Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category

Tumblr, Porn, and Internet Intermediaries

posted by William McGeveran

In the hubbub surrounding this week’s acquisition of the blogging platform Tumblr by born-again internet hub Yahoo!, I thought one of the most interesting observations concerned the regulation of pornography. It led, by a winding path, to a topic near and dear to the Concurring Opinions gang: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally immunizes online intermediaries from liability for the contents of user-generated content. (Just a few examples of many ConOp discussions of Section 230: this old post by Dan Solove and a January 2013 series of posts by Danielle Citron on Section 230 and revenge porn here, here, and here.)

Apparently Tumblr has a very large amount of NSFW material compared to other sites with user-generated content. By one estimate, over 11% of the site’s 200,000 most popular blogs are “adult.” By my math that’s well over 20,000 of the site’s power users.

Predictably, much of the ensuing discussion focused on the implications of all that smut for business and branding. But Peter Kafka explains on All Things D that the structure of Tumblr prevents advertisements for family-friendly brands from showing up next to pornographic content. His reassuring tone almost let you hear the “whew” from Yahoo! investors (as if harm to brands is the only relevant consideration about porn — which, for many tech journalists and entrepreneurs, it is).

There is another potential porn problem besides bad PR, and it is legal. Lux Alptraum, writing in Fast Company, addressed it.  (The author is, according to her bio, “a writer, sex educator, and CEO of Fleshbot, the web’s foremost blog about sexuality and adult entertainment.”) She somewhat conflates two different issues — understandably, since they are related — but that’s part of what I think is interesting. A lot of that user-posted porn is violating copyright law, or regulations meant to protect minors from exploitation, or both. To what extent might Tumblr be on the hook for those violations?

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  May 24, 2013 at 12:46 pm   Posted in: Cyberlaw, Feminism and Gender, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Media Law, Privacy, Web 2.0   Print This Post   2 Comments

Cardozo Law Review, China Re-Rising

posted by Cardozo Law Review

Symposium on China’s Transition from Manufacturing to Innovation Economy Hosted by Cardozo Law Review’s Online Journal

NEW YORK, NY, April 29, 2013 — All eyes are on China in the twenty-first century, as it emerges as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. At the same time, losses in various industries are attributed to piracy—a substantial amount of which is alleged to occur within China’s borders—and the Chinese government is routinely criticized for its weak enforcement measures against counterfeiting activities and intellectual property infringement on its soil.Cardozo Law Review de•novo’s online symposium, “China Re-Rising?: Innovation and Collaboration for a Successful Twenty-First Century” focuses  on China’s overall transition from a manufacturing to an innovation economy and how this transition affects IP policies and industries around the world.

The online symposium – located at http://cardozolawreview.com/de-novo-2013.html - features articles from practitioners, industry corporate counsel, professors, and Chinese IP law specialists. Esteemed participants include Chen Wang, the Deputy Chief IP Counsel of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company; Jonathan Sallet, a Partner at O’Melveny & Myers LLP; and Professor Peter Yu, the Kern Family Chair in Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Intellectual Property Law Center at Drake University Law School.

About the Articles:

Professor Yu discusses the slowly-begun change in discourse around China’s intellectual property system, particularly in the field of patents. He presents the reader with five key questions on the state of Chinese intellectual property law and policy. His answers suggest that the future of China’s intellectual property system is dualistic and dynamic—while massive piracy and counterfeiting does continue, this ongoing issue is balanced by China’s rise as a patent power.

Professors Murphy and Orcutt discuss China’s patent subsidy program—an aspect of China’s national innovation strategy that aims to increase domestic patents and innovation through government subsidies to pay for domestic inventors’ legal costs associated with obtaining patents. Noting that the program has been criticized for failing to fund truly valuable or innovative patents, the Authors propose a unique two-stage, three-dimensional relative value technique for the Chinese government to implement in evaluating whether to fund a given patent application through the subsidy program.

Ms. Wang and Mr. Sallet in turn criticize the Chinese government’s metric-based approach to innovation. They posit that China’s emphasis on numerical goals to domestic patenting actually hampers Chinese innovation by directing resources away from research and the development of truly valuable inventions. The Authors further discuss how China’s metric-based approach frustrates the ability of multi-national corporations to collaborate effectively with Chinese companies. They conclude by identifying steps the Chinese government can take to increase local innovation through effective international collaboration.

Professor Shao calls for a holistic perspective of the Chinese innovation economy, law, and policies. His Article offers a historical and cultural perspective that aims to make a holistic approach possible for Western scholars and practitioners, who lack the knowledge of Chinese history and culture necessary to understand the context of China’s current policies. He concludes by proposing that innovation still can, and should, be the bridge to China’s successful economic transition.

Professors Murphree and Breznitz discuss China’s innovation strategy through the lens of its failed attempts to develop globally successful technology standards. The Authors attribute these failures to fragmented production and structured uncertainty implicit in the Chinese domestic market. Despite these failures, the Authors acknowledge that Chinese companies’ participation in even failed attempts does produce tangible benefits, like receiving lower royalty rates on goods they produced.

View the online symposium at http://cardozolawreview.com/de-novo-2013.html

  April 29, 2013 at 1:12 pm  Tags: Cardozo Law Review, china  Posted in: Innovation, Law Rev Contents, Law Rev Forum   Print This Post   No Comments

STEM education and some more on 3D printing as general purpose tech

posted by Deven Desai

3D printing and its related technology is general purpose technology that can train kids for the future. I saw an example of that yesterday when I was able to visit La Jolla Country Day School where sixth to eighth grade kids on spring break were learning basic 3D Modeling and Design. Last week they worked on How to Make Musical Electronics. In the 3D modeling program, Ann Worth, an MIT School of Architecture graduate, guided the youngsters as they manipulated files of their heads so that at the end of the program they could print them. I also watched a video of two girls who had been shown how to make an amplifier and oscillator for their iPhones. Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney, UCSD was their instructor. The kids talked about trial and error, vectors and faces, and circuit boards with energy and joy. How often does that happen? If Katie Rast and her co-visionaries at FabLab San Diego have their way, much more often.

Despite some nerds are cool ideas, we still hear that kids are turned off by math and science and that there is a lack of good Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) education. New programs may change all that. By taking an old idea like shop and updating it, a FabLab (short for Fabrication Lab) offers the chance to make learning about programing, engineering, geometry, and the jot of creation. Kids are willing to engage with formulas; start, fail, and restart projects; and work rather hard at their projects, because there is fun and an outcome for them. The spring break program I visited is called Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math, or STEAM. The University of California, San Diego and FabLab SD worked together to offer the classes (which to me is a tech transfer moment that is quite important).

In the 3D modeling program, the kids started with a series of photos, which were uploaded to 123D (a suite of 3D modeling apps by Autodesk). That service knits the images together into a file that the kids then download. In many cases there are holes in the images. As they made models of their heads, they laughed at the holes in their heads. They then used a program called Blender to learn about filling the gaps. That meant some kids were telling me about vectors, others about textures, and all showed off as they pulled, stretched, and edited files to create the proper rendering of their heads. After that, they grabbed files for the bodies. A range of animal bodies will be virtually sliced up to make the new creature upon which the heads will attach. When asked what they might do next, these folks talked about how metals, glass, and other materials would be awesome so they could make really functional items. Some talked about being able to have a home printer that could make solar cells to power other printers. When told that these ideas were already being pursued, eyes popped out of their heads, and then grins covered their faces at thoughts of what’s next (and I think a little pride at predicting where the technology could go).

The skills learned in these programs will persist even as the machines and software are superseded. Who knows? If I had access to this sort of tech training combined with math and science education, I might have stuck with that path. Even if I didn’t, I’d have a greater ability to play with and understand the technology that surrounds us. In short, congratulations to La Jolla Country Day School, UCSD, FabLab SD, Ann Worth, Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney, and Katie Rast for pursuing ways to make STEM fun and for kids. The ideas here remind me of Julie Cohen’s work about play and its importance in her book, Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice. As Rast said on a panel at SxSW, computer labs were often seen as saviors for education especially in low income areas, but they often gathered dust. The key is to have maker spaces that work for the group’s context. A lab need not have the latest technology. If the technology is connected to people in meaningful ways, then the magic can happen. I agree. The magic of playing with technology, understanding what you can do with it, and seeing new possibilities will fire the desire to learn and create. As Neil Gershenfeld (a leader in the Maker and Fab movement) put it, this is a liberal, as in liberating, art. But don’t take my word for it. As one kid told me at lunch, adults’ brains are not as good at learning as kids’ brains, and kids like showing what they can do. Now that is education.

  April 4, 2013 at 1:29 pm   Posted in: Education, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Technology   Print This Post   No Comments

Innovate or Innovation, Your Assurance of Meaningless Assertions

posted by Deven Desai

In the words of Portlandia, innovation is over. Or as another era of hipsters might say, innovation is dead anyway (Swingers). Take a look at the posturing of European Publishers Council and Google over the recent German bill to force search to pay for material longer than a snippet.

“As a result of today’s vote, ancillary copyright in its most damaging form has been stopped,” Google said in a statement. “However, the best outcome for Germany would be no new legislation because it threatens innovation, particularly for start-ups. It’s also not necessary because publishers and Internet companies can innovate together, just as Google has done in many other countries.”

Translation: Insert resistance is futile jokes as needed, but you will work with us and win! We all will win, because we innovate and belong to the Church of Innovation (located somewhere south of San Francisco and north of San Jose).

“With the right legal conditions and the technical tools provided by the Linked Content Coalition, it will be easy to access and use content legally,” the European Publishers Council said in a statement (PDF) on Friday. “This will mean that publishers will have the incentive to continue to populate the internet with high-quality, authoritative, diverse content and to support new, innovative business models for online content.”

Translation: We have no idea what is next. But please give us more time, protection, and money. We promise we will come up with something new.

Confession: Have I invoked innovation. Of course. It is seductive. It is too seductive. Pam Samuelson is a fan of Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, as is Neil Richards, and as am I. I must confess that I have sinned. I slipped away from Orwell’s mandate and went with the easy, meaningless word. I hate when that happens. I will try and stop.

Of course, what other word or words would say more is the next struggle. The German law says only a snippet is allowed. Right. What’s a snippet? Someone says innovate. I say, “Right. What’s innovate?” I hope to find out. If I am lucky, I may be like Bill Cosby’s Noah and come up with an answer no one else thought of. Hmm is that innovat… Khannn!!!!

Enjoy the clip

  March 22, 2013 at 2:22 pm   Posted in: Humor, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Technology   Print This Post   No Comments

MOOCs in law schools

posted by Aaron Saiger

Last week both Frank and I blogged about the MOOC, the “massive open online course.” Also last week a substantial and prominent group of academics posted an open letter to the ABA that urged legal educators to consider, among other reforms, “building on the burgeoning promises of internet-distance education.” (The letter garnered positive press in diverse fora.) Might the MOOC platform be part of that “promise”?

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  March 14, 2013 at 10:53 am  Tags: MOOC  Posted in: Cyberlaw, Education, Innovation, Law School (Teaching), Teaching   Print This Post   No Comments

Calling Klingons and Romulans, Cloaking Now Available (Sort of)

posted by Deven Desai

According to the BBC, “Scientists have succeeded in “cloaking” an object perfectly for the first time, rendering a centimetre-scale cylinder invisible to microwaves.” OK this method works only for microwaves, works only in one direction, and not for visible light. Nonetheless, “The design principles that make the cloak work in microwaves would be difficult to implement at optical wavelengths. But microwaves are important in many applications, principally telecommunications and radar, and improved versions of cloaking could vastly improve microwave performance.”

The advance is cool to me in that the ideas started in 2006 from a paper on “transformation optics.” with an implementation of the idea coming that year as well. So the science fiction world of true cloaking is not here, but the fact that a few folks did some basics science, a test application followed fast, and now a full version of the microwave idea is in place within seven years is rather great. The practical side of the work may mean that funds are coming quickly from industry and the government. I am not sure which. Still I love the idea that one of the oldest fantasy/sci-fi bits of magic, invisibility, is a little closer to reality.

  November 16, 2012 at 6:33 pm   Posted in: Innovation, Technology   Print This Post   No Comments

BRIGHT IDEAS: Werbach and Hunter on For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business

posted by Deven Desai

This Bright Ideas post looks at Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter’s new book, For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. I have posted about it, but Kevin and Dan were gracious enough to answer some questions. We go into what is gamification, the differences between internal and external uses of the technique, how it relates to super-crunching, and the ethical and legal implications of the technique.

Kevin and Dan, you have drilled into an area, gamification, that seems almost arcane, a technique known to initiates. Why do it?

[KW] We actually think gamification is quite relevant for a broad range of audiences. First of all, video games have a huge impact on our culture. The games industry generates more revenue annually than Hollywood does at the box office. According to a Pew survey, 97% of American teeagers play video games, and it’s not just young people: the Entertainment Software Association reports that the average age of a gamer is 30, with almost half of them women. We can dismiss video games the way we used to dismiss social networking… and e-commerce before that… and the Internet before that… or we can look at why they are so powerful and apply those lessons in other contexts.

Second, the core goal of gamification is motivation. Think about all the situations where motivation matters: at work, at home, as consumers, in legal compliance, in social activism, and in collective action, to name a few. In all these cases, greater engagement drives material results. If there were motivational techniques that were proven in real-world businesses, consistent with decades of psychological research, and synergistic with big data and other leading-edge technology trends, wouldn’t you want to understand them?

And third, gamification is happening. It’s a rapidly growing business trend among startups, Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, and even government agencies. It raises a host of significant legal, operational, and ethical issues, as well as a variety of practical business concerns. We felt that my work on emerging technology and policy trends through the Supernova conference, and Dan’s scholarship on virtual worlds and background in cognitive psychology, gave us a unique ability to tackle these questions in a serious way. That’s why we put together the first gamification course at Wharton, and wrote For the Win as business guide to this emerging field.

OK, so what is gamification?

[KW] Gamification means applying design techniques from video games to business and other problems. In other words, it’s the process of motivating customers, employees, and communities by thinking like a game designer. It doesn’t mean turning everything into a game. Quite the contrary! Gamification involves incorporating elements of games into existing activities, the way Nike weaves levels and awards into its Nike+ system, or Microsoft motivated employees to review half a million Windows 7 dialogue boxes for localization errors with a competition among offices.

When you look at it that way, the basic concept of gamification is pretty simple, but doing it well is hard. Even experienced game designers often create games that aren’t much fun. Executing gamification effectively requires a combination of skills and knowledge, which we describe in For the Win.

Right. I see games are important in that they are big business and a big part of many folks’ lives. Let’s talk a little more about motivation. Is this approach a sort of applied behavioral economic one? Someone identifies levers and then builds systems to nudge or indeed shift the way others engage and behave?

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  November 15, 2012 at 9:30 pm   Posted in: Behavioral Law and Economics, Bright Ideas, Cyberlaw, Innovation, Technology, Web 2.0   Print This Post   No Comments

Robots for Relief: Disaster Robot Challenge

posted by Deven Desai

With Sandy upon the U.S. Eastern coast, DARPA’s “Robotics Challenge” could not come fast enough. As NPR reports, robots were used after Fukushima, but the need for robots anyone can use and especially for disaster operations is high. The contest will be a “junkyard-wars-style competition next year. The robots will have to open a blocked door, operate a valve, climb a ladder. And perhaps the toughest: get into and drive a vehicle.” As my friend Brett Kennedy of JPL notes in the piece, JPL’s RoboSimian has many advantages but may not do so well with car driving as yet.

This challenge offers $2 million to the winner, but the real prize maybe like the self-driving car challenge. Great technology is developed, industry sees it potential, and a whole new industry blossoms. There are some questions about what technology can be proprietary when the core was from government funds. Peter Lee’s work on this point comes to mind. Nonetheless, I dig this approach and the goals. Cylons to help us in nasty places and nasty jobs, oops, did I say cylons? Seriously, I hope we don’t need these sorts of options for Sandy or other disasters, but the odds are we will. So working on finding better ways to deal with the aftermath of such events is great and smart in my view.

The video below is from the Drexel project, Hubo, I believe.

  October 30, 2012 at 2:37 pm   Posted in: Innovation, Intellectual Property, Technology   Print This Post   No Comments

Gamification – Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter’s new book

posted by Deven Desai

Gamification? Is that a word? Why yes it is, and Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter want to tell us what it means. Better yet, they want to tell us how it works in their new book For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business (Wharton Press). The authors get into many issues starting with a refreshing admission that the term is clunky but nonetheless captures a simple, powerful idea: one can use game concepts in non-game contexts and achieve certain results that might be missed. As they are careful to point out, this is not game theory. This is using insights from games, yes video games and the like, to structure how we interact with a problem or goal. I have questions about how well the approach will work and potential downsides (I am after all a law professor). Yet, the authors explore cases where the idea has worked, and they address concerns about where the approach can fail. I must admit I have only an excerpt so far. But it sets out the project while acknowledging possible objections that popped to mind quite well. In short, I want to read the rest. Luckily the Wharton link above or if you prefer Amazon Kindle are both quite reasonably priced. (Amazon is less expensive).

If you wonder about games, play games, and maybe have thought what is with all this badging, point accumulation, leader board stuff at work (which I did while I was at Google), this book looks to be a must read. And if you have not encountered these changes, I think you will. So reading the book may put you ahead of the group in understanding what management or companies are doing to you. The book also sets out cases and how the process works, so it may give you ideas about how to use games to help your endeavor and impress your manager. For the law folks out there, I think this area raises questions about behavioral economics and organizations that will lay ahead. In short, the authors have a tight, clear book that captures the essence of a movement. That alone merits a hearty well done.

  October 30, 2012 at 1:39 pm   Posted in: Book Reviews, Innovation, Social Network Websites, Sociology of Law, Technology   Print This Post   No Comments

Because It’s Cool, Time Lapse from Space

posted by Deven Desai

I sometimes suggest that folks, especially lawyer folks, should look up and remember the coolness of the world. This post of star trails and city lights looks down, down at the Earth from the ISS. It’s sort of 2001 updated. According to Wired, “Photographer Christoph Malin from Austria created the stunning film by stacking image sequences taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.”

  October 19, 2012 at 9:27 pm   Posted in: Innovation, Just for Fun, Technology   Print This Post   No Comments

One step closer to Star Trek, painless injections

posted by Deven Desai

Remember the syringe looking device that made a hiss and allowed Dr. McCoy to sedate folks? It looks like we might be avoiding needles and using lasers (so maybe Dr. Evil is happy somewhere) to deliver medicines. And it may be pain-free.

A series of very short laser pulses, lasting no more than 250 millionths of a second each, generates a vapor bubble inside the driving fluid. The bubble creates a pressure or elastic strain on the membrane, which forces the drug to be ejected through the tiny nozzle as a narrow jet no more than 150 micrometers (millionths of a meter) wide, or slightly thicker than a human hair.

Yoh explains that the jet pressure is higher than the tensile strength of skin, so it penetrates smoothly into the targeted depth underneath, causing no splashback.

The team has tested the device on guinea pig skin. This showed the jet drives the drug up to several millimeters under the skin, without damaging surrounding tissue.

The speed and narrowness of the jet should be enough to make the procedure painless, says Yoh. But just the fact they are aiming for the epidermal layer just under the surface of the skin, about 500 micrometers down, where there are no nerve endings, should already ensure it is “completely pain-free”.

The hope is that the device may be developed so that it could be used for mass vaccinations.

  October 12, 2012 at 1:47 am   Posted in: Innovation, Just for Fun, Technology   Print This Post   No Comments

The Correct Word is Desource, Not Outsource.

posted by Deven Desai

Everyone thinks jobs are being outsourced; they are, in fact, being desourced. When Mitt Romney claims he will create jobs, when Barak Obama claims the same, when Google, Apple, or Amazon assert they build out the economy, they all overstate. Worse, they ignore the reality that both manufacturing and service jobs are dying. Robots, artificial intelligence, and the new information-at-scale industries all but assure that outcome. The ability to build and sell without humans is already here. I am not saying that these shifts are inherently bad. They may even be inevitable. What we do next is the question. To answer that question, we need to understand the ways humans will be eliminated from manufacturing and service jobs. We need to understand what I call desourcing.

Focus on manufacturing is a distraction, a sideshow; so too is faith in service jobs. A recent New York Times article about Apple, noted that manufacturing accounts for only about eight percent of the U.S. labor force. And, The Atlantic’s Making It in America piece shows how manufacturing is being changed by robots and other automation. According to some, the real engine is service labor “and any recovery with real legs, labor experts say, will be powered and sustained by this segment of the economy.” That is where desourcing comes in. Many talk about the non-career path of service sector jobs. A future of jobs that have low pay and little room to rise is scary and a problem. Amazon explains why that world might be heaven.

The world of low wage, high stress service work is being replaced by automation. Amazon gave up its fight against state taxes, because it is moving to a model of local distribution centers so that it can deliver same-day delivery of goods. According to Slate, Amazon will spend more than $1 billion to build centers all over the U.S. and hire thousands of people for those centers. The real story is that like any company Amazon wants to reduce operation costs; it must automate or perish as Technology Review put it. It will do that, in part, by using robots to handle the goods. Self-driving cars and autonomous stocking clerks are the logical steps after ATMs and self-serve kiosks at movie theaters and grocery stores. I am always amazed at the folks who line up at movie theater ticket windows rather than use the kiosks. A friend said to me that we should walk up to the window to keep those jobs. It is a nice idea, but I think untenable. We all want to move faster and pay less. Welcome to desourcing.

Desourcing means reducing or eliminating humans from the production or service equation. Humans are friction points. More and more we can reduce those points of contact. We no longer need to send work to other humans.

There are many economic questions that are beyond what can be addressed in a short piece. But here are some ideas on which to chew. The returns from this approach are tremendous for the companies that desource. For example, by one account, Apple makes $473,000 per employee; yet “About 30,000 of the 43,000 Apple employees in this country work in Apple Stores, as members of the service economy, and many of them earn about $25,000 a year.” So we may satisfy our need for instant gratification as companies reduce their costs, but that money will go to corporate bottom lines. Whether it will really reach the rest of the economy is not so clear precisely because a smart company will invest in desourcing. I suppose at some point companies will have to realize that they need masses who can buy stuff. Yet I think some studies indicate that serving the upper end of the economy works better than serving the masses. In theory, a company may offer goods at lower prices but to do that, it will need lower production costs. And less workers means lower costs.

I am not saying I know what will solve this riddle. I offer desourcing, because I have not seen a satisfying answer to the issue. There may not be one; for we may be stil sorting what to do as the digital age takes full hold. As the computer science folks say in early training, “Hello world.”

  September 22, 2012 at 4:28 pm   Posted in: Economic Analysis of Law, Employment Law, Innovation, Political Economy, Technology, Web 2.0   Print This Post   6 Comments

My Brand Journey, Part I

posted by Deven Desai

Right out of law school, brands were on my mind. I began at Quinn, Emanuel and learned trademark law practice there. I picked up on the way companies such as Mattel, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (think Oscar Awards), Lockheed Martin, and others thought about trademarks. They called them brands. My paper with Sandy Rierson, Confronting the Genericism Conundrum started my work on the topic. We looked at the core value of a brand and started to poke at the blended functions of a brand with which trademark law struggled. We argued that information costs have dropped and that courts looked to uses that did not matter as they determined the status of a mark (at 1834). We also showed in relying on dubious evidence and not paying attention to the broader linguistic aspects of trademarks, courts set up incentives for policing that not only made little sense but are wasteful, not to mention fostering unnecessary clashes between expression and trademark interests (1835-1842). At that point we argued that looking at how consumers encounter the mark in a market setting may help parse the issue. As we put it,

Consider that a person with a cold can walk into a colleague’s office, ask for a “kleenex” and be handed a tissue but not a Kleenex®-brand tissue. At that moment the person with the runny nose is likely to accept the tissue offered without complaining or caring about the brand. When that same person is in a supermarket, however, he may certainly care whether he buys Kleenex® versus Puffs® brand facial tissue, due to his experience with the brands’ relative softness or thickness.

After that piece, I read more and thought about whether trademark law and the search costs approach mapped to branding practices. They don’t. More on that in the next part.

The image is of a coaster available here.

  September 21, 2012 at 4:43 pm   Posted in: Innovation, Intellectual Property   Print This Post   2 Comments

On Information Justice

posted by Mike Carroll

Like the other commenters on From Goods to a Good Life, I also enjoyed the book and applaud Professor Sunder’s initiative in engaging more explicitly in the values conversation than has been conventionally done in IP scholarship. I also agree with most of what the other commenters have said.  I want to offer plaudits, a few challenges, and some suggestions about future directions for this conversation.

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  September 21, 2012 at 11:13 am   Posted in: Book Reviews, Civil Rights, Culture, Cyberlaw, Economic Analysis of Law, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Jurisprudence, Law and Humanities, Law and Inequality, Politics, Property Law, Symposium (From Goods to a Good Life), Technology, Trade   Print This Post   No Comments

For whom does IP work?

posted by Jessica Silbey

One of the major questions Professor Sunder’s book asks is whether IP works for the people who make it. This is a question that US law does not grapple directly with, but assumes and then glosses over. It is an important question. As Molly Van Houweling mentions, drawing on Julie Cohen’s fantastic article on IP as corporate property, IP certainly works for some companies some of the time. Insofar as companies are intermediaries (distributors of IP protected goods) and the licensees of the creators of those goods (either through work for hire or assignment), firms can and do make some of their money from IP revenues, which IP is generated by individuals working alone or in groups.

The story of Solomon Linda is an example of what can go wrong from the initial creation to the widespread distribution of creative expression that has commercial value. Firms will say that without intellectual property, they cannot harness or nourish the creativity to reproduce, commercialize and distribute it, that the conditions of their productive and distributive business require exclusive rights in the intangible goods. (I think this in part right, but it is largely overstated in light of the the many other ways in which companies make money, such as first to market, complementary products, contracting for services, reputation. And the extent to which the company depends on IP is industry specific.) Individuals will say that the best environment for their creative work is a situation in which autonomy and collaboration are optimized. Individuals want time and space to do their work, and they need some funding to pursue it, but that funding may come from a day or night job that does or does not directly relate to their creative or innovative activity. Ideally, the way the individuals earn a living derives from the creative or innovative work they do, and if that is the case, they still seek autonomy and collaboration, which are often at odds with corporate structure and IP exclusivity. Sunder’s book points out many of these conflicts between individual welfare and corporate welfare. My puzzle, these days, is why there must be such inconsistency. How (when and why) does the corporate interest so greatly diverge from the individual’s interest and what, if anything, can be done about it to maximize IP’s functionality in our global system of creative and innovative production? Sunder’s book goes a long way to putting these issues front and center.

  September 13, 2012 at 3:51 pm   Posted in: Corporate Law, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Law and Inequality, Symposium (From Goods to a Good Life), Uncategorized   Print This Post   2 Comments

Super-Sizing IP Values

posted by Mark McKenna

In a 2006 Stanford Law Review article, Madhavi Sunder despaired that “there are no ‘giant-sized’ intellectual property theories capable of accommodating the full range of human values implicit in intellectual production.”  But, she argued, there should be. From Goods to a Good Life is her full response to her own challenge, pushing intellectual property scholars to conceive of IP rights not through the narrow lens of incentives to create and distribute, but as tools to promote human flourishing broadly understood.

I am quite sympathetic to Sunder’s goals here, and we share an affinity for the capabilities approach most prominently associated with Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Indeed, Brett Frischmann and I have also suggested (only in much broader and tentative terms than Sunder) that IP theory needs to open up to a broader range of goals. Yet in spite of the ambition of Sunder’s project, I was struck by how traditional her project ultimately seemed. For notwithstanding her avowedly liberal goals, Sunder embraces property as much as she rejects it, and many of the tools on which she would rely to promote development depend heavily on the very market mechanisms she criticizes for having led to the exploitation and inequality she wants to address.

To be sure, Sunder has different ideas about the scope of IP entitlements – particularly when those entitlements run up against concerns about access to medicines or other cultural products. But fundamentally what she wants is a principle of equal recognition that operates in practice and not just in theory. She wants poor people’s inventive/creative contributions to be recognized, both in the sense of attribution and in the sense that those contributions deserve the status of property that can be traded to improve material conditions. Hers is a freedom-promoting conception of property that, as Jedediah Purdy has written, traces to the “Enlightenment period of the mid-to-late eighteenth century, when it was exemplified in the thought of the Scottish jurist, moral philosopher, and proto-economist Adam Smith.” This notion that the ability to own property can enable individual creators to make a life for themselves is prominent in certain threads of IP literature. But notably, most proponents of that view (Rob Merges comes to mind most significantly here) favor more IP protection than do the cultural critics of IP on whose work Sunder draws when she argues, persuasively in my view, for greater recognition of the need to engage with, and even to subvert, creative works.

This is not to say that Sunder would come to the same conclusions as these scholars about how a freedom-promoting conception of IP should play out in practice – clearly Sunder would balance the competing interests of creators and users differently, at least in some cases – only that I am struck by how resonant her approach is with those understandings of property, and indeed by how much actualizing her views would depend on property as an institution. Thus, I had the feeling reading the book that Sunder is deeply conflicted about the role of the market as the mechanism for promoting human flourishing.

Sunder, for example, suggests many times throughout the book that people in the developing world might rely on geographical indications (or some variant thereof) as means of gaining recognition for their creative accomplishments and as a lever for economic development. But GI’s, as Sunder notes, are brands – they work only to the extent they are valued by consumers because they denote (or reify) some characteristic consumers care about.  And getting consumers to notice and care about a new GI won’t be easy, because they are swimming in GI’s already. There are well over 100 American Viticultural Areas in California alone; the names of thousands of counties in the US are protected appellations of origin; hundreds of wine-related indications are protected just in France; and thousands more GI’s (counting the several varieties) are protected in Europe.

To succeed with a GI in this marketplace, you need a megaphone. That will be even truer for indications that refer to places in the developing world, since as Sunder ably demonstrates, we in the developed world have a skewed sense of the sources of creativity. And of course those who will need the biggest megaphones have the least access to the marketing machinery they will need to compete.

Lea Shaver wrote in her review that “MAD MEN is the perfect antonym for the better world that Professor Sunder’s work envisions. Marketing executives, practically dripping in 1960’s-era white male privilege, strive to endow branded commodities with hegemonic symbolism. The protagonists of this drama view their fellow Americans not as citizens to be democratically engaged or individuals creating their own lives, but as minds to be manipulated. To achieve that goal, they fund the creation of one-way cultural media, which offers its audience no opportunity to challenge the message that the most important way of making meaning in the world is through passive consumption.” The irony of Sunder’s book is that, having shown so well the problems with one-way cultural media, some (many?) of her solutions would rely on the very same mechanisms of one-way cultural media.

  September 12, 2012 at 9:37 pm   Posted in: Culture, Cyberlaw, Innovation, Intellectual Property, International & Comparative Law, Symposium (From Goods to a Good Life)   Print This Post   One Comment

From Madhavi to Mad Men

posted by Lea Shaver

As Zahr Said points out, Madhavi Sunder is by no means the first to critique intellectual property from the perspectives of distributive justice or liberty. Indeed, the author of From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice not only gives due credit to the IP scholars who have written in this vein before her, but provides a compelling intellectual history of the field. What is striking about this particular book project is not so much its break with past approaches, but its breathtaking ambition in positioning the future of the field.

Read the rest of this post »

  September 11, 2012 at 9:21 pm   Posted in: Culture, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Movies & Television, Symposium (From Goods to a Good Life)   Print This Post   One Comment

What Is IP Good For? Madhavi Sunder Has an Answer: The Good Life

posted by Deven Desai

Why bother to have intellectual property rights? That question is the question for IP. Madhavi Sunder has answers. Some excellent work on the subject has looked at whether economics has new answers about IP rights and their structure. Others have taken a hard look at whether any economic argument works. Like books by James Boyle, Brett Frischmann, and Julie Cohen, Sunder’s book runs right at intellectual property law and tackles the hard question. Sunder proposes that we have left off asking what is the good; not just the good produced but the good for all of us. In the tradition of critique she asks about power dynamics and whether free culture is also fair culture. She forces us to consider the realities of exchange culture and rules that bind our ability to engage and thus limit our freedom to author ourselves. In my work on trademarks, brands, and culture, I looked at specific ways we have moved from one-way mass market systems to two-way interactive ones as I questioned whether trademark rules make sense and improve society. I love this book because Sunder takes this point and drills into local, national, and global levels. She challenges current narratives about how and why we create with concrete examples of overflowing creation, unfair results, and troubling societal outcomes all of which abound despite claims about incentives and social welfare creation in IP law. Still, she believes the law has the foundations for “plural values at stake in cultural production.” Her prescription is that we should be “ripping, mixing, and burning” law to get to the world where we have not only goods, but a good life. I recommend the book and look forward to our discussion here at Concurring Opinions.

  September 11, 2012 at 1:40 am   Posted in: Culture, Cyberlaw, DRM, Economic Analysis of Law, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Symposium (From Goods to a Good Life), Web 2.0   Print This Post   No Comments

Symposium on Madhavi Sunder’s From Goods to a Good Life, September 11-13

posted by Deven Desai

This week Concurring Opinions is hosting a symposium on Madhavi Sunder’s From Goods to a Good Life (Amazon) published by Yale Press which offers a preview. Madhavi’s work has pushed how many colleagues and I think about intellectual property. I am honored to organize this discussion.

I have more to say about the book, but to whet your appetites, I offer this quote:

The full cultural and economic consequences of intellectual property policies are hidden. We focus instead on the fruits of innovation—more iPods, more bestsellers, more blockbuster drugs—without concern for what is being produced, by whom, and for whose benefit. But make no mistake: intellectual property laws have profound effects on human capabilities…

The symposium will include contributions from Mike Carroll, Laura DeNardis, Brett Frischmann, Mike Madison, Mark McKenna, Frank Pasquale, Zahr Said, Lea Bishop Shaver, Jessica Silbey, and Molly Van Houweling.

  September 10, 2012 at 11:24 pm   Posted in: Culture, Cyberlaw, DRM, Economic Analysis of Law, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Political Economy, Symposium (From Goods to a Good Life), Web 2.0   Print This Post   7 Comments

SOPA, PIPA and some truth about activism

posted by Deven Desai

As folks start to claim they saved the Internet and rally for alleged ways to keep the Internet open for all, I want to call out something Rep. Issa said at Stanford in April. Step one, and to me the but-for moment, in stopping SOPA and PIPA was the security and CS community speaking (which was rare) about just how dangerous (“A potpourri of dumb things” – Issa at around 8:15) the bills were. Without that the activism probably could never have gotten in place. Furthermore, as I noted elsewhere, science can shift. Science is, by definition, amoral. If you build it, it will work. So expect the copyright industry to demand new things. Expect them to hire and fund studies about how to get what they want without going using “A potpourri of dumb things.” And note that Google’s recent shift in approach regarding links and alleged pirate sites shows that things change.

This is not an apolitical moment. It is deeply political, but pretends that it is not about a power shift. When Internet and tech companies swear they are there for you, be skeptical. In some senses they are. Many folks I know at Google really are interested in serving users. Many are also scientists who will pursue, as they should, the truth of what is possible. The current bus-stop tour by Reddit’s co-founder, Alexis Ohanian is political. Per the Washington Post, for him, “[T]he key issue is getting Internet openness on the minds and into the talking points of politicians in this election.”

What does openness mean? What are the politics of openness? Why do Facebook, Google, Reddit want openness? South by Southwest looks like it may have panel on disrupting DC. The description reads like an evangelic rally (a good tip that thought is replaced by faith). But to its big credit (except for saying the questions will be answered), the panel looks at some decent issues:

1. The Industrial Revolution brought about a political realignment that created the existing party system. Can the Internet do the same?
2. Beyond “openness,” what are the essential characteristics that define the Internet’s political identity? Market oriented or socially conscious? Libertarian or progressive? (Or all of the above?)
3. Politically, does the Internet most resemble an interest group (like big business or labor unions), a movement, or something we haven’t seen before?
4. Is Internet culture weakening partisanship — or making it worse?
5. Technology drives growth, but some say it also kills jobs. How do we make sure that the benefits of the Internet are widespread? Is there a consistent political viewpoint here among Internet activists, or does this break down along typical political lines?

I doubt one panel can tackle all these questions. Much will depend on the panelists and whether the panel is really open in that it has voices other than those who all agree. Nonetheless, one thing that is missing is a deeper look at the power structures and history that inform the issue. For example, the idea of realigning parties still relies on parties. And, there is an essentialism to Internet identity that is ironic at best and willfully blind and lacking irony at worst.

Have I abandoned my Google brothers and sisters? Oh perhaps, but I don’t think so. These questions were ones I raised while there. Some disliked them. Some took them seriously. The people I respected and loved the most pushed me to dig into these points. Like society, Google has many people with many views and agendas. That’s the point. With all companies and all people asserting truth, administer several grains of salt, reflect, (maybe add some lime and tequila first). For those wishing a good book on the problems with saying we know where we are going, check Professor Wendy Brown’s work, especially Politics Out of History.

  September 2, 2012 at 3:11 pm   Posted in: Cyberlaw, Google & Search Engines, Google and Search Engines, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Technology, Web 2.0   Print This Post   No Comments

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