DISQUS

I may have been unclear. What I meant was that there is an inherent conflict between intellectual property, at least beyond some minimal trademark issues, and the ideal of free trade (any two people who wish to engage in mutually beneficial transactions ought to do so). Indeed, Levine & Boldrin's whole book is about how IP is anti-free-market, though their analogy is towards state-created monopolies rather than tariff and non-tariff barriers. But really, the arguments you make for IP--fixed-cost v. marginal cost disparities, etc.--seem really quite similar to standard infant-industries apologetics.

If all of this is so obvious as to be a truism, I apologize.

I think the zero-sum game issue was more along these lines: strong IP laws may or may not be bad for developed countries (we obviously differ), but they are much worse for developing states. At the very least, such states don't seem eager to adopt them on their own. The whole WIPO/TRIPS stuff has been all about trying to tie IP protection, which developing states don't want, to free trade advances, which they typically do. One might think of this as raising the cost for developing nations to signing onto free-trade agreements; at the margin, one might expect fewer FTAs to be signed. That, at least, was my gloss.

Noel: the claim that there's no inherent conflict between free trade and IP is the result of question-begging: you're assuming content 'owners' are entitled to the bundle of rights they have been granted. If, on the other hand, you think these restrictions are wrong, the conflict is simple and direct: if I wish to buy, say, an unauthorized book set in the 'Star Wars' universe written by, say, a guy in Singapore, I can't. A consensual, welfare-enhancing transaction has been prohibited. Just as trade quotas and tariffs prevent similar consensual transactions between, say, the Singaporean wanting to sell me something more tangible.

You may say, "Ah, but George Lucas is entitled to his monopoly on all things Star Wars." Perhaps, perhaps not; all domestic industries seem to think they are entitled to be the lone supplier to "their" markets.

My first two CD purchases were at Tower. C+C Music Factory and Deee-Lite. Yes, really.

There may have been a Michael Jackson ("Bad") tape purcahse prior to that. Also at Tower.

Great post; I love this series you're doing.

Incidentally, did you ever finish Levine & Boldrin's book? This is one of their main points against patents: IP by itself is nothing; it's not even meaningful. IP must be embodied in *people* before it can do anything.

Come on over to the dark side of IP-abolitionism, Tim. All the cool kids are doing it.

Indeed, it seems like the biggest problem with the program is how tied to governmental decision-making it is. It would be a shame if a single decision by a set of bureaucrats prevented all of India from participating. "One Laptop Per Child" sounds great, but it seems silly to go all-or-nothing.

You've done a truly wonderful job putting together this argument... I've gotten so tired of neo-Schumpeterians claiming that because companies *like* monopoly profits, and often hope to have them temporarily, we must therefore move heaven and earth to guarantee them.

My comment yesterday seems to have been eaten--are you sure the Linspire is legit? It claims to be based on the Xine player, but that's GPLd--and Linspire claims to be closed source. Isn't that a GPL violation? It would be amusing if the only 'legit' player were itself an infringing derivative work...