The Economist takes a bleak look at the internet's prospects, seeing it fracturing because of national and language differences, and anti-competitive forces among service providers link here. It seems that there is little individual users can do about the first two, as the likes of China puts up barriers in the national defense interest or to reflect national differences in cultural norms on pornography, for example.

But we can do something about the drive to carve up the internet by patented technology or by rules that cement the powerful ISPs in place against possible competition by not mandating net neutrality or not mandating that big ISPs offer small ones open access to their networks at wholesale rates to restore competition. Indeed, based on the experience of other countries with the latter rule, it would be the best alternative.

In the end, the bleak look is softened by The Economist's usual on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other outlook such as, 'Yet predictions are hazardous, particularly in IT." I wouldn't hold my breath unless the consumer is heard and is listened to.

The New York Times now carries a lot of stories that are of interest to anyone concerned about the high cost of intellectual property protection. The first story today is a debate over who is right AARP or the industry. AARP says the cost of branded drugs rose 8.3% in 2009 link here. Last year the industry complained that the figure was based on wholesale prices, not the retail prices consumers actually paid. Responding to that criticism, AARP switched to retail and still got a big increase. The industry countered that they should use the consumer price index figure which includes generic drug prices--which showed a much lower price increase and argues that the US has the lowest prices for generics in the world.

Of course, all of this back and forth is irrelevant; the high prices for the branded drugs reflect the monopoly that drug patents give the companies a fact never mentioned in the Times story. That monopoly power allows the companies to raise prices at a time when the economy is in recession and other prices are barely rising. It is also a time when many are unemployed and have a harder time making ends meet; particularly if they are ill and require those drugs.

The other story relates to e-books and a quarrel between Random House, the publisher and the Wylie literary agency link here. The quarrel began because Wylie started publishing e-book versions of 13 classics, previously published in hard copy by Random House. Because e-books are newer than the publisher's contracts with the authors and not always covered by its terms, Wylie felt free to enter the e-book business in them. Random countered by refusing to deal with Wylie in future. The two sides have now agreed, with Wylie ceasing to distribute the 13 e-books. No other terms were published.

Send not to know who pays. Clearly it is we consumers and copyright once again loses its reason for being as an inducement to innovate. These books have long been in existence and can have little to do with the incentive to write more for aging, moribund, or dead authors, given that copyright extends for the life of the author plus 70 years.

Duff Wilson writing for the The New York Times link here, tells us about a deal between Roche, the Swiss drug giant, and a start-up, Aileron, which engages in research involving peptides that are "stapled" to another chemical and can be delivered right into the offending illness cells where they may deliver cures without damaging the body elsewhere a magic bullet. The gee-whiz tone of the article will sell stock and improve the chances that boards will approve the drill little different from most promotions.

What struck me, however, was that Aileron holds patent rights to the stapled technology from Harvard University and its associated Dana Farber Cancer Institute. So now creating a patent monopoly, granted according to the constitution to individuals ostensibly to encourage innovation, becomes a way to make the university richer than it already is. Harvard is the same place that lost millions from its fat endowment when its then president Larry Summers began giving directions as to how it was to be invested and guessed wrong. Aileron will get a potential minimum gain of $25 million and a maximum of $1.1 billion if Aileron's projections work out. The article doesn't tell us what Harvard gets, beyond the original patent license fee of an undisclosed amount. Or whether the original research was funded by Federal Government research grants as is common or what the individual scientists involved get. A lot seems to be missing from this story.

Brand name product piracy has long been with us and continues to grow if one is to believe the New York Times magazine section link here. The story focuses on sneakers produced in huge quantities in South China where the product range is broad and the copies range from very good to shoddy.

The author, Nicholas Schmidle, has got both Chinese producers and the US feds to talk to him about how the business works. He shows how good the copies are in a series of photos; it would take a professional enforcer and a photographic memory to see some of the differences. But they seem to sell. Indeed the copyright holding makers are reluctant to complain too loudly, for fear of souring the market for all, legitimate and not.

As a one-time economic counselor in our embassy in Seoul Korea bsck in the days when Korean pirates were rampant, I found it was really hard to get the cops to close the pirates down. They were small businessmen providing jobs at a time when Korea was very poor. All this changed when Korea got rich enough to want IP law enforced to protect its own export goods. But I suppose now the name brand producer is Korean while the pirates are Chinese.

Today's New York Times editorial page takes up orphaned works covered by copyright, keying off on the bequest of recordings by jazz masters to the National Jazz Museum in Harlem link here. The problem is identifying the performers and finding them to offer them compensation under the current version of the copyright law. Without that, they won't be reproduced and the works widely distributed. The Times solution is an amendment to the law which would make it possible after a good faith search and undertaking to pay should the performer surface.

The Times notes the bill is unlikely to pass and wrings its hands. What it really needs to do is point out that performance copyright is valid for the life of the performer plus seventy years, an absurdity given the constitutional provision that copyright is ostensibly designed to promote innovation -the current value of such a right beyond twenty or so years is virtually worthless if discounted by an appropriate interest rate- unless you are Walt Disney interested in preserving its control over the image of Mickey Mouse et al. No wonder the current law is known as the Disney Relief Act. In the meantime, the consumer pays in higher prices or the work is unavailable.

Ezra Klein has a smart piece on copyrights today, slamming Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) draft bill to copyright fashion and grandly titled the the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act link here. We really need a lot more op-eds like this if public opinion is to change and we have any chance of stopping still more cancerous IP.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a long article on enforcing fees for playing copyrighted music as background for bars and other establishments link here. As is so often the case, nothing in the article suggests that doing so is controversial. No reference is made to the constitution's basis for copyright, much less its reason, promoting innovation. Instead it notes only that copyright was amended in 1909 providing for "performance rights" and that the change was blessed by the Supreme Court, quoting Oliver Wendall Holmes, "If music did not pay, it would be given up. Whether it pays or not, the purpose of employing it is profit and that is enough."

The article goes on to quote Larry Lessig with the only dissenting view, and even that is equivocal: "If technology creates efficient ways to charge commercial users of copyright, then that's good, but what I fear is that we evolve into a permission culture, where every single use of music creates an obligation to pay. I wish the line could be as clear as commercial exploitation--you're running a dance club, using it in a movie. The author ought to have the right to be paid for that. But I don't think that that right should translate into the right to control whether my kid uses the music for a collage he makes for a class about his trip to Costa Rica."

The article also fails to note that there has been criticism of how the royalty administering organizations distribute the money and account for what they do, as is clear from the Wikipedia article on ASCAP link here. Instead it is an account of how one of BMI's enforcer's is really very nice and works hard to deal pleasantly but firmly with the poor bar owners and other small businesspeople that use music to attract customers.

To me this simply looks like a lot more lawyers and others with little or nothing to do with the original performance who have found another way to extract money for themselves with no increase in the public good. We are looking at the modern version of the highwayman and asked to admire him.

The New York Times has a good short article on the growth of patent trolls (which it terms as non practicing entities or NPEs) link here. The story hangs on the suit against EBay for $3.8 billion by XPRT Ventures which goes unmentioned thereafter.

It then describes the basic patent troll model: "The basic idea is that an investment firm buys a pre-existing patent for, say, $2 million. It then sues perhaps a dozen companies that use technology potentially overlapping the patent. Each firm that fights may end up paying $500,000 or more to defend itself and could also face penalties. The alternative is to settle for, say, $1 million or so. If just three firms pay up to avoid a battle, the patent owner makes big money."

The EBay example is not particularly apt here since it is for so much money that EBay is likely to fight it. But the story provides the excuse for the article which goes on to cite the rise in the number of such suits, 500 last year or six times the number in 2001.

The article then switches to a "new" business response to the patent troll threat, the counter-troll that acquires patents to sue or cross license other firms by which its member companies might be sued for infringement. Thus for a generous annual fee, it seems to offer some insurance against loss.

Its exemplar, roughly two year old RPX, has an extensive website link here, a puff piece, and Google adds little more. However, the Times piece reminded me of ten-year-old Intellectual Ventures about which we wrote link here and which now has a Wiki write-up link here . I checked quickly for officer names of the two but found no overlap. I do note, however, that IV has some big corporate subscribers including Microsoft, Verizon (also "insured" by IV), and Intel.

Thus the "counter-troll" model seems to have proved so attractive that it has spawned a rival. Here is another reminder of how patents enrich the big oligopoly companies and exploit the consumer while providing no benefit to the inventor in whose name patents are issued.

Talking Points Memo tells us that Nevada Senatorial candidate Sharon Angle, running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has sued him for violating copyright link here. He had posted her old website after she took it down and rewrote her old far-right positions used to win the primary, in favor of more moderate ones.

Reid did take down the copy, after stating that he had made his point about her retailored views.

This interesting abuse or misuse of copyright law again shows an old fox obeying the law but getting what he wanted, including great publicity in a campaign where it is not all that easy to get news coverage.