EU newsflash: patents are anticompetitive!

IP Law
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As discussed on Tech News Today #377, the European Commission has decided to open an investigation into the patent wars  between Apple and Samsung.1 According to EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, “Apple and Samsung is only one case where IP rights can be used as an instrument to restrict competition.”2

Since patents are aimed at limiting “unbridled competition” of a free market,3 this should come as no surprise. As I have discussed elsewhere,4 the state is schizophrenic. It grants monopolies aimed at limiting competition (patents and copyright), and then penalizes companies for using (“abusing”) them, in contravention of state antitrust law–so that there is a “tension” between these state laws. Here’s an idea: get rid of both antitrust and patent law.

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  1. For more on the smartphone patent wars, see Samsung, Apple continue patent dispute; Apple accuses Motorola, Samsung of monopolizing markets with patents–or, you’ve got to be kidding me; We Hope Apple Wins the Patent Wars; Android Patent Trouble Worsens: Motorola Considers Collecting IP Royalties; Apple vs. Microsoft: Which Benefits more from Intellectual Property?. ↩

  2. EU: Apple-Samsung row could be stifling competition; EU Injects Itself Into Apple-Samsung Patent War. ↩

  3. Intellectual Property Advocates Hate Competition; also IP Rights as Monopolistic Grants to Overcome the Public Goods Problem. ↩

  4. See State Antitrust (anti-monopoly) law versus state IP (pro-monopoly) law and The Schizo Feds: Patent Monopolies and the FTC; see also When Antitrust and Patents Collide (Rambus v. FTC); Antitrust vs. Trademark Law; Price Controls, Antitrust, and Patents; IP vs. Antitrust; The Schizophrenic State; Intel v. AMD: More patent and antitrust waste. ↩

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The Petition to Stop Internet Censorship and the Great Firewall of America

IP Law, Technology
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The looming threat of Internet censorship in the name of copyright is being opposed by an increasing number of groups, politicians, and companies. Ron Paul and others, for example, oppose it, although supporting the goal of stopping rogue websites and copyright “piracy.”1

As for companies, Dyn, for example, an Internet infrastructure/DNS/email delivery comany, has a strong statement opposing the horrible Stop Online Piracy Act/E-PARASITE (which emerged after the defeat of PROTECT-IP, aka “son of COICA” as it rose from the ashes of the defeated COICA) pending legislation that Big Media are trying to usher through Congress.2 Unfortunately, they also, like the politicians who are coming out against SOPA, water down their opposition by paying obeisance to the legitimacy of the statist protectionism known as copyright, by including the comment: “While online piracy is obviously bad …” However, the rest of Dyn’s statement is very good. A few excerpts are included below.

And as noted above, other groups and companies are coming out against SOPA, including the European Parliament and “more than 60 civil and human rights organizations”. Even the the Business Software Alliance, which represents IT companies including Microsoft, SAP, IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, and which originally supported SOPA, has withdrawn its support for SOPA in its current form.3

Dyn urges people to sign this petition to oppose SOPA. It is a fairly strong opposition to the proposed legislation, even though it also implies there can be “reasonable copyright law.” There cannot be. Genuine rights cannot conflict; when statist positive law sets up rights that “conflict,” or laws that are “in tension” (such as the “tension” between antitrust and IP law), that’s a red flag that at least one of these laws is illegitimate. When people try to reconcile copyright with free speech, the result is inconsistency, and lack of a principled approach. Thus, you see people saying, sure, we need to stop piracy–but these laws go “too far”; we need to have a “reasonable” copyright regime, not one that results in “too much” censorship. Of course mirrors the content of the Constitution itself, which enshrines both copyright (which results in censorship) and free speech. Since most people are legal positivist and hold the fallacious view that the state is legitimate, they accept the Constitution as legitimate and try to square unsquarable things. The result is cognitive dissonance. (One could argue, by the way, that the First Amendment, ratified in 1791, overrules the Copyright clause, ratified along with the Constitution in 1789, since they are incompatible and later-ratified (legislation and) constitutional provisions implicitly overrule earlier (legislation and) constitutional provisions, just as the Twenty-first Amendment (1933) repealed the alcohol prohibition of the Eighteenth Amendment (1919).4

Here are some excerpts from Dyn’s statement: …

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  1. SOPA Becoming An Election Issue: Challengers Highlighting Reps Who Want To Censor The Internet; Ron Paul Comes Out Against SOPA; Joins Other Elected Officials Saying No To The Great Firewall Of America. ↩

  2. See Die, SOPA, Die. ↩

  3. Business Software Alliance Withdraws Support for Stop Online Piracy Act; SOPA Needs Work to Address Innovation Considerations. ↩

  4. For more on this argument, see my post Copyright Censorship versus Free Speech and Human Rights; Excessive Fines and the Eighth Amendment; also Judge Rules EA has “1st Amendment Right” to Depict College Football Players; Cato/Reason/CEO brief opposing medical diagnostic process patents as violating freedom of speech. ↩

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In Depth with Tibor Machan on C-SPAN

Education, Libertarian Theory, Statism
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Libertarian philosopher Tibor Machan had a wide-ranging 3-hour interview on C-SPAN’s BookTV a few months ago. Titled “In Depth with Tibor Machan,” the May 1 show description reads:

Tibor Machan talked about his life, work, and career. Topics included morality in business, capitalism versus individualism, and the pros and cons of the Libertarian philosophy. He responded to telephone calls and electronic communications from the grounds of the University Park Campus of the University of Southern California during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Tibor Machan holds the R.C. Hoiles Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. He is also professor emeritus of philosophy at Auburn University and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Professor Machan is the co-founder and former editor of Reason magazine. Tibor Machan is the sole author of 29 English language books, the co-author of four books, the sole editor of 15 books, and co-editor of five books. His books include The Pseudo-Science of B.F. Skinner (1973), Liberty and Culture: Essays on the Idea of a Free Society (1989), Private Rights and Public Illusions (1995); Ayn Rand (2000); and The Promise of Liberty: A Non-Utopian Vision (2008). His memoir, The Man Without a Hobby: Adventures of a Gregarious Egoist, was published in 2004.

The video and a transcript are available here.

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Power, Both Pathetic and Terrifying

Fiction Reviews (Movies), Police Statism, Pop Culture
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J. Edgar, the new film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is making the news for dealing frankly with the decades old rumors concerning Hoover’s private life. But that’s not what makes the film immensely valuable. Its finest contributions are its portrait of the psycho-pathologies of the powerful and its chronicle of the step-by-step rise of the American police state from the interwar years through the first Nixon term.

The current generation might imagine that the egregious overreaching of the state in the name of security is something new, perhaps beginning after 9/11. The film shows that the roots stretch back to 1919, with Hoover’s position at the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation under attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer. Here we see the onset of the preconditions that made possible the American leviathan.

Palmer had been personally targeted in a series of bomb attacks launched by communist-anarchists who were pursuing vendettas for the government’s treatment of political dissidents during the first world war. These bombings unleashed the first great “red scare” in American history and furnished the pretext for a gigantic increase in federal power in the name of providing security. In a nationwide sweep, more than 60,000 people were targeted, 10,000 arrested, 3,500 were detained, and 556 people were deported. The Washington Post editorial page approved: “There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over infringement of liberties.”

Here we have the model for how the government grows. The government stirs up some extremists, who then respond, thereby providing the excuse the government needs for more gaining more power over everyone’s lives. The people in power use the language of security but what’s really going on here is all about the power, prestige, and ultimate safety of the governing elite, who rightly assume that they are ones in the cross hairs. Meanwhile, in the culture of fear that grips the country – fear of both public and private violence – official organs of opinion feel compelled to go along, while most everyone else remains quiet and lets it all happen.

The remarkable thing about the life of Hoover is his longevity in power at every step of the way. With every new frenzy, every shift in the political wind, every new high profile case, he was able to use the events of the day to successfully argue for eliminating the traditional limits on federal police power. One by one the limitations fell, allowing him to build his empire of spying, intimidation, and violence, regardless of who happened to be the president at the time.

…

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