DISQUS

Chin up, MikeRT! Liberty will prevail. Let's just aim on making some headway sooner rather than later.

Tim,

Congratulations!

My family recently hired a photographer who, at my request, simply assigned to me her copyrights in her photos. (I had her do so in a signed writing, of course, as the Copyright Act requires.) She took the shots on a digital camera and gave us a set of copies when she was done, to reproduce, modify, publish, etc., as we saw fit. She had no objections, and indeed told me that she generally did not assert copyrights in her work, finding it instead more workable and profitable to charge enough up-front to cover her costs and then let customers do what they wanted with the results.

If your photographer objects to that approach, and allows only a non-exclusive license, the one you propose doesn't look too bad. Personally, I'd skip the "the rights in all images to" bit--it risks a claim that the subsequent permissions cover only such rights as you might already have. Also, I'd think very carefully about whether you should use "or" in place of some of those "and"s; you want the broadest possible definition of your rights, after all. It makes for ugly prose, but "and/or" certainly does the trick.

Your proposed wording makes me wonder why there is no right to distribute and/or publicly display simply the images. What if you want to post a photo of you and your bride here on the blog? Lastly, of course, you will want to carefully define "images" as used in the agreement.

That's "Tom W. Bell"--not "Tom W. Lee."

The Force (of argument) is strong with you, Adam. But do not create foes where none exist! My paper argues only about the *trend* towards greater blockheaded content--it does not claim we have already reached a world where no author requires copyright's lucre. Some particularly expensive-to-produce works, such as computer games and blockbuster movies, will continue to rely on copyright, at least for sometime. If you look into the future, though, you can see a world where blockheads might produce even those.

Great stuff, Adam. One small suggestion, though: Don't use graph markers that, thanks to highlighting and shadows, appear to have 3-D volume.

Presumably, you really mean only to chart each marker's area. Thus, for instance, Google in exhibit three has about 10 times the area of Clear Channel. Graphics that indicate the markers have volume instead suggest that Google is a lot bigger than it really is. Here, as always in matters graphical, ask yourself: "What would Tuft do?"

V, there is nothing now stopping Internet casinos and the like from volunteering to undergo audits by objective and trusted third parties. And, unsurprisingly, they do so; see, e.g., this casino's promise. So while I agree that domestic bans on Internet gambling work to the disadvantage of U.S. consumers, I don't think the supposed need for audits justifies regulation.

It looks like a lot of the Intrade claims are pretty inactive. For whatever reason, Intrade has hardly proven especially effective in handling political claims. Maybe too many U.S. citizens fear the reach of local anti-gaming laws. Or maybe they don't like the Intrade interface. At any rate, I say: "Let the market (in markets) decide!"

As for the real/play money distinction, some scholarship indicates that it doesn't really matter much. Or, to be more precise, it looks as if real money markets do better at rewarding discovery whereas play money ones do better at collecting information. I'm a big fan of real money markets, but I'm not sure they're absolutely necessary in this context, where we care more about measuring preferences than we do rewarding innovation.

Granted, Seth, that some markets have offered trading on some political claims. But I think WSX offers a real leap forward in terms of the extent of coverage, focus on political events, and user interface. Those are not incidental matters, either, when you're asking what it will take to get media types to start referencing a prediction market.

Steve,

An innovator could use the SPEx to raise funding because he would have an edge, by dint of the innovative nature of his discovery, over other traders. That, my friend, we call arbitrage.

I don't think that futures markets have any "intent"; how you use them depends on what you want. Granted, many traders use them to hedge against risk. But traders can and sometimes do use them to profit from insights they have and others do not.

You describe the limits of patents accurately. However, the policy reasons that justify those limits do not apply to predicition markets. Why? Because, in brief, a patent limits use of a valuable idea, whereas as prediction market does not.

I don't think a PM would stop frivolous patent suits. That is a separate problem calling for a different cure.

Tom

Not quite. Some bookies abroad offer bets on a few science questions, but they are not really offering prediction markets. And there exist play-money markets both here and abroad. The paper offers many details, over which you might quibble, but basically U.S. law now stands in the way of the real deal.

Anon. of 1/11/05: I thought of that potential counterargument, but concluded that the WSJ simply does not arouse as much animus--and thus commentary--as the Times does. That the WSJ has not apparently cracked down on bloggers thus does not disprove my conjecture.

Hey, Lynn! If I understand your point, you mean to say that the Times' proposed change of business model won't affect *all* bloggers (such as you, for instance). OK, granted. But it seems to me you would still, like any other blogger, have an increased incentive to redistribute the Times' content. Relatively few of your blog's readers would, after all, enjoy the sort of access that your workplace provides.

Of course *I'm* serious, Mike; serious that the Times might well view the situation as I describe. I'm not propounding that view, myself. I'm just saying that under the proposed business model the Times would have an incentive to use copyright law to try to prevent the loss of potential customers to bloggers who make unauthorized copies of Times' articles.

You may be right that, in that event, the Times would have adopted the wrong business model. I'm not so sure, myself. Your example does not illuminate, since an overpriced pizza place has no right to stop cheaper competitors, whereas a copyright owner does have the right to sue infringers. But,at any rate, that is not an issue I was trying to address.

I think you're right about the "email . . . and . . . title" bit, Michael. Thanks for the correction. You don't convince me to change my views about the definitions of those two items, however. I still think they can be very easily satisfied, thus leaving the statute largely useless. But I will concede that it all depends on how courts interpret the law.