Against Monopoly
defending the right to innovate
Open Thread
Monopoly corrupts. Absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely.
Copyright Notice: We don't think much of copyright, so you can do what you want with the content on this blog. Of course we are hungry for publicity, so we would be pleased if you avoided plagiarism and gave us credit for what we have written. We encourage you not to impose copyright restrictions on your "derivative" works, but we won't try to stop you. For the legally or statist minded, you can consider yourself subject to a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Comment Spam
Following a suggestion of a commentator, and based on reading the google blog, all links in comments are now marked "nofollow". This means that while the link works as normal, it will not be counted for Google page rankings. As the comment spam is being left by human beings paid by spammers (mostly hired from Amazon Mechanical Turk apparently) we may hope that the spammers are intelligent enough not to pay for links that won't increase their page ranks and will leave us alone. I will continue to be vigilant and delete spam as it appears. Let's see if that works before introducing registration and "trusted" users.
[Posted at 12/18/2010 09:39 AM by David K. Levine on Open Thread 
comments(4)]
Comment Spam
This is for contributors: if you access the blog in administrative mode (edit posts) the comment bar on the right now gives you the option of deleting the comment. This should make it quick and easy to get rid of spam, so please do. Notice that if you are unsure whether a comment is spam from the preview it is always safe to click on delete - you will then see the entire post and can hit cancel or just close the page if it isn't really spam and shouldn't be deleted.
[Posted at 12/14/2010 04:33 AM by David K. Levine on Open Thread comments(0)]
Comment Spam
We need to take measures against comment spam. Programmatic methods (better capchas and so forth) seem unlikely to work since some of the spam is clearly human generated. Moderation seems the best solution, but would likely to lead to substantial delays in posting. How do people feel about a limited moderation solution: anyone can flag a comment as spam causing the comment to vanish and the moderator to be notified so that it can be restored if it is not actually spam? This system seems possibly subject to abuse if commentators start marking each others posts as spam. Comments or alternative suggestions?
[Posted at 12/10/2010 12:11 AM by David K. Levine on Open Thread comments(22)]
Open Thread
Since there has been a lot of discussion John suggested rather than having it all as comments to a single post, I create an open thread for general discussion. I will try to set up an open thread each Monday for whatever IP topics catch the imagination and see how it goes. So go ahead, and post away comments to this posting on whatever IP/Monopoly topics you'd like.
[Posted at 08/11/2008 04:00 PM by David K. Levine on Open Thread comments(11)]
Most Recent Comments
3D Printing Groundnut:
The first available 3D printers were produced in the early 1980s. Because those
at 06/03/2013 10:55 AM by Anonymous
3D Printing You were aware, I hope, that the popularization of 3D printing is happening now, rather than 20
at 06/01/2013 12:43 AM by groundnut gallery
Catching Up The Ruth Lewis post is interesting, but incomplete. The very economies that are supposedly
at 01/31/2013 07:21 AM by Anonymous
Canada - A Copyright Year in Review Hello. I don't like copyright law but I don't think it will go away in my life. I started a
at 01/02/2013 04:58 AM by Sabrina
Canada - A Copyright Year in Review Regarding the Copyright Act revision, let it be known that there was substantial opposition to the
at 12/28/2012 06:57 AM by Byte
From the Trenches Innovative remarks indeed. Cecil Quillen suggests the system needs to be modified, which I think
at 12/21/2012 06:18 PM by Anonymous
The golden age of beer innovation ""Perhaps the first reason [for the rate of patenting] is that during this period the rate of
at 12/20/2012 05:46 PM by Anonymous
Obama Transition Team Member on Holy cow. None of Your Beeswax is a Canadian (Laurier Optical is Canadian only). You don't even
at 12/19/2012 06:08 PM by Anonymous
The golden age of beer innovation Adam_Smith:
Until the latter half of the 19th century, corporations routinely filed for patents,
at 12/19/2012 04:54 PM by Brewing Is Fun
The golden age of beer innovation It would seem from the account given in the previous comment that it was innovation that stimulated
at 12/19/2012 04:04 AM by Adam_Smith
Would books be published without copyright? taxpayer:
"The Wealth of Nations" went through five editions in the first 13 years of publication,
at 12/05/2012 08:31 AM by Anonymous
Would books be published without copyright? I was wondering whether free-market advocate Adam Smith made much money from his books.
On-line
at 12/04/2012 09:59 AM by taxpayer
Open Book Publisher Great work! Here's my quick review of the book:
It seems to me that behavioral economists
at 11/27/2012 08:38 PM by Aaron Wolf
250000 Patents for Smartphone Technology Hi. Sorry for posting here as I cannot see a contact us section.
How can I contact you?
I have
at 11/27/2012 10:17 AM by Thomas Stringer
The golden age of beer innovation With respect to the beer innovation paper, I have to wonder whether the authors were overly focused
at 11/23/2012 08:31 AM by Brewing Is Fun
The golden age of beer innovation With respect to Christian's comment that "there was rapid innovation without recourse to patents,"
at 11/21/2012 03:16 PM by Beer Innovation
250000 Patents for Smartphone Technology I have seen several analysts who believe that the number of patents in this area indicate that our
at 10/24/2012 08:40 AM by Anonymous
Would books be published without copyright? Gael:
I would be curious as to how much copyright litigation is costing. I have never seen any
at 10/19/2012 01:12 PM by Anonymous
Would books be published without copyright? I think it's going to evolve towards a better system with or without copyright. Right now copyright
at 10/19/2012 11:46 AM by Gael N.
Patents and Secrecy Of course patents are not the "only" answer. That is just plain dumb. There are multiple business
at 10/13/2012 08:47 AM by Anonymous