1 The attack is increasingly brutal, frontal and direct. In recent litigation in the United States about the Linux computer operating system, for instance, it has been argued that the General Public License (GPL) is invalid because it is pre-empted by copyright law. In other words, a court is being asked to rule that a rights holder cannot waive his or her IP rights even if he or she wants to. See Matthew Broersma, “SCO plans court attack on Linux GPL,” ZDNet, 15 August 2003, available at http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5064337.html, [16 September 2003]. Another example might be limits imposed on inter-library loan activity by some database licenses.Google Scholar

2 The expansion is noticeable both in regard to area coverage, as mentioned, and in the total number of applications for and grants of patents. In 1999, the United States issued 169,000 patents (Howkins, John The creative economy: how people make money from ideas (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2002), p.vii. The WIPO system permits one application for all WIPO member countries. Between 1999 and 2000, applications increased sharply, by about 25% (Business Day, 26 February 2001). For current WIPO statistics, go to http://www.wipo.int/ipstats/en/index.html.Google Scholar

3 E.g. the Roz Chast cartoon “The Ultimate Contract” in the New Yorker (11 August 2003), p. 44.Google Scholar

4 Interview with Kellner, Jamie Cableworld, 29 April 2002, available at http://www.2600.com/news/050102-files/jamie-kellner.txt [24 September 2003].Google Scholar

5 “Tanzania loses name to tanning salon chain,” The Onion Vol. 39, No. 34 (3 September 2003), available at http://www. theonion.com/3934/news1.html [10 September 2003].Google Scholar

6 Howkins, , loc.cit.Google Scholar

7 Howkins, , op.cit., p. xii-xiii.Google Scholar

8 See e.g. Bell, Daniel The coming of post-industrial society: a venture in social forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Castells, Manuel, The information age: economy, society and culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996-1998), 3 vols.Google Scholar

9 This is a paraphrase of a point made nearly half a century ago by Fritz Machlup about the patent system. See his An economic review of the patent system (Washington DC: US GPO, 1958), available at http://www.ipmall.fplc.edu/hosted_resources/jepson/unit1/aneconom.htm [extracts only], accessed 4 September 2003.Google Scholar

10 “Undoubtedly members of medieval guilds […] believed that they had an exclusive right to practice their craft. However, no serious economist would allow the moral perceptions of guild members to alter their assessment of guild restrictions as protectionist.” Baker, Dean“Vaccine buying pools: is more protectionism the best route?” Paper prepared for the Conference “Making New Technologies Work for Human Development,” Tarrytown, NY, 31 May-2 June 2001, emphasis added. Available at http://www.cepr.net/globalization/vaccine.htm [23 September 2003].Google Scholar

11 Phillips, Jeremy J. Durie, Robyn and Karet, Ian, Whale on copyright, 5th ed. (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1997), p. 5. For a facsimile and transcription of the whole act, see Tallmo, Karl-Erik, The history of copyright: a critical overview with source texts in five languages, (forthcoming), available at http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html [16 September 2003].Google Scholar

12 Constitution of the United States of America, Article I, Sect. 8.Google Scholar

13 The British Act of 1842 begins expansively by recognizing the expediency of affording “greater Encouragement to the Production of Literary Works of lasting Benefit to the World,” (Phillips, et al., op. cit., p. 17).Google Scholar

14 Valenti, Jack “There's no free Hollywood,” New York Times, 21 June 2000, emphasis added. Available at http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/20000621_valenti_oped.html [16 September 2003].Google Scholar

15 Hurt, Robert M.and Schuchman, Robert M., “The economic rationale of copyright,” American Economic Review 56:1–2 (March 1966): 425–426.Google Scholar

16 Phillips, et al., op. cit., p. 12.Google Scholar

17 Hurt, and Schuchman, , op.cit., p. 426.Google Scholar

18 However, the modern reformist writings on IP of lawyers and non-economists such as e.g. Lawrence Lessig, Pamela Samuelson, Jessica Littman, James Boyle, or Siva Vaidhyanathan make little use of the inefficiency argument.Google Scholar

19 Dean Baker (Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington DC), e-mail to Colin Darch, 8 January 2003.Google Scholar

20 Hurt, and Schuchman, , op.cit., p. 421–432.Google Scholar

21 “Perfectly competitive innovation,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Research Dept. Staff Report no.303, March 2002, available at http://minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr303.pdf [23 September 2003]. For a useful summary of reactions, both positive and critical, see Douglas Clement, “Creation myths: does innovation require intellectual property rights?” Reason Online, March 2003, available at http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml [21 February 2003].Google Scholar

22 Baker, , “Vaccine buying pools.”Google Scholar

23 Mandeville, T.et al., Economic effects of the Australian patent system (1982), summary and quotations available at http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/quotes/index.en.html#mandeville82 [16 September 2003]. The argument applies just as well to copyright reform as it does to patent reform.Google Scholar

24 Eldred v. Ashcroft. There is extensive Web documentation on this case. See, e.g. Harvard Law School coverage, with documents, at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvashcroft/ [24 September 2003].Google Scholar

25 Dawkins, Kristin “Intellectual property rights and the privatization of life,” Foreign Policy in Focus Vol. 4, no.4 (January 1999), available atGoogle Scholar

26 Leys, , op.cit., p. vi.Google Scholar

27 Milmo, Dan “Piracy costs will double in five years,” The Guardian, 23 September 2003, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4759205-111163,00.html [24 September 2003].Google Scholar

28 Liebowitz, Stan “Policing pirates in the networked age,” Policy Analysis no.438, 15 May 2002, especially p. 11 ff. Available at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa438.pdf [24 September 2003].Google Scholar

29 There are six content/distribution giants, and one hybrid. For a more detailed analysis of their troubles, see “Tangled webs,” The Economist, Vol. 363, No. 8274, 25 May 2002.Google Scholar

30 For the texts of these reports go to the Website “Americans in the Information Age: falling through the Net,” at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide/ [24 September 2003].Google Scholar

31 E.g., domestic interest rate fixing, control of the exchange rate, and so on. Leys, , op. cit., p. 6–7.Google Scholar

32 Kay, , op. cit., p. 15.Google Scholar

33 Leys, Colin The rise and fall of development theory (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1996), p. vi.Google Scholar

34 Becker, Charles M. “Unequal exchange and dependency theory: a neoclassical interpretation,” Denver, Colorado, n.d. Available at http://econ.cudenver.edu/cbecker/Papers/Dependency.pdf, [22 September 2003, cited with permission]. But Jorge Larrain countered this type of argument as overly formal and abstract, and missing the historical essence of the theory (Theories of development: capitalism, colonialism and dependency [Oxford: Polity Press, 1989], p.178-179, quoted by Leys, , op. cit., p. 14–15n).Google Scholar

35 L'échange inégal (Paris: François Maspero, 1969); English translation, Unequal exchange: a study of the imperialism of trade, with additional comments by Charles Bettelheim (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972). Becker, , op. cit., for instance, is broadly supportive of the idea that unequal exchange can be theoretically tested in a neoclassical framework.Google Scholar

36 Although this slippery term is itself used in varying and contested senses, I take it here reductively to represent a fundamental reluctance to recognize that since the law is an instrument of social policy, legal decisions should be considered in a social context rather than mainly assessed for their internal consistency. See Kennedy, D. “Legal formalism,” in: International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001), p. 8634–8638 for an introductory discussion of this topic.Google Scholar

37 For example, open source software, or the Open Archive Initiative for delivering preprints of scientific articles.Google Scholar