also broken up by type of work -- the ideal term for a movie may be different from the ideal term for a computer program, and there's no reason at all why we need a one-size-fits-all term length).

• * 42 years max from date of publication, no fuss about expensive copyright clearance research
• * royalties inheritable by the descendants for that period of time (2 generations)
• * 3 x as long as the societal optimum (a compromise to keep the publishers happy)
• * everyone's grandchildren are allowed to browse and copy their grandparents' old music, books, etc. at will without repercussions (2 generations protection ensures a viable cultural transmission of which books/music were cool in gramps' halcyon days).

This last point sounds silly but I think it's the most important reason. See Raymond van het Groenewoud's song "Cha Cha Cha":

En pas onlangs
bij oma op de zolder
ontdekte ik
de zwoele Cha Cha Cha

Now THAT's what culture means. Not having to wait 90 years before you're allowed to recycle old crap.
To illustrate: Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was published in 1937, that's only 74 years after the death of the last of the Grimm Brothers in 1863, so it would have still been under copyright with the current 90 year rule.

I'm not sure why you should have to pay for any content. The Open Source world has shown that you can actually make significant amounts of money by giving away the content and selling services. Of course, that would fundamentally change the nature of how business is conducted. For instance, we'd see a lot more "sponsored" content and the current commercial-laden TV system would die out. I'm not sure exactly how the shakeout would end, but some things wouldn't change much. Most musicians would still make the majority of their income from concerts. The few top-level mega-stars would make slightly less money, and the RIAA would disappear. The Hollywood movie studio system would likely collapse into the theater system so that both the theaters and the studios are owned by the same company (thus limiting access to copies of the movie through physical means rather than copyright). Potentially new movies could be reclassified as trade secrets and distributing a copy of the movie before it's exclusivity period was over would be the equivalent of corporate espionage. I think the world would survive the removal of copyright and patents.

Of course, for the less courageous we could also just severely curtail the extent and duration of both. Dr. Rufus Pollock calculated that the ideal length for copyright was 15 years. Similarly, in the modern world where the duration of patents should likely be reduced on account of advancements in technology and business methodology. It takes less time to implement a new a patent so reducing it's duration would keep the benefit of the patent in line with what it was when it was originally introduced. Merely keep patent duration at the same level, leads to a slow inflation in the value of a new patent because more can be done, and thus more money earned as technology advances.

according to Rufus Pollock "around fifteen years", the footnote on page 3 points to Boldrin and Levine (2006) for the optimal length of 7 years.

The optimal time is 15 years, to 99% certainty less than 38 years [pdf] according to Rufus Pollock, an economist at Cambridge specializing in intellectual property. An updated annoying Web slideshow from his most recent talk on the subject is here and the narrative is here.

Even assuming we made it 28 years from publication at the first go to stay straight with the WTO, every bit of content produced before 1/1/1982 would be in the public domain tomorrow including the movies "Chariots of Fire" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the books "Cujo" and "Red Dragon", the songs "9 to 5" and "Physical". The value of these works as cultural artifacts are worth far more now than their residual commercial value.

The optimal time is 15 years, to 99% certainty less than 38 years [pdf] according to Rufus Pollock, an economist at Cambridge specializing in intellectual property. An updated annoying Web slideshow from his most recent talk on the subject is here and the narrative is here.

Even assuming we made it 28 years from publication at the first go to stay straight with the WTO, every bit of content produced before 1/1/1982 would be in the public domain tomorrow including the movies "Chariots of Fire" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the books "Cujo" and "Red Dragon", the songs "9 to 5" and "Physical". The value of these works as cultural artifacts are worth far more now than their residual commercial value.

The optimal time is 15 years, to 99% certainty less than 38 years [pdf] according to Rufus Pollock, an economist at Cambridge specializing in intellectual property. An updated annoying Web slideshow from his most recent talk on the subject is here and the narrative is here.

Even assuming we made it 28 years from publication at the first go to stay straight with the WTO, every bit of content produced before 1/1/1982 would be in the public domain tomorrow including the movies "Chariots of Fire" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the books "Cujo" and "Red Dragon", the songs "9 to 5" and "Physical". The value of these works as cultural artifacts are worth far more now than their residual commercial value.

The optimal time is 15 years, to 99% certainty less than 38 years [pdf] according to Rufus Pollock, an economist at Cambridge specializing in intellectual property. An updated annoying Web slideshow from his most recent talk on the subject is here and the narrative is here.

Even assuming we made it 28 years from publication at the first go to stay straight with the WTO, every bit of content produced before 1/1/1982 would be in the public domain tomorrow including the movies "Chariots of Fire" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the books "Cujo" and "Red Dragon", the songs "9 to 5" and "Physical". The value of these works as cultural artifacts are worth far more now than their residual commercial value.

http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf

This research article is on copyright but it should more or less apply to patents and says 15 years

Thomas Macauley gave two speeches on copyright extension. He covered all the salient points we're going to touch here on slashdot today, and a few more. They are hosted here. Please note that the host is a publisher, and Macauley was himself a distinguished author. It was over 160 years ago, but it's still a good read.

After that, if you have the math to sift through these two papers on the subject, you may agree with their author that the maximum benefit to authors and the public comes with copyright terms of about 15 years. The farther you get from optimum, the less benefit both creators and consumers see - not more for one and less for the other depending on direction, as one might assume.

Excessive length of copyright harms content creators, too.

And apparently a distinguished mathematician has done the math. Benefits are optimized at about fifteen years

We should also point out the frequently cited possibility that downloaders' propensity to purchase is positively correlated with downloading (the so-called sampling effect). Google around for this and you will find at least 10 papers that discuss it.

Example: http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/p2p_summary.html

The reason people attempt to file perpetual copyright is that the things being copyrighted, in most cases, still have value. If others are uncomfortable with that, they are perfectly free to create something different/better. People should stop arguing for the removal of other's rights because it's inconvenient for them.

You're looking at this through the European perspective -- as if the creator's monopoly on their work is a natural right.

Look at it again, as if the natural order of things in for information to be usable without restriction, and copyright is an artificial monopoly created for the sole purpose of benefiting the greater good of the public as a whole.

To be sure, things which are copyrighted may have value to the eventual rightsholder 90 years later -- but if you calculate present value at the time of creation (if you've never taken an accounting class, this determines the amount which would need to be invested, at current interest rates, to yield the same eventual income as the extended monopoly period would grant; this sum effectively represents the amount of economic motivation granted to an author to create their work), the amount of value which the creator receives at the time of creation based on this extended grant of exclusive rights is absolutely minimal. On the other hand, the costs levied on the rest of the economy -- even excluding the unknowns of derivative works which aren't created, public-benefit performances which don't occur, and enhanced breadth of society's culture as a whole based on expanded exposure to knowledge -- are considerable indeed.

See this amicus brief to the Supreme Court challenge of the DMCA, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law (Landes and Posner), Forever Minus A Day? Some Theory And Empirics of Optimal Copyright (Rufus Pollock), and (for lighter reading) this analysis in the Financial Times.

I agree that shorter terms with an option to renew are desirable, but also hold that the length of renewal should be limited either explicitly or via economic incentives (ie. attaching significant cost for renewal after a reasonable period).

This idea is great. Here are some more:

1. I think a general copyright of 14 years is the optimum from the time of publication. This study previously appeared on slashdot.
http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf

2. Solve the problem of people using copyright to prevent reproduction especially in small independent films.
If companies use copyright to deny reproduction at any price or at a price that is so high its absurd, enable people to pay some fixed fee and ignore the wishes of the copyright holder. Copyright shouldn't be a tool to prevent reproduction just a tool to make some money from artistic creativity.

3. If companies abuse the position by engaging in fraud or anti trust behavior to manipulate prices they lose their copyright.
http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/PrRel/prfeb192004.htm
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-cd-settlement.htm

4. Expand fair use. If I want to use a small portion of a book eg 1000 words from a 50,000 word book its ok even if its for profit. I just can't reproduce lots of 1000 word bit to reproduce the book. If its educational I get to use it unless it literally causes major loss to the company. Eg in a classroom I can make 200 copies of a newspaper article for all the students. I just can't do that for a whole textbook. But I can use it for a figure from a textbook.

5. No automatic copyright for photos. There has to be some artistic quality to them.

6. In the U.S., buildings built on or after December 1, 1990 are also eligible for copyright. This is pathetic. Given that creativity was not stifled beforehand this is totally unnecessary. No copyright on buildings.

7. No frivolous copyright either like on restaurants. Yes someone was sued and lost because one restaurant was too similar to another.

8. No copyright on 'happy birthday'. If you sing happy birthday in a restaurant you gotta pay a fee to the so called rights holder. The movie 'The Corporation' claims that Warner/Chappell charge up to US$10,000 for the song to appear in a film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You

• * When formulating policy the key variable to consider should be social value, which is the sum of commercial value and user value, rather than commercial value alone (in economist's terminology: welfare rather than national income).
• * When looking at the value of knowledge goods in general, and the public domain in particular, policy makers should take account of the value generated by complementary products and services.
• * Historically, innovation policy, particularly in relation to intellectual property, is characterized by extensive rent-seeking activity and significant imbalances in power. It is important that this be taken into account in policy making, for example by the provision of a clear set of principles that could safeguard groups that are poorly represented (such as the general public). The public domain while very important to society tends to lack a concentrated set of stakeholders to defend it, compared, for example, to the copyright-based industries.
• * For some of the categories of works currently covered by copyright, for example music, the introduction of open access along with some form of alternative compensation system promises to deliver significant gains both to creators and to consumers.
• * Access and preservation of older copyrighted works is a significant problem and should be addressed. This could be done in several, potentially complementary ways, including: introduction of a registration requirement, orphan works provisions, and a reduction in copyright term.
• * In areas such as open source software and technology standards the first principle should be "do no harm". In particular, it is imperative that policy makers maintain, and strengthen, the exclusion of software and business methods from patentability.
• * Make public sector information open. This is one of the most direct, and straightforward actions governments can take in promoting the public domain, and it is one that the available evidence suggests will have large benefits both to industry and to the general public.

• * When formulating policy the key variable to consider should be social value, which is the sum of commercial value and user value, rather than commercial value alone (in economist's terminology: welfare rather than national income).
• * When looking at the value of knowledge goods in general, and the public domain in particular, policy makers should take account of the value generated by complementary products and services.
• * Historically, innovation policy, particularly in relation to intellectual property, is characterized by extensive rent-seeking activity and significant imbalances in power. It is important that this be taken into account in policy making, for example by the provision of a clear set of principles that could safeguard groups that are poorly represented (such as the general public). The public domain while very important to society tends to lack a concentrated set of stakeholders to defend it, compared, for example, to the copyright-based industries.
• * For some of the categories of works currently covered by copyright, for example music, the introduction of open access along with some form of alternative compensation system promises to deliver significant gains both to creators and to consumers.
• * Access and preservation of older copyrighted works is a significant problem and should be addressed. This could be done in several, potentially complementary ways, including: introduction of a registration requirement, orphan works provisions, and a reduction in copyright term.
• * In areas such as open source software and technology standards the first principle should be "do no harm". In particular, it is imperative that policy makers maintain, and strengthen, the exclusion of software and business methods from patentability.
• * Make public sector information open. This is one of the most direct, and straightforward actions governments can take in promoting the public domain, and it is one that the available evidence suggests will have large benefits both to industry and to the general public.

• * When formulating policy the key variable to consider should be social value, which is the sum of commercial value and user value, rather than commercial value alone (in economist's terminology: welfare rather than national income).
• * When looking at the value of knowledge goods in general, and the public domain in particular, policy makers should take account of the value generated by complementary products and services.
• * Historically, innovation policy, particularly in relation to intellectual property, is characterized by extensive rent-seeking activity and significant imbalances in power. It is important that this be taken into account in policy making, for example by the provision of a clear set of principles that could safeguard groups that are poorly represented (such as the general public). The public domain while very important to society tends to lack a concentrated set of stakeholders to defend it, compared, for example, to the copyright-based industries.
• * For some of the categories of works currently covered by copyright, for example music, the introduction of open access along with some form of alternative compensation system promises to deliver significant gains both to creators and to consumers.
• * Access and preservation of older copyrighted works is a significant problem and should be addressed. This could be done in several, potentially complementary ways, including: introduction of a registration requirement, orphan works provisions, and a reduction in copyright term.
• * In areas such as open source software and technology standards the first principle should be "do no harm". In particular, it is imperative that policy makers maintain, and strengthen, the exclusion of software and business methods from patentability.
• * Make public sector information open. This is one of the most direct, and straightforward actions governments can take in promoting the public domain, and it is one that the available evidence suggests will have large benefits both to industry and to the general public.

Here are some links for the interested:

Music and books
http://questioncopyright.com/

Patents
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm

Network economy
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.ph p/Main_Page

Collection p2p politics
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/

Software
http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/20 07/computer-2007-article.html

IP economics
http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/