Legal Commentary

The Packet-Switched Society

Posted on February 08, 2008
Two sharply contrasting views dominate the debate over copyright policy. On the one hand?the left one, we might say?copyrights represent mere policy tools, no better in principle than any other legal mechanism and, indeed, more modern, rationally planned, and democratically chosen that anything the common law can offer...

Darwin Awards Imposter

Posted on January 28, 2008
The 2007 Darwin Awards have been announced, but if you think you?ve read them, you may be mistaken. Here is the list forwarded to me by email, and the winner sounds like the real deal:When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California , would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder...

That's My Boy

Posted on January 18, 2008
Our cat, Hamlet, died last night. He'd been in poor health for some time, wasting away before our eyes, so his death came as no surprise. Hamlet lived far longer than we had expected, did not seem to suffer a great deal, and remained with us to the end...

Bad Signaling

Posted on January 18, 2008
This morning I saw an ad for Kinoki foot pads, which allegedly suck toxins out through the soles of your feet while you sleep. Right. But if the description alone wasn?t sufficient to set off your B.S.-detector, this should: they will send you a two-week supply for $19...

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Copyrights as Positive Natural Rights

Posted on January 17, 2008
[I earlier explained why copyrights do not qualify as natural rights under Locke's theory of property. Here, I explain why the same holds true under Barnett's positivist account of natural rights. Both passages come from my draft book, Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good...

A Casting Out of Thousands

Posted on January 15, 2008
Well, see, here?s the danger in even suggesting ideological excommunication. From the comments on my prior post:But while we're excommunicating people from the libertarian movement, why not include Palmer and his associates at CATO? After all, many of them endorsed the concept of preemptive war, which last time I checked violates oh, the entire philosophical underpinning of libertarianism...

Whom to Cast Out and Why

Posted on January 11, 2008
Tim Sandefur says the time has come for libertarians as a group to excommunicate the racist-paleoconservatives among us ? especially those associated with Lew Rockwell and the (criminally misnamed) Mises Institute.[W]e need to face up to the serious conflict within our ranks, between the neo-Confederates at the Mises Institute on one hand, and what James Kirchik calls ?the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine? on the other...

Surge from the Grave

Posted on January 11, 2008
I eagerly await the neo-con op-eds telling us The Surge has been so spectacularly successful, it has not only reduced the monthly death toll in Iraq, it has actually raised 849,000 Iraqis from the dead!

George MacDonald Fraser, R.I.P.

Posted on January 11, 2008
One of my very favorite authors is dead at the age of 82. I guess I will never know how Harry Flashman came to serve on both sides of the U.S. Civil War.

But Did He Attach a Chainsaw to the Stump?

Posted on January 10, 2008
Crazy.

Google Thinks I Live in Spain

Posted on January 09, 2008
Anyone know how to fix this? I already checked to make sure English is selected in my preferences.

The Libertarian Small Sample Problem

Posted on January 09, 2008
The Ron Paul newsletter scandal (summarized by Arnold Kling here and Radley Balko here) underscores what I see as the most difficult PR issue for libertarianism: the small-sample problem.Given the relative rarity of libertarians, both in the public eye and in general, most people?s judgment of libertarianism will be based on a very small sample ? often a sample size of one...

How Surfing Saved My Sabbatical

Posted on January 08, 2008
What motivates tenured law professors to write? I suppose that some do so as second nature, as automatically as lesser scholars breath. Perhaps other law profs write out of a heroic sense of duty, confident that what they publish will change the world for the better...

Global Warming Insurance?

Posted on January 07, 2008
Just a quick thought about global warming rhetoric, which came to mind while reading this Marginal Revolution post and the linked posts by Jim Manzi. Some of those who advocate taking major steps (starting with a hefty carbon tax) to stop global warming say doing so is a way of ?buying insurance? against a major catastrophic event...

Monkey Prostitution?

Posted on January 05, 2008
If this is prostitution, then most women I've dated are prostitutes:The [macaque] males use grooming as a form of currency to buy sex from the female, the study found. ... Left to her own desires, a female macaque mates about 1.5 times an hour, but that rate jumps to 3...

The Common Law from Satellite

Posted on January 04, 2008
[My forthcoming book spends a lot of time contrasting copyright with the common law. I thus thought that I should say at least a little about what I mean by the latter.][C]ommon law originates in custom, wins recognition in courts, and develops in commentary...

Copyright, Mapped

Posted on January 02, 2008
All copyrighted works originate as ideas, born when authors choose how to express themselves. The slightest exercise of discretion will suffice; just about anything more original than an alphabetical listing of names can qualify for copyright protection...

New Year's Reaffirmations, One-Shots, and Coordinations

Posted on December 31, 2007
In general, I don?t advocate New Year?s resolutions. I think most resolutions worth making are worth making any time of year, not just at the beginning. Moreover, your ability to make and keep a resolution is a function of your will power, preferences, and circumstances...

What and How to Think About Immigration

Posted on December 31, 2007
It?s Kerry Howley versus Megan McArdle on immigration. Kerry favors a guest-worker program, while Megan opposes it (see here, here, here, and here.I won?t weigh in on the topic itself, fascinating though it is. I?m more interested in trying to parse why they disagree...

When Will They Learn?

Posted on December 27, 2007
Bayes' Rule, dammit, Bayes' Rule! You don't go giving tests to everyone for a disease without having some prior reason to think they might have it! The false positives will almost certainly outweigh the true positives.

Copyright's Path

Posted on December 27, 2007
Works of authorship originate in private, safely kept under common law protections. Once published, however, expressive works become data ferae naturae?wild and natural information. As such, expressive works roam and reproduce freely. They may get captured in fixed copies, caged in atoms or bits...

Discouraging Just Enough Infringement

Posted on December 25, 2007
While rightly shuddering at specter of copyism, we should also recognize that the unauthorized use of copyrighted works can, if it does not go so far as to undercut authors' incentives, increase social wealth. Consider, for instance, an impoverished entrepreneur relying on pirated software to start her business...

The Specter of Copyism

Posted on December 24, 2007
On the standard economic view of copyrights, as on the economic view of other monopolies, average revenue equals demand. Those two measures trace one and the same line. Why? Because for most products and services, consumption closely matches supply at the market-clearing price...

The Standard Economic Model of Copyright

Posted on December 23, 2007
Creating a work can cost authors a lot, whereas copying a work costs others very little. Absent copyright, then, authors might find it discouragingly difficult to recoup the costs of creating fixed expressive works. Authors might then underproduce expressive works, and the public consequently suffer...

Atheist Holidays

Posted on December 22, 2007
Dinesh D'Souza feigns ignorance.Yes, I agree that many nominal Christians have also forgotten the message of Christmas. Even so I wonder: what's the atheist equivalent of Christmas? Darwin's birthday?To which Radley Balko, an agnostic, aptly replies:[M]y ?equivalent? of Christmas is ...

Explaining the RAND Experiment

Posted on December 21, 2007
At Overcoming Bias, David Balan ponders the counterintuitive results of the famous RAND health insurance study. The RAND study gave one group of patients more generous coverage, and a second group of patients less generous coverage. Not surprisingly, the former group consumed a lot more health services...

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