Ok. But, the better question ought to be why the numbers are different. There seems to be this view "England and France have better results than the US does and England and France have 'universal' care. Therefore, if we want to have those results, we should have universal care also."
I suggest that there are a number of alternate reasons why our results are as poor as they apparently are. For example, we have a significantly higher incidence of morbid obesity and we don't get nearly the exercise that many people in other countries do. There are policies which the US can adopt which will reduce these effects without completely taking over the heath care system. We could change agriculture policy to shift subsidies away from soybeans and corn. The subsidies make corn syrup and soybean oil dirt cheap, which is why they show up in so many food products, increasing waistlines and decreasing health.
There are also a number of places where the market can help reduce the cost of health care. In pharmaceuticals, for example, there is a huge disparity in the prices charged by different drug stores -- compare the prices at Walgreens and Walmart. Since Walmart introduced its $4 generic prescription program, large numbers of patients have talked with the doctors and switched from non-generic drugs to generic drugs intended to treat the same problem. At the same time, many drug stores, plus Target and Walmart are opening doc-in-the-box mini-clinics to treat common problems for small fees.
The US government has a lousy track record running the VA hospital system; I sure don't want to see it do more of that.
A large reason that our infant mortality rate is so high is because we have a number of premature babies and multiple births due to technologies like in-vitro fertilization, which result in multiple births and older, less-healthy women giving birth. In many other countries (Cuba, for example), these babies would have never been conceived. Infant deaths drive down life expectancy far faster than deaths of, say, 50-year-olds.
Sorry, I did not need to imply that "ability to pay" should be used to ration care. However, despite the original comment, there is some price-elasticity in health care markets. So, having a price does diminish demand -- if it's all "free," it gets over-used. Low-end health care (treating of, say, poison ivy treatments) is a lot more price-elastic than severe disease markets.
I also agree that one anecdote doesn't mean that the entire French health care system is broken. I was pointing out, however, that in a system that rations care (as all "universal" health care systems do), there are people who are unable to get it.
In any case, the end result in the US is not so much that people going without care, as it is that they end up with enormous healthcare bills which, in some cases, drive people into bankruptcy.
There are serious pushes in most of the "universal care" healthcare markets (France included) to institute some free-market reforms.
cafehayek.com had an interesting anecdote about France's healthcare system:
"Conversation at lunch revealed that the neighbor, who had a history of heart trouble, suffered severe chest pains a few weeks ago. He wisely went to the hospital seeking treatment. He was told that there was no space available for him. He was advised to go home and call back later to see if a room might have become available. He did so, but was told repeatedly that the hospital remained full to capacity. Several days later this man died at home, never having received hospital treatment."
Going to government-paid health care does not mean that healthcare is "universal." It just means that it's no longer ability-to-pay that determines who gets it.
(1) Best buy demands retail price maintenance
(2) Sony gives it to Best Buy; Toshiba doesn't
(3) People see the lower prices on Toshibas and buy lots of them; Sony's sales decline
(4) Sony slaps itself in the head, gets rid of price maintenance
In any case, I suspect that if Best Buy were to start demanding that, they would probably lose the resulting anti-trust lawsuit. (Remember, the decision did not say that RPM is legal; only that it's not always illegal.)
If the manufacturer is concerned about exclusivity, it can already just increase the price it charges its dealers, or reduce the supply of the article. If they're concerned about dealers buying high and selling low, they can offer to buy back unsold inventory. There's no need to tell the dealers what they can charge in order to maintain "exclusivity." If a dealer values that exclusivity of that brand, it will keep the price high anyway.
I think that you're missing my free-riding point, which is that consumers benefit when those services are available. But, if the only thing that dealers compete on is price, those services will never be made available. Advertising is another example: if one dealer spends a lot of money on promoting a brand, that has the effect of increasing demand for that brand. But, since that one dealer has to pay for that advertising, he has to raise the price of his goods. Another dealer who sells the same goods but does not advertise the brand will be able to undercut the first dealer. In the end, the result will be that nobody advertises the brand. A manufacturer who wants its dealers to advertise can protect them against this free-riding problem by preventing that other dealer from undercutting the price.
Recognize that this only affect intra-brand competition, which doesn't even need to exist. If a manufacturer wanted to, it could set up its own private network of retailers and set its own prices. I don't think anybody would complain about that.
The other thing to remember is that a manufacturer's decision to set retail prices doesn't happen in a vacuum. If Honda says "Ok. That MSRP is the actual retail price," a lot of people will buy Toyotas, Mazdas or (if they're masochists) Chryslers. There are still competitive pressures on that price.
First of all, this only said that there are some cases where vertical price restraints are legal. It did not say that they're all legal. In fact, the opinion listed several situations where they're almost certainly illegal.
For the most part, manufacturers don't want to impose price maintenance -- they BENEFIT when their dealers sell at low prices. Why? Well, here's an example: say Apple sells iPods to dealers for $100, sets a retail price of $200, and 5 people buy it. Apple now has $500. Let's say they don't set a retail price, and (because of competition), the retail price stabilizes at $130, and 7 people buy it at the lower price. Apple now has $700. Which one is better for Apple? Both manufacturers and consumers want dealers to make as little profit as they can.
Here's an example why vertical price restraints should not all be illegal: Suppose that you build sailboats, which are somewhat complicated, not many people know a lot about them, and there are a lot of first-time buyers. Your dealers, then, spend a lot of time and money educating the customers, maintaining showrooms, teaching "what to know before you buy your boat" classes, and so on. These things are very expensive, and consumers benefit by having them. The problem, though, is that if one of your dealers does all the education, and another doesn't, the second one will undercut the first one's prices. As a result, customers will go to the first dealer, look at the boats and take the classes, then go buy the cheap boat from the second dealer. Eventually, the first dealer either goes out of business or just stops offering all those extra services. If the manufacturer can set a minimum retail price, he can stop the second dealer from doing this free-riding. Now, the two dealers are still competing with each other, but they're doing it on something other than price -- they're doing it on service. So, consumers may get longer dealer warranties, or dealers may offer free storage or maintenance.
Most statutes do not have a single well-defined purpose behind them -- they're the result of horse-trading in the Congress to get enough votes to pass a bill. Legislation is often the result of compromise. For every congressman who wanted the H1-B visa law drafted broadly to keep out as many foreign workers as possible, there's another one who favors immigration and wants it drafted narrowly. So, the two sides compromise and get a bill that neither of them would choose by itself, but which they can both agree is better than nothing. The vagaries and loopholes are often put in on purpose.
When that happens, what are you supposed to do? Do you follow the "spirit" that the anti-immigration side wanted, or the "spirit" that the pro-immigration side wanted?
The core technology in cell phones is usually shared among the manufacturers through cross-licensing agreements. Basically, these say "if you let me use your patents, I'll let you use mine," then the company with fewer pays a big chunk of change to the party with more.
It's a weird system -- basically, the two companies spend a ton of money trying to get ahead of each other so they'll be the one receiving the money, not vice-versa. In the end, neither company gets very much, but small companies without a large patent portfolio are kept out.
This particular scandal is a tempest in the teapot. There are two competing laws in place: the first is the presidential records act, which requires preservation of the administration's records; the second (the Hatch Act) prevents the use of government equipment for politicai purposes. So, emails related to political activity cannot go through the white house email system. Instead, they get sent through the RNC. So far, there's nothing new or disturbing -- the Clinton administration did the same thing with the DNC, largely because there's no other way out of the problem.
The problem is that the RNC servers weren't correctly backed up. And, as a result, a bunch of those emails were lost when, by law, they were supposed to be kept. There's absolutely no indication that they were lost deliberately or that any higher-ups ordered their destruction or knew about their destruction and failed to stop it. (At best, the report says that Gonzalez knew about the RNC accounts, but "took no action to preserve" them. But, that's a non-sequitor -- he only had to take that action if he thought they were not going to be preserved.)
Was there a law broken? Maybe -- I don't know whether negligently failing to keep them is enough to break the law, or if it requires deliberate destruction. But, is there any evidence of corruption? No. Maybe incompetence at the RNC, but not corruption.
Everybody knew that when the Republicans were voted out of control of Congress the Democrats were going to conduct investigation after investigation for political purposes. That's all this is. Heck, the list didn't even come about because of some thorough investigation by the Committee Staff -- they asked for the list and the Republicans gave it to them.
There are plenty of places where the administration could be accused of incompetence. But, there's no real evidence of general corruption.
It goes a little beyond that. If there's an ongoing legal action, you may be subpoenaed to turn over all the documents related to it. Plus, you can be sanctioned for trying to hide one piece of useful evidence in a pile full of junk. The result is that when you've been sued, you suddenly have to pour through a ton of information. These tools are intended for organizations that get sued a lot, to help them in that task.
That said, I agree with your characterization of it as FUD. Often, this sort of work can be done after you've been sued -- as long as you keep track of generally what you have and where you have it.
In the U.S., literary works are one of the categories of work explicitly protected by copyright. Literary works, in that sense, are defined as "works, other than audiovisual works, expressed in words, numbers, or other verbal or numerical symbols or indicia . .." Cox' point is that copyright protection is enough; you don't also need patent.
The problem with your analysis is: "what is the offer?" Nearly every box of software has a notice that says something about being subject to the terms of an EULA. The outside of most computer boxes too, and when you buy computer on-line you are (or should be) notified of the EULA's existence.
Generally, in the US, if the existence of the EULA is made known to the purchaser before the purchase AND he's given a chance to reject the purchase after being given a chance to read the EULA, then the EULA is enforceable under contract law.
In this case, it sounds like the court was right -- because he never had a chance to read the EULA, he could not accept it and, thus, was not bound by it.
I've heard your claims about "IP" not actually being "Property" before, based on the idea that it's non-rivalous, where as real and tangible property is rivalous. But, the work "property" there is used more in its legal meaning of a "property right" -- the legal right that, among other things, allows you to exclude others. So, for example, you have a property right in your land: you can legally exclude others from coming onto it. IP gives you the right to exclude others from certain uses of your work. I'll agree that it's not a wholly correct metaphor, but it captures the basics pretty well.
I would cast that more as corporations profiting by curing illnesses.
Research, even research conducted in universities, costs money. So, there has to be a source of that money. Currently, there are two main sources: (1) industry and (2) government.
It's possible to imagine a world were the government funded all research and development of drugs. But, note that this creates odd incentives. First of all, how should the government decide how much to spend on research? How will it decide which avenues of research to pursue? And, if the US government is paying for the invention of the drugs, does that mean that it gets to keep the rest of the world from using them? Will the people doing the research and making the decisions be paid like government workers or like folks in private industry? What incentives would there be to save money and to cut off research that appears to be going nowhere?
Right now, the market is doing a remarkably good job of handling these problems. Sure, there are drugs that are too expensive for some; but that's a better situation than their not being available at all.
As for your comparison with Tylenol, the only reason they can charge a premium now is because their original patent created a perceived differentiation. Without that original patent, Tylenol would be nowhere.
I have a number of small drug and biotech companies as clients. They are spending a LOT of money to develop new drugs and technologies. As they develop something new, it gets patented. Why? Because the companies are going to go through a lot of effort and expense in getting their individual drugs or technologies approved and they want to make sure that they can make money selling those drugs once they are. Without patent protection, the instant they received approval, somebody else would start manufacturing it. And, as a result, the company would not be able to recoup the money it spent or that it could have made doing something else.
IP protects creators against freeloading. Sure, oftentimes they sell off the rights to their works. But, why should a creator be allowed to make money off individual sales of his works, yet not be able to sell the work itself off?
I won't defend all IP law; some of it's screwy, some of it's unnecessary and some of it actually impedes what its intended to promote. But, we would be in a sorry state without it.
"The Raw Story"?? Please -- why not just cite directly to the Hillary Clinton's blog?
Executive stock options are an odd thing because they are generally not transferable. So, technically, you're right -- he still technically owns them. However, they are subject to a trust agreement that provides that their proceeds, upon sale, will go to GWU Hospital's Cardiothoracic Institute, the University of Wyoming and Capital Partners for Education. (Since they're just options, he doesn't get dividends.)
The point is that he doesn't get any of the benefits of ownership -- he will be in exactly the same position if Haliburton does well as he'll be in if Haliburton tanks.
I don't think Cheney is going "to need another job in 2009." He's got a heck of a lot more money than Bill Clinton did when he left office.
And, how do you know that Cheney will go back to Haliburton? Every politicial has the ability to benefit certain private groups, and are thus open to the accusation that they're only doing so to guarantee them a job after office.
No-bid contracts were awarded (1) because there are very few US companies that can do what Haliburton & KBR did and (2) the bidding process is time consuming, and they were in a rush. In hindsight, there were a LOT of screwups leading up to the war and in the rebuilding. But, those are more easily attributed to poor decision-making (plenty of evidence for that) than to corruption (no direct evidence.)
Realize that the article you're pointing to is about how a democratic senator is putting a different spin on what my linked article said. Even then, you got the accusations of YOUR article wrong. Factcheck.org is reasonably neutral. Frank Lautenberg, especially in the run-up to the 2004 election (your article is dated in 2003) is not.
Cheney is performing any work for Haliburton. He has two potential financial ties: (1) he received stock options, the rights to which he has donated to charity (no tie there), and (2) he has some deferred compensation. The deferred compensation is money that Haliburton is legally obligated to pay him -- it's payment for services rendered in the past, not in the present. Even if Cheney were to start saying that Haliburton was the most corrupt company on the face of the earth, they would STILL have to pay him. The only out for them is going so far into the red that they're bankrupt.
No-bid contracts were awarded for a lot of Iraq construction because (1) there are not many US companies who can do the work and (2) the bidding process more time-consuming than they wanted.
I am not defending KBR or Haliburton's practices with regard to the war. All I'm saying is that Cheney had nothing to do with it. That's just left-wing spin left over from the 2004 election that's been repeated enough that people think it's true.
You're right -- it's trollish, mainly because it's wrong. Go to fact check here for the actual truth. Cheney has received some deferred compensation and turned over a bunch of his stock options to charity. Apart from that, he has no continuing interest.
I don't even think you get to fair use on this one. There are only a few general ways you can infringe the copyright of a broadcast:
(1) You can make a copy of it (2) You can make a derivative work out of it (3) You can publicly perform it (4) You can distribute copies to the public
Slingbox, by itself, does none of these, unless you consider the tiny pieces of the recording stored in a buffer along the way to be a "copy." (While that's still an open question, it appears that Congress' intent is that it is not.) As long as you're not transmitting to, say, a sports bar, you're fine.
Yes, I absolutely believe that a lot of people only install licensed software, especially in large companies. For them, it's not a moral thing -- it's all about liability. And, there are a lot of people who obey the law because it is the law.
Charles Dickens had to write his works as 'serials' in newspapers -- if he published them, then competing publishers would just print their own versions without paying him any royalties. (And, in fact, that's what happened once they were published in the newspaper.)
Apart from the other arguments raised here, that author ignores the problem of "orphan works" -- there are a lot of works, especially old movies, which has no clearly ascertainable owner. As a result, these works are deteriorating because nobody is willing to put the effort into exploiting them. The last thing anybody wants is to restore a great 60-year-old movie, only to have some long-lost step-cousin of the original producer sue your for copyright infringement.
In order to be valid, a transfer of real property has to be recorded with the government. Among other things, this allows the current owner to be known. This is generally also true with patents and trademarks. Why not copyright?
(The answer is that the U.S. is party to the Boerne convention, which forbids disvestment of copyright for failure to follow formalities, and the US has encoded that prohibition into its law.)
I'm not aware of any empirical study, but it's pretty easy to argue the case. Consider software, for example. If every country in the world were to decide that software was not protected, how many more versions of Photoshop do you think Adobe would put out? How many would people buy?
I agree with your view that copyright term is hardly "limited" -- the Supreme Court got the Eldred case dead wrong as a practical matter.
I'll disagree with your last statement, though: copyright does not protect ideas; it protects expression. I, for example, could write a novel about a young wizard going to an english wizarding school, where he battles a dark wizard, and not infringe any copyright. But, once I start to copy her expression, that's a different issue.
In many instances, titles can be protected as trademarks. I think J.K. Rowling would have a good claim if somebody were to name their book "Harry Potter and the . . . ". But, trademark has very different boundaries than copyright.
Titles, by themselves, are not copyrightable because they generally do not evidence enough of the creative expression that copyright is supposed to protect. Plus, as a practical matter, you don't want to put a copyright on short phrases. Should Stephen King have a copyright on the word "It," Shakespeare on "Hamlet," Coben on "The Woods," or Grisham on "The Firm"?
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Ok. But, the better question ought to be why the numbers are different. There seems to be this view "England and France have better results than the US does and England and France have 'universal' care. Therefore, if we want to have those results, we should have universal care also."
I suggest that there are a number of alternate reasons why our results are as poor as they apparently are. For example, we have a significantly higher incidence of morbid obesity and we don't get nearly the exercise that many people in other countries do. There are policies which the US can adopt which will reduce these effects without completely taking over the heath care system. We could change agriculture policy to shift subsidies away from soybeans and corn. The subsidies make corn syrup and soybean oil dirt cheap, which is why they show up in so many food products, increasing waistlines and decreasing health.
There are also a number of places where the market can help reduce the cost of health care. In pharmaceuticals, for example, there is a huge disparity in the prices charged by different drug stores -- compare the prices at Walgreens and Walmart. Since Walmart introduced its $4 generic prescription program, large numbers of patients have talked with the doctors and switched from non-generic drugs to generic drugs intended to treat the same problem. At the same time, many drug stores, plus Target and Walmart are opening doc-in-the-box mini-clinics to treat common problems for small fees.
The US government has a lousy track record running the VA hospital system; I sure don't want to see it do more of that.
A large reason that our infant mortality rate is so high is because we have a number of premature babies and multiple births due to technologies like in-vitro fertilization, which result in multiple births and older, less-healthy women giving birth. In many other countries (Cuba, for example), these babies would have never been conceived. Infant deaths drive down life expectancy far faster than deaths of, say, 50-year-olds.
Sorry, I did not need to imply that "ability to pay" should be used to ration care. However, despite the original comment, there is some price-elasticity in health care markets. So, having a price does diminish demand -- if it's all "free," it gets over-used. Low-end health care (treating of, say, poison ivy treatments) is a lot more price-elastic than severe disease markets.
I also agree that one anecdote doesn't mean that the entire French health care system is broken. I was pointing out, however, that in a system that rations care (as all "universal" health care systems do), there are people who are unable to get it.
In any case, the end result in the US is not so much that people going without care, as it is that they end up with enormous healthcare bills which, in some cases, drive people into bankruptcy.
There are serious pushes in most of the "universal care" healthcare markets (France included) to institute some free-market reforms.
cafehayek.com had an interesting anecdote about France's healthcare system:
"Conversation at lunch revealed that the neighbor, who had a history of heart trouble, suffered severe chest pains a few weeks ago. He wisely went to the hospital seeking treatment. He was told that there was no space available for him. He was advised to go home and call back later to see if a room might have become available. He did so, but was told repeatedly that the hospital remained full to capacity. Several days later this man died at home, never having received hospital treatment."
Going to government-paid health care does not mean that healthcare is "universal." It just means that it's no longer ability-to-pay that determines who gets it.
Here's a scenario:
(1) Best buy demands retail price maintenance
(2) Sony gives it to Best Buy; Toshiba doesn't
(3) People see the lower prices on Toshibas and buy lots of them; Sony's sales decline
(4) Sony slaps itself in the head, gets rid of price maintenance
In any case, I suspect that if Best Buy were to start demanding that, they would probably lose the resulting anti-trust lawsuit. (Remember, the decision did not say that RPM is legal; only that it's not always illegal.)
If the manufacturer is concerned about exclusivity, it can already just increase the price it charges its dealers, or reduce the supply of the article. If they're concerned about dealers buying high and selling low, they can offer to buy back unsold inventory. There's no need to tell the dealers what they can charge in order to maintain "exclusivity." If a dealer values that exclusivity of that brand, it will keep the price high anyway.
I think that you're missing my free-riding point, which is that consumers benefit when those services are available. But, if the only thing that dealers compete on is price, those services will never be made available. Advertising is another example: if one dealer spends a lot of money on promoting a brand, that has the effect of increasing demand for that brand. But, since that one dealer has to pay for that advertising, he has to raise the price of his goods. Another dealer who sells the same goods but does not advertise the brand will be able to undercut the first dealer. In the end, the result will be that nobody advertises the brand. A manufacturer who wants its dealers to advertise can protect them against this free-riding problem by preventing that other dealer from undercutting the price.
Recognize that this only affect intra-brand competition, which doesn't even need to exist. If a manufacturer wanted to, it could set up its own private network of retailers and set its own prices. I don't think anybody would complain about that.
The other thing to remember is that a manufacturer's decision to set retail prices doesn't happen in a vacuum. If Honda says "Ok. That MSRP is the actual retail price," a lot of people will buy Toyotas, Mazdas or (if they're masochists) Chryslers. There are still competitive pressures on that price.
First of all, this only said that there are some cases where vertical price restraints are legal. It did not say that they're all legal. In fact, the opinion listed several situations where they're almost certainly illegal.
For the most part, manufacturers don't want to impose price maintenance -- they BENEFIT when their dealers sell at low prices. Why? Well, here's an example: say Apple sells iPods to dealers for $100, sets a retail price of $200, and 5 people buy it. Apple now has $500. Let's say they don't set a retail price, and (because of competition), the retail price stabilizes at $130, and 7 people buy it at the lower price. Apple now has $700. Which one is better for Apple? Both manufacturers and consumers want dealers to make as little profit as they can.
Here's an example why vertical price restraints should not all be illegal: Suppose that you build sailboats, which are somewhat complicated, not many people know a lot about them, and there are a lot of first-time buyers. Your dealers, then, spend a lot of time and money educating the customers, maintaining showrooms, teaching "what to know before you buy your boat" classes, and so on. These things are very expensive, and consumers benefit by having them. The problem, though, is that if one of your dealers does all the education, and another doesn't, the second one will undercut the first one's prices. As a result, customers will go to the first dealer, look at the boats and take the classes, then go buy the cheap boat from the second dealer. Eventually, the first dealer either goes out of business or just stops offering all those extra services. If the manufacturer can set a minimum retail price, he can stop the second dealer from doing this free-riding. Now, the two dealers are still competing with each other, but they're doing it on something other than price -- they're doing it on service. So, consumers may get longer dealer warranties, or dealers may offer free storage or maintenance.
Most statutes do not have a single well-defined purpose behind them -- they're the result of horse-trading in the Congress to get enough votes to pass a bill. Legislation is often the result of compromise. For every congressman who wanted the H1-B visa law drafted broadly to keep out as many foreign workers as possible, there's another one who favors immigration and wants it drafted narrowly. So, the two sides compromise and get a bill that neither of them would choose by itself, but which they can both agree is better than nothing. The vagaries and loopholes are often put in on purpose.
When that happens, what are you supposed to do? Do you follow the "spirit" that the anti-immigration side wanted, or the "spirit" that the pro-immigration side wanted?
The core technology in cell phones is usually shared among the manufacturers through cross-licensing agreements. Basically, these say "if you let me use your patents, I'll let you use mine," then the company with fewer pays a big chunk of change to the party with more.
It's a weird system -- basically, the two companies spend a ton of money trying to get ahead of each other so they'll be the one receiving the money, not vice-versa. In the end, neither company gets very much, but small companies without a large patent portfolio are kept out.
This particular scandal is a tempest in the teapot. There are two competing laws in place: the first is the presidential records act, which requires preservation of the administration's records; the second (the Hatch Act) prevents the use of government equipment for politicai purposes. So, emails related to political activity cannot go through the white house email system. Instead, they get sent through the RNC. So far, there's nothing new or disturbing -- the Clinton administration did the same thing with the DNC, largely because there's no other way out of the problem.
The problem is that the RNC servers weren't correctly backed up. And, as a result, a bunch of those emails were lost when, by law, they were supposed to be kept. There's absolutely no indication that they were lost deliberately or that any higher-ups ordered their destruction or knew about their destruction and failed to stop it. (At best, the report says that Gonzalez knew about the RNC accounts, but "took no action to preserve" them. But, that's a non-sequitor -- he only had to take that action if he thought they were not going to be preserved.)
Was there a law broken? Maybe -- I don't know whether negligently failing to keep them is enough to break the law, or if it requires deliberate destruction. But, is there any evidence of corruption? No. Maybe incompetence at the RNC, but not corruption.
Everybody knew that when the Republicans were voted out of control of Congress the Democrats were going to conduct investigation after investigation for political purposes. That's all this is. Heck, the list didn't even come about because of some thorough investigation by the Committee Staff -- they asked for the list and the Republicans gave it to them.
There are plenty of places where the administration could be accused of incompetence. But, there's no real evidence of general corruption.
It goes a little beyond that. If there's an ongoing legal action, you may be subpoenaed to turn over all the documents related to it. Plus, you can be sanctioned for trying to hide one piece of useful evidence in a pile full of junk. The result is that when you've been sued, you suddenly have to pour through a ton of information. These tools are intended for organizations that get sued a lot, to help them in that task.
That said, I agree with your characterization of it as FUD. Often, this sort of work can be done after you've been sued -- as long as you keep track of generally what you have and where you have it.
In the U.S., literary works are one of the categories of work explicitly protected by copyright. Literary works, in that sense, are defined as "works, other than audiovisual works, expressed in words, numbers, or other verbal or numerical symbols or indicia . . ." Cox' point is that copyright protection is enough; you don't also need patent.
The problem with your analysis is: "what is the offer?" Nearly every box of software has a notice that says something about being subject to the terms of an EULA. The outside of most computer boxes too, and when you buy computer on-line you are (or should be) notified of the EULA's existence.
Generally, in the US, if the existence of the EULA is made known to the purchaser before the purchase AND he's given a chance to reject the purchase after being given a chance to read the EULA, then the EULA is enforceable under contract law.
In this case, it sounds like the court was right -- because he never had a chance to read the EULA, he could not accept it and, thus, was not bound by it.
I don't disagree that the IFPI is off its rocker.
I've heard your claims about "IP" not actually being "Property" before, based on the idea that it's non-rivalous, where as real and tangible property is rivalous. But, the work "property" there is used more in its legal meaning of a "property right" -- the legal right that, among other things, allows you to exclude others. So, for example, you have a property right in your land: you can legally exclude others from coming onto it. IP gives you the right to exclude others from certain uses of your work. I'll agree that it's not a wholly correct metaphor, but it captures the basics pretty well.
I would cast that more as corporations profiting by curing illnesses.
Research, even research conducted in universities, costs money. So, there has to be a source of that money. Currently, there are two main sources: (1) industry and (2) government.
It's possible to imagine a world were the government funded all research and development of drugs. But, note that this creates odd incentives. First of all, how should the government decide how much to spend on research? How will it decide which avenues of research to pursue? And, if the US government is paying for the invention of the drugs, does that mean that it gets to keep the rest of the world from using them? Will the people doing the research and making the decisions be paid like government workers or like folks in private industry? What incentives would there be to save money and to cut off research that appears to be going nowhere?
Right now, the market is doing a remarkably good job of handling these problems. Sure, there are drugs that are too expensive for some; but that's a better situation than their not being available at all.
As for your comparison with Tylenol, the only reason they can charge a premium now is because their original patent created a perceived differentiation. Without that original patent, Tylenol would be nowhere.
I have a number of small drug and biotech companies as clients. They are spending a LOT of money to develop new drugs and technologies. As they develop something new, it gets patented. Why? Because the companies are going to go through a lot of effort and expense in getting their individual drugs or technologies approved and they want to make sure that they can make money selling those drugs once they are. Without patent protection, the instant they received approval, somebody else would start manufacturing it. And, as a result, the company would not be able to recoup the money it spent or that it could have made doing something else.
IP protects creators against freeloading. Sure, oftentimes they sell off the rights to their works. But, why should a creator be allowed to make money off individual sales of his works, yet not be able to sell the work itself off?
I won't defend all IP law; some of it's screwy, some of it's unnecessary and some of it actually impedes what its intended to promote. But, we would be in a sorry state without it.
"The Raw Story"?? Please -- why not just cite directly to the Hillary Clinton's blog?
Executive stock options are an odd thing because they are generally not transferable. So, technically, you're right -- he still technically owns them. However, they are subject to a trust agreement that provides that their proceeds, upon sale, will go to GWU Hospital's Cardiothoracic Institute, the University of Wyoming and Capital Partners for Education. (Since they're just options, he doesn't get dividends.)
The point is that he doesn't get any of the benefits of ownership -- he will be in exactly the same position if Haliburton does well as he'll be in if Haliburton tanks.
I don't think Cheney is going "to need another job in 2009." He's got a heck of a lot more money than Bill Clinton did when he left office.
And, how do you know that Cheney will go back to Haliburton? Every politicial has the ability to benefit certain private groups, and are thus open to the accusation that they're only doing so to guarantee them a job after office.
No-bid contracts were awarded (1) because there are very few US companies that can do what Haliburton & KBR did and (2) the bidding process is time consuming, and they were in a rush. In hindsight, there were a LOT of screwups leading up to the war and in the rebuilding. But, those are more easily attributed to poor decision-making (plenty of evidence for that) than to corruption (no direct evidence.)
Realize that the article you're pointing to is about how a democratic senator is putting a different spin on what my linked article said. Even then, you got the accusations of YOUR article wrong. Factcheck.org is reasonably neutral. Frank Lautenberg, especially in the run-up to the 2004 election (your article is dated in 2003) is not.
Cheney is performing any work for Haliburton. He has two potential financial ties: (1) he received stock options, the rights to which he has donated to charity (no tie there), and (2) he has some deferred compensation. The deferred compensation is money that Haliburton is legally obligated to pay him -- it's payment for services rendered in the past, not in the present. Even if Cheney were to start saying that Haliburton was the most corrupt company on the face of the earth, they would STILL have to pay him. The only out for them is going so far into the red that they're bankrupt.
No-bid contracts were awarded for a lot of Iraq construction because (1) there are not many US companies who can do the work and (2) the bidding process more time-consuming than they wanted.
I am not defending KBR or Haliburton's practices with regard to the war. All I'm saying is that Cheney had nothing to do with it. That's just left-wing spin left over from the 2004 election that's been repeated enough that people think it's true.
You're right -- it's trollish, mainly because it's wrong. Go to fact check here for the actual truth. Cheney has received some deferred compensation and turned over a bunch of his stock options to charity. Apart from that, he has no continuing interest.
I don't even think you get to fair use on this one. There are only a few general ways you can infringe the copyright of a broadcast:
(1) You can make a copy of it
(2) You can make a derivative work out of it
(3) You can publicly perform it
(4) You can distribute copies to the public
Slingbox, by itself, does none of these, unless you consider the tiny pieces of the recording stored in a buffer along the way to be a "copy." (While that's still an open question, it appears that Congress' intent is that it is not.) As long as you're not transmitting to, say, a sports bar, you're fine.
Yes, I absolutely believe that a lot of people only install licensed software, especially in large companies. For them, it's not a moral thing -- it's all about liability. And, there are a lot of people who obey the law because it is the law.
Charles Dickens had to write his works as 'serials' in newspapers -- if he published them, then competing publishers would just print their own versions without paying him any royalties. (And, in fact, that's what happened once they were published in the newspaper.)
Apart from the other arguments raised here, that author ignores the problem of "orphan works" -- there are a lot of works, especially old movies, which has no clearly ascertainable owner. As a result, these works are deteriorating because nobody is willing to put the effort into exploiting them. The last thing anybody wants is to restore a great 60-year-old movie, only to have some long-lost step-cousin of the original producer sue your for copyright infringement.
In order to be valid, a transfer of real property has to be recorded with the government. Among other things, this allows the current owner to be known. This is generally also true with patents and trademarks. Why not copyright?
(The answer is that the U.S. is party to the Boerne convention, which forbids disvestment of copyright for failure to follow formalities, and the US has encoded that prohibition into its law.)
I'm not aware of any empirical study, but it's pretty easy to argue the case. Consider software, for example. If every country in the world were to decide that software was not protected, how many more versions of Photoshop do you think Adobe would put out? How many would people buy?
I agree with your view that copyright term is hardly "limited" -- the Supreme Court got the Eldred case dead wrong as a practical matter.
I'll disagree with your last statement, though: copyright does not protect ideas; it protects expression. I, for example, could write a novel about a young wizard going to an english wizarding school, where he battles a dark wizard, and not infringe any copyright. But, once I start to copy her expression, that's a different issue.
In many instances, titles can be protected as trademarks. I think J.K. Rowling would have a good claim if somebody were to name their book "Harry Potter and the . . . ". But, trademark has very different boundaries than copyright.
Titles, by themselves, are not copyrightable because they generally do not evidence enough of the creative expression that copyright is supposed to protect. Plus, as a practical matter, you don't want to put a copyright on short phrases. Should Stephen King have a copyright on the word "It," Shakespeare on "Hamlet," Coben on "The Woods," or Grisham on "The Firm"?