The Indelible Bonobo Experience

Renaissance Monkey: in-depth expertise in Jack-of-all-trading. I mostly comment on news of interest to me and occasionally engage in debates or troll passive-aggressively. Ask or Submit 2 mah authoritah! ;) !

Link Post

Harvard Law Review: The Obligatory Structure of Copyright Law: Unbundling the Wrong of Copying

Generally speaking, copyright theory and practice can be characterized as divided into two broad copyright cultures. On the one hand, in common law jurisdictions, copyright is regarded as a policy instrument designed to serve the public interest in the production and dissemination of works of authorship. Not the author’s right, but the public interest that both generates and justifies that right is the central animating concern of copyright law. On the other hand, in civil law jurisdictions, authorial entitlement is conceived not instrumentally but as a juridical recognition of rights inherent in the act of authorship as such. Not the public interest, but the inherent dignity of authorship is the axis around which copyright revolves. Terminologically speaking, these distinctions recall for us that what the common law world regards as copyright is rather known as author’s right (droit d’auteur, derecho de autor, diritto de autore, urheberrecht, for example) in the civil law world.
Posted in copyright intellectual property law civil law common law author's right public good public interest public domain
Photo Post
The average life expectancy of public companies shrank from 65 years in the 1920s to less than ten in the 1990s. So has the life expectancy of CEOs. The average job tenure of the CEO fell from 8.1 years in 2000 to 6.3 years in 2009, according to Booz & Co, a consultancy. (via Economist) The worry is that regulators and owners both seem to be making it harder for bosses to look beyond quarterly earnings. France’s “SCAs” or Sociétés en Commandite par Actions have two tiers of partners: general ones jointly and severally liable for a company’s debts, and limited partners who are ordinary shareholders with little power and who can lose only what they invest. This might provide a model for investment banks. Kauffman Foundation has shown that one reason America has been better at generating jobs than Europe is its skill at creating innovative companies such as Amazon, eBay and Google. These companies took off when they went public. William Draper, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful investors, speaks for many when he argues that this ecosystem may be drying up. Venture capitalists are recouping their investment by selling new companies to established ones rather than preparing them for independent life. In 2010 five large companies gobbled up 134 start-ups—more than the entire crop of American IPOs that year. Two of the most talked-about start-ups of recent years—Skype and Zappos—chose to sell themselves to giant firms (Microsoft and Amazon respectively). This may not be good for the start-ups. Imagine if Microsoft or Apple had sold themselves to IBM in the 1980s and you get a sense of the problem. I would’ve liked to see a parallel drawn between the rise of intellectual property divisiveness and erosion of the public domain and the decline of the public companies.

The average life expectancy of public companies shrank from 65 years in the 1920s to less than ten in the 1990s. So has the life expectancy of CEOs. The average job tenure of the CEO fell from 8.1 years in 2000 to 6.3 years in 2009, according to Booz & Co, a consultancy. (via Economist)

  • The worry is that regulators and owners both seem to be making it harder for bosses to look beyond quarterly earnings.
  • France’s “SCAs” or Sociétés en Commandite par Actions have two tiers of partners: general ones jointly and severally liable for a company’s debts, and limited partners who are ordinary shareholders with little power and who can lose only what they invest. This might provide a model for investment banks.
  • Kauffman Foundation has shown that one reason America has been better at generating jobs than Europe is its skill at creating innovative companies such as Amazon, eBay and Google. These companies took off when they went public.
  • William Draper, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful investors, speaks for many when he argues that this ecosystem may be drying up. Venture capitalists are recouping their investment by selling new companies to established ones rather than preparing them for independent life. In 2010 five large companies gobbled up 134 start-ups—more than the entire crop of American IPOs that year. Two of the most talked-about start-ups of recent years—Skype and Zappos—chose to sell themselves to giant firms (Microsoft and Amazon respectively). This may not be good for the start-ups. Imagine if Microsoft or Apple had sold themselves to IBM in the 1980s and you get a sense of the problem.
I would’ve liked to see a parallel drawn between the rise of intellectual property divisiveness and erosion of the public domain and the decline of the public companies.
Posted in public domain public companies decline private equity business investment investing finance economy
Vid Post

Everything is a Remix Part 4 (by Kirby Ferguson)

copyright, patents and why the legal system of protection of intellectual property is broken

Brilliant video!

Posted in usa copyright patents intellectual property loss aversion remix infringement public domain disney ray charles dmca wto acta software opportunistic litigation bridgeport music patent trolls paul allen ideas innovation rmx viral fail