This story surfaced several days ago and then disappeared without further comment. The King family's Intellectual Properties Management Inc. extracted $761,160 from the Martin Luther King Jr National Memorial Project Foundation in return for use of King's words and image on a memorial planned for the Washington mall link here and here. In addition it received $71,700 in 2003 as a "management" fee. All that in turn has come from a $10 million Congressional appropriation for the memorial.

Applying copyright to a dead person's image seems strange, but one must assume that the lawyers already know what the established law. However, where is "fair use" in this?

Peter Leeson has a fantasy about pirates and their utility. as promoters of socially useful values like freedom, equality, liberty, and democracy back when monarchies were tyrants link here.

The George Mason economics professor writes in respect to the Somali pirates , but his point is worth thinking about in terms of IP piracy as well. IP pirates promote a greater social good, once one gets over the illusion that IP enforcement facilitates innovation. And as good economists, they deliver the product at its marginal cost, either nothing or close to it.

This piece was published days ago and has been up on the internet but largely passed without notice, much less comment link here. I found it valuable as another case where a major innovation took place without IP--no copyright and no patents. It occurred at its own pace, driven by the intellectual interest and dreams of a number of people, cooperating informally to bring about the Internet. Read it and remember, the next time you hear that little innovation would take place without IP.

IP is granted under the constitution to encourage innovation. Stories about non-IP protected innovations are rare. Here is one that turns out to be big in the field of computer software. "Hadoop, a free software program named after a toy elephant, has taken over some of the world's biggest Web sites. It controls the top search engines and determines the ads displayed next to the results. It decides what people see on Yahoo's homepage and finds long-lost friends on Facebook link here. It has achieved this by making it easier and cheaper than ever to analyze and access the unprecedented volumes of data churned out by the Internet. By mapping information spread across thousands of cheap computers and by creating an easier means for writing analytical queries, engineers no longer have to solve a grand computer science challenge every time they want to dig into data. Instead, they simply ask a question."

The software remains open-source, open to anyone to use or modify. The business model for developers is to give away the software but to make money from selling support and consulting services.

The Times story contains a lot more detail on the spread of the software, but the bottom line is that this innovation does not come from patents and copyright, but from unrestricted and open use.

If you haven't seen the Stewart/Cramer showdown, you should link here

It has also drawn a lot of comment. Matt Yglesias does a good job drawing the moral with this:

"The big Stewart-Cramer faceoff was funny and it made good television. But what's striking about it is that basically Jim Cramer had nothing to say on his own behalf and then at the end of the day that's not going to make any difference. People talk about how sad it is that you need to turn to Comedy Central to get real journalism. And it really is sad because Comedy Central just can't do what journalism is supposed to do, and it can't do the things that make a difference. It's worth thinking a bit about the General Electric Corporations news media properties more generally. They hired Phil Donahue, and then fired him when he had the highest ratings on the network because they didn't like that he was against invading Iraq. They hired Keith Olbermann, expecting him to not be a liberal. But he turned out to be pretty progressive. And that turned out to be pretty popular. So they started featuring him more. Which prompted a huge freakout from their big news stars like Tom Brokaw about how it was injuring their credibility to appear on a network that's cobranded with a network that features a liberal. Meanwhile, at their other cobranded network, CNBC, they have on air a bunch of frauds. People show up and pretend to have sage investment advice. Larry Kudlow is put forward as someone who's knowledgeable about economic policy. And when someone points the fraud out, the whole GE circles the wagons to defend Jim Cramer and CNBC. Liberals? That wrecks their credibility. Liars and frauds? That's great. Go peacock! It's a deep rot, and John Stewart satirizing it doesn't really change anything. It would require the people working at NBC News to develop a conscience. link here"

In the category of "can you believe it," the District of Columbia Bar "wants an online directory (avvo.com) that compiles profiles of lawyers -- from the bar's own Web site, no less -- to cease and desist, arguing that posting information about Washington lawyers for commercial purposes violates copyright laws and privacy rights. It's not too fond of the feature that allows consumers to rate a lawyer, either" link here. "This has nothing to do with obstructing access to information," said the bar's spokeswoman,

The story has more detail, but adds little to alter the thrust. Need one say more?

Developments abroad on intellectual property don't get a lot of attention in the US. South Korea, one of the most wired nations, has been the object of a good deal of official attention, but not much otherwise. While I was economic counselor in our embassy in the 70s, enforcing copyrights and patents was an uphill battle. Most of the offenders were small mom-and-pop operations and the policemen on the beat were reluctant to prosecute small sellers of software or knockoffs of branded clothing, etc. I argued that the Koreans would enforce IP when they had developed it and wanted to protect their property. Unfortunately in hindsight--I was charged with pushing for enforcement--I seem to have been right, as they are doing so now according to this story link here.

Under the headline, "Crackdown nabs 39 uploaders for digital theft"; the Korea Herald tells us that "digital theft is blamed for an annual loss of more than 2 trillion won ($1.34 billion) in South Korea, the world's most wired country, with nearly 20,000 files of copyrighted content circulating illegally last year alone;" that "the individuals charged last month were described as "heavy uploaders" who received money from internet service providers in return for posting more than 1,000 files on local peer-to-peer sites; that "twelve had been previously convicted of breaking copyright and computer program protection laws"; and that "last month, a court sentenced the chiefs of the country's four top internet service providers to one year in prison and a 30 million won fine for facilitating illegal distribution of copyrighted content.... the first time criminal charges had ever been brought."

Thirty years ago, I would have been happy to read this result of development, but now, only with regret. The opponents of monopoly are losing abroad as well as here.

The intellectual property farce goes on. Charge Notification Services Corporation is suing credit card company Visa for patent infringement when it uses SMS (short message service) to inform card holders that their cards have just been used link here.

Knowing that, I'm looking forward to patenting the use of mail, email, and the telephone to do so. The profit in this must be immense. Oh, obviousness? Is that a problem?

This sort of legal action is making a joke out of the system of granting patents and of the courts in enforcing them. Have the bureaucrats, lawyers and judges no shame or respect for their profession?

I missed this story when it appeared, but it seems to sum up the current patent situation so well, that it is worth revisiting now link here. Ryan Paul wrote it for Ars Technica as a review of a speech by Rob Tiller, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Red Hat, at the Southern California Linux Expo.

While the emphasis is on software patents, the same criticisms apply to the whole category. What to do? I do not expect us to be delivered of this plague by the courts with their seeming vested interest in perpetual litigation, also known as the full employment act for lawyers and judges. Congress and the White House then, are the only hope, a conclusion that Larry Lessig also reached. Talk to your representatives.

Brad Stone writes in the New York Times, following up on the Blount oped, that Amazon will allow copyright owners to decide whether to allow or prevent voice-rendering of the book on the Kindle 2 link here.

Here is the full text of Amazon's statement: "Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business. Customers tell us that with Kindle, they read more, and buy more books. We are passionate about bringing the benefits of modern technology to long-form reading." Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rights-holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat. Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is. Customers tell us that with Kindle, they read more, and buy more books. We are passionate about bringing the benefits of modern technology to long-form reading."

Apparently the software on the Kindle will have to be altered, so it does not have immediate effect.

Amazon seems to be running from a potential fight. Too bad. It is de facto extending the power of copyright so that the owner is free to choose when he calculates it is not to his advantage. The consumer gets stuck again.

Since there are other book readers like the Kindle, it will be interesting to see if they go along with Amazon's decision. Is there a possible legal challenge here when Amazon allows copyright to be extended without either legislative or judicial justification?

After I initially posted this, I came across a long discussion on the legalities of this link here. That may help Amazon justify its decision to allow opt-in or -out. But the customer still gets cheated.