A few years ago, there was a ton of political grandstanding against Craigslist, because there was some prostitution on the site. As we noted at the time, it was pretty misguided. Craigslist cooperated with law enforcement and many law enforcement officials realized that Craigslist was an excellent tool to help them find and arrest law breakers. We pointed out that going after Craigslist instead of the actual law breakers would mean that the activity would just move somewhere else. Indeed, Craigslist finally caved to tons of public pressure and blocked any ad that might be related to prostitution... and it did nothing to stop prostitution or human trafficking. It just moved elsewhere. The same crowd that wrongfully targeted Craigslist then shifted all of their attention to Backpage.com. Even though the law has made it clear that Backpage, as a third party service provider is not liable, the grandstanding continues against Backpage. The whole thing has gotten to be so much, that Backpage's owners, Village Voice Media, have sold off the newspapers to separate them out from the site, and to avoid having the two properties connected.

The crusading against Backpage.com has become increasingly intense and increasingly misguided lately. We get press releases all the time, full of emotional, but legally false, language, all attacking Backpage.com. No one seems to even want to recognize that attacking Backpage instead of those actually responsible only makes it that much more difficult to track down the real criminals. Some law enforcement officials are not quite as misguided. As with Craigslist, we're seeing cases where Backpage.com is instrumental in putting together the case -- in this case, against someone who had set up a brothel.

And yet, the attacks on Backpage.com continue. The whole thing is stunning to me. Here's a tool that is a goldmine for the police to collect evidence against those actually responsible for prostitution and human trafficking... and the response is to try to shut it down and drive those efforts further underground, rather than actually going after and arresting those responsible. It's shocking.

Biology is almost never as simple as it appears, and studying how animals evolve is an endless task filled with unanswered questions. Life begets life in a multitude of ways -- sometimes with strange or unexpected results. Scientists are conducting a few unnatural breeding experiments with plants and animals that sound like science fiction, and here are just some examples.

• French researchers devised an experiment to determine what would happen if shrimp could time travel -- re-animating preserved brine shrimp eggs from 1985, 1996 and 2007 to mate with each other. Shrimp specimens that mated with shrimp from the past or future died more quickly than contemporary mating... so Sarah Connor should be a bit wary of the pickup line, "Come with me if you want to live." [url]
• Little kids might ask where babies come from, but real scientists ask, "Where did plant sex come from?" Apparently, the answer is low oxygen levels in the atmosphere that trigger some plant cells to become sex cells. This discovery could lead to new ways to manage plant seeds -- as well as a patent for plant sex under varying oxygen concentrations. [url]
• Plans for colonizing other planets could be derailed by the sterilizing effects of radiation from outer space. Cosmic rays are difficult to shield away from astronauts, so there need to be a few more studies to figure out how humans will reproduce without the Earth to protect us. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

We're always interested in neat experiments concerning creativity. We've written about filmmaker Ed Burns, who has plenty of "big" Hollywood credits to his name, but last year went "micro" with a $9,000 budget film. It appears he's still continuing down that inexpensive indie route. His latest plan, as announced on Twitter, is to release a new short film each month in 2013 telling a longer story in four separate arcs: winter, spring, summer and fall.

To make this happen, he's made it clear that he's going to rely on his Twitter followers for help, from acting to scouting locations and more. It's clearly an experiment, but certainly fits into the kinds of thing that "the internet" does well. We've seen musicians release a "new song every week" or "a new song every day" or something similar. So why not have a filmmaker build a movie in chapters, somewhat serially? And, of course, it only makes sense to make it happen while involving his biggest fans.

Every time we see stories about how the changing market has made it more difficult for artists to create, we see stories like this which suggest the exact opposite. It's easier than ever to create. It's all about figuring out cool ways to embrace all of those opportunities.

We've been covering how there are a number of troubling proposals before the UN's ITU (International Telecom Union), which has been trying to use its role as the global regulator of international telecom issues to insert itself into how the internet should work. So far, the leaks from the secretive process have really only served to highlight how various telcos are using this as an opportunity to get regulators to divert money their way from internet innovators, because they're jealous of the revenue that actual innovators can generate. Vint Cerf recently gave an insightful, if worrisome, interview with Jerry Brito about how the ITU is being misleading with its statements on the matter. Cerf notes that the ITU has been trying to insert itself into internet issues for many years now, recognizing that its existing mandate, covering telco issues, is becoming increasingly obsolete. Rather than do something useful, like disband, it's trying to gobble up internet issues, despite a very different view on them.

Cerf points out that the ITU is playing word games in claiming that it simply acts as a neutral platform for various proposals from different telcos, noting that it's pretty clear that it's been actively working in this direction for a while, encouraging proposals that would give the ITU much greater say in key internet issues, despite little familiarity with the basics of the internet (or, worse, thinking that it's no different than a standard telco network).

Of course, the ITU process is being condemned by a growing number of folks. The US government has a surprisingly unified voice on this issue, with both houses of Congress emphatically passing resolutions rejecting the ITU's efforts here. Of course, the worry is that the US is just one vote in the process, and many other countries see this as an opportunity not just to prop up telcos, but to better establish standards that would make it easy to monitor and censor the internet. Iran, China and Russia, for example, have all been quite interested in the upcoming ITU discussions. Now, the US is (not surprisingly) still a powerful voice in what happens here, so even as just one vote, it can exert influence... which it appears to be trying to do in a variety of ways.

Given the sudden and unexpected public interest in its activities, the ITU has been scrambling to respond, including having its chief, Hamadoun Toure give a talk at Columbia supposedly responding to "critics." Of course, as Larry Downes highlights, Toure and the ITU seem totally tone deaf in the way they've responded so far. For example, Toure seems to think that the complaints are all due to "sensationalist claims in the press," -- apparently ignoring governments, the public, internet companies, civil service, public interest groups and others. All the press's fault, apparently.

The ITU itself, meanwhile, is stepping up the rhetoric in its campaign to defend the transfer of at least some Internet oversight from today’s multi-stakeholder process to the U.N. Dr. Toure, for example, says that he hopes the WCIT negotiations will address issues “of real import,” including Internet security.

But “security,” in ITU jargon, is a loaded term, relating more to perceived threats to national security than to the security of network communications.

In that regard, the ITU has become dangerously close to associating itself with the overtly repressive goals of Russia. Last year, at a meeting between Dr. Toure and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Putin was characteristically blunt about his country’s aspirations for the ITU. Putin told Dr. Toure that he was keen on “establishing international control over the Internet using the monitoring and supervisory capability of the International Telecommunications Union.”

Toure, of course, is used to dealing with telco execs and some regulators, and simply hasn't been prepared for public scrutiny at all.

The ITU’s clumsy response has exposed just how uncomfortable the agency is in dealing directly with Internet users worldwide—a sure sign of the ITU’s inability to regulate a technology it doesn’t even know how to use.   The agency’s flurry of releases read like weird dispatches from Dickensian England, with lots of extra “distinguished guests,” “plenipotentiaries” “directorates,” and references to “civil society” thrown in for good measure.

In an unprecedented number of interviews and public speeches, ITU senior officials have tried to dismiss their critics as “scaremongers” and “paranoids.”  Dr. Toure has even called out FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, who first brought the threat of a free-for-all WCIT to the attention of Congress.

The agency also keeps the media at arm’s length or better.  Any journalist who wishes to cover the WCIT conference, for example, must first satisfy the ITU that they are “a professional journalist or analyst with a proven track record of reporting for bona fide media.”  Online journalists must be “registered to a media organization with a verifiable non-web address and telephone number.”  Bloggers can just stay home.

So not only does the group not actually understand the internet that it's looking to have much more control over... it doesn't even think that web-only journalists count as real journalists. Is this really the group that we want making decisions on core internet issues?

Unless you've been living under a rock the past few weeks, you're by now aware of Gangnam Style, the meme/song/video/dance craze/pop culture phenomenon by Korean pop star Psy, that was kicked off with this video, but has become much, much, much more. Of course, there have been thousands of parody videos created, different versions of the song and a variety of other meme-related content. I was at a wedding a week and a half ago, and basically everyone there, including many of the "older generation," were well aware of the song and ready to do the dance when the DJ played it. It's basically everywhere. It's become so popular that, this week, an attempt to do the video without the music but adding back in the "natural" sound effects, is pushing 6 million views all by itself.

Oh yeah, and the song is doing quite well on the charts as well. The song is currently at number 2 on the Billboard charts, but has recently hit number one in 10 countries, including the UK and Australia. Down in Australia, for the publication TheVine, Tim Byron explores the cultural phenomenon and notes that this appears to be the first song that started as a meme that made it to number one on the charts. Other songs have charted and then became memes, or were memes that charted -- but not as high.

But, then, in the middle of the discussion, Byron makes a really interesting point:

One of Psy's cannier moves has apparently been to waive copyright on 'Gangnam Style' so that anybody can use the music and the video as they like. Most of the social media response to 'Call Me Maybe' is basically different ways to say 'this song is really catchy'. Once 'Call Me Maybe' truly became a famous meme, the meme was largely specifically about how catchy it was. 'Gangnam Style' is different. The social media response to 'Gangnam Style' is largely about absurdity, about the surrealism of the song and the video, not really about music for music's sake. 'Gangnam Style' has become an event. It's a piece of shared cultural currency which can be taken as known in a world which is increasingly nicheified.

I don't know if Psy or his label has actually done anything explicit to say that he's "waived" his copyright on Gangnam Style, but it is clear that he's been perfectly happy to have tons of folks make their own versions, edit the video and much much more. Each one of those things only seems to drive much more attention to the original, which only helps Psy out even more.

So, even if it's not really true that he's "waived" the copyright on the song or video, can anyone honestly argue that copyright has had a significant hand in the Gangnam Style cultural phenomenon? If anything, it's the fact that everyone ignores the copyright that has made it such a big deal. A large percentage of those derivative works and videos almost certainly "infringe" upon the copyright of both the song and the video. And yet each and every one of those "infringements" has probably helped Psy. You'd be hard pressed to find a single case where it has hurt him.

Hell, just imagine a world in which everyone making those response videos would have needed to get permission from Psy or his label. Does anyone think that, under those circumstances, it would be the same sort of cultural phenomenon today? Obviously, there's no way it would be anywhere close to as big.

In other words, whether or not Psy waived his copyrights, it's difficult to argue that copyright has had anything to do with his success with Gangnam Style and it seems clear that it is the fact that most people ignored copyright that has helped spread the song and video so far and wide.

Despite having 45 years to get "warmed up," the era of "open government" may take several more cycles before it becomes a reality. President Obama promised an unprecedented level of openness, but to date, the level of openness remains pretty much unchanged from his predecessors'.

An analysis of open-government requests filed by Bloomberg News shows that most cabinet-level agencies would rather break the law than comply with the requirements of the Freedom of Information act. And by "most," Bloomberg means "nearly all."

Nineteen of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the law requiring the disclosure of public information: The cost of travel by top officials. In all, just eight of the 57 federal agencies met Bloomberg’s request for those documents within the 20-day window required by the Act.

The Bloomberg analysis also tracked the timeliness of information requests, pointing out that fast turn-time was referred to as "an essential component of transparency" by Attorney General Eric Holder. Bloomberg was seeking disclosure on out-of-town travel expenses generated by top officials.

About half of the 57 agencies eventually disclosed the out-of-town travel expenses generated by their top official by Sept. 14, most of them well past the legal deadline.

The travel costs generated by some other Obama officials --Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano -- also remain undisclosed.

A request made in June for the travel records of Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will remain unfulfilled for more than a year, according to a federal official involved in the case.

“We really appreciate your patience in this matter. The estimated completion date is July 2013,” wrote Chris Barnes, a State Department FOIA official, in a Sept. 24 e-mail. Under FOIA, the department is required to offer a timetable for delayed responses.

Travel expense reports aren't exactly the most arcane records. Every business has them and while the government may have more to track, it's hard to believe that requesting this data on only the top official in each department should take longer than the 20-day period. In fact, it's hard to believe that this data needs to be requested at all.

Eric Newton, senior adviser at the Knight Foundation, a Miami-based group that promotes citizen engagement, said agencies have no excuse not to rapidly disclose travel costs.

“In a 24/7 world, it should take two days, it should take two hours,” Newton said. “If it’s public, it should be just there.”

It looks as if FOIA requests, no matter what their reason, are either being stalled or given a very low priority in certain departments. Whatever can't be held off indefinitely is being avoided completely through abuse of exemptions. The Obama administration flexed its exemption muscle during its first year, deploying 50% more than the Bush administration. Since then, the numbers have died down a bit, but there's no reason to start celebrating a "new era of openness." This simply means a drop from a high of 466,402 down to 369,417 exemptions in 2011.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, a majority of these exemptions (231,634) were deployed by the Department of Homeland Security. (The next two are the Dept. of Defense [30,861] and the Dept. of Justice [23,916].) With the handy ability to cite the interests of "national security" at the drop of a hat, the DHS can turn down nearly any request. This hasn't stopped the public from trying, however. The DHS still receives the most requests but it's hard to believe it's receiving 10 times the number of requests the Dept. of Justice is, making its exemption percentage that much more egregious.

Even with exemption deployment being the default setting for a few agencies, there are currently no exemptions that apply to the requested travel information from disclosure. A slight delay could be expected for redaction efforts, but as Bloomberg points out, other agencies redacted personal data and still managed to respond in a timely fashion.

Responsive agencies were able to redact personal details within the FOIA time period. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the chief regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provided the travel expense records for Acting Director Edward DeMarco’s six trips out of town within 15 days of the filing.

DeMarco’s trips cost $5,653.29, the documents show. Personal information such as his Social Security number and home address were blacked-out in the file.

Some of these delays can also be chalked up to good old fashioned bureaucracy, something which nevers seems to go out of style in DC. The administration is working on a streamlining plan for the FOIA process, but it's being rolled out at a very bureaucratic pace.

The administration acknowledged systemic issues with the FOIA process when the Office of Management and Budget issued guidelines Aug. 24 to all federal agencies on how to streamline government information. The memo called for all government information to be stored in an electronic format by December 2019 -- almost three years after the end of a potential second Obama term.

A glacial pace only a bureaucrat could love combined with what Bloomberg refers to as a "culture of obfuscation" means that requesting something as simple as travel records becomes an exercise in near futility. The Freedom of Information Act has been around since 1966 which means that a.) this isn't just this administration's problem and b.) the government has had more than four decades to make the process run more smoothly. One can only conclude that the government has very little interest in transparency, no matter what promises were made during the "honeymoon" period.

Fortunately, many more entities like the ACLU and the EFF are working to make the government comply with its own law. The process is arduous and far from satisfying, but without a continual push, the government will continue to allow the public to pay for the "privilege" of being told it's "none of their business." Oh, and it should be noted that after I finished this, Mike informed me that he's been waiting for months for the response to a FOIA he filed which, by law, should have been completed back in July. The reason given by the agency in question for the delay: give us more time, because we only have two people working on all FOIA requests.

While the TSA has already declared themselves this nation's official Humor Police, all while likely profiling based on race, the agency constructed to keep us safe while we fly has another problem to deal with: the thieves that wear the uniform.

ABC News recently conducted an investigation in which they packed travel bags with cash and iPads and took them through security at several major airports, while also going out of their way to leave iPads behind at security checkpoints as well. As the report notes, the bags went through without a problem and most of the iPads were returned per TSA policy. But not all of them.

In case you can't see the video, a TSA agent was taped at work handling the iPad ABC had left behind, and simply decided to take it home with him. When confronted at his home by ABC's Brian Ross, Agent Andy Ramirez denied he had the device until Ross initiated the iCloud application used to track the iPad and its audible alert. Ramirez then produced the iPad and valiantly blamed having it on his wife, who was kind enough to stand next to him and not punch him repeatedly in the testicles on camera.

It may be tempting to simply write this off as the occasional occurrence of bad actors in any sector of any industry, but theft by TSA agents is likely more widespread a problem than you realize. Nearly 400 TSA agents have been fired specifically for theft since 2003. One would expect, of course, that the number of agents fired represents a fraction of those that have actually stolen something.

And to think, they've done all of this thieving without managing to catch a single terrorist.

Jeff Price, who was recently pushed out of TuneCore after building one of the premiere new tools for musicians to take control over their careers, is continuing to think deeply about the state of the music business, as he figures out what's next. He's penned a really fantastic piece that explores how technology and innovation have completely disrupted the old recorded music business hitting on a few key points. I'd recommend reading the whole thing, but I'll highlight a few key snippets. First up, he notes the general shift in the music business from a world where artists were completely at the mercy of gatekeepers to one where that's no longer the case, almost entirely due to technology.

Until recently, the music industry provided artists one path, and one path only, to reach and connect with their fans and monetize their pre-recorded music. Artists had to sign to a record label, transferring ownership of copyrights, relinquishing exclusive artistic control, and giving up most of the revenue from the sale of their recordings. Fans could only buy pre-recorded music in physical form from retail outlets from the limited number of artists that labels chose to anoint. Labels were aware of their unique position and took full advantage of it by gouging both artists and music fans.

He goes on to point out that the reason the labels were able to do this was because of four key factors that only the major labels could really provide:

Four main reasons: barriers to recording, manufacturing, distributing, and marketing music were virtually insurmountable.

However, he notes that all four of these areas have been disrupted by new technology, and that process is continuing, such that the key advantages that the major labels have continued to rely on are slowly disappearing as well:

First, it’s far cheaper to record now than it ever has been before. In addition, the level of expertise needed to record has dropped considerably. With a laptop, some one-time purchases of software and some hours to learn how to use it, a home recording studio can be created for the cost of one day’s recording at a high-end studio.

Second, in the digital world there is no up front cost or risk to manufacture inventory. The music is available in unlimited quantity as a digital file that replicates on demand only after it’s bought or accessed to stream.

Third, music fans have shifted from buying CDs in stores to buying/streaming music on-line. Now an artist, for a nominal fee and the click of a button on a website, gets an unlimited amount of self-replicating inventory with no up front cost into the world’s largest music retail stores (i.e. iTunes is larger than Walmart ever was), all while keeping their copyrights.

Fourth, there is now equal access to music discovery outlets – YouTube, blogs, Slacker, Pandora, Spotify, digital music stores’ discovery features, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking applications are open to everyone, not just the elite few artists signed to labels. The only media outlet not open to everyone is commercial radio, but with that going the way of the 8-Track over the next few years, the last stranglehold of the traditional music industry will be gone.

Because of this, you no longer are required to deal with a major label. The majors do still dominate radio play, but the piece also digs in (in great detail) as to why Price thinks terrestrial radio is about to be completely destroyed by technology as well (think: once interactive streaming is standard in cars and on phones...). But the major labels haven't done that much to adapt to this pretty massive change to their market. And that's caused them a lot of problems (as seen in their bottom line). Of course, rather than admitting their own failures in adapting, they've basically tried to blame pretty much everyone else. Price highlights the ways in which they've tried to cope:

• Sue music fans for copyright infringement
• Create more onerous agreements between labels and artists requiring them to give up even more of their copyrights, not fewer (the infamous “360deals”) while providing less value.
• Use antiquated royalty accounting systems and provisions to slow down or reduce royalty payments owed.
• Stifle innovation under the guise of “protecting” copyright (As one example, the majors made it a condition that they must own a piece of Spotify in order for Spotify to have access to their music).  
• Killed artist development and long term careers in a mad dash attempt to make money as quickly as possible.  
• Feed the media as much false information as possible (i.e. the entire music industry is dying) in an attempt to discredit, slow down and delegitimize the new emerging industry. 

Of course, almost every one of these moves actually does more to hurt their longterm sustainability than to help it. Basically, every one of these moves has been bad for both consumers and artists -- and that's no way to adapt to the digital era. Price notes that the transformation from the old era to the new digital era is now "complete," as the key things that made the old record labels so powerful is almost entirely whittled away by technology. That doesn't mean that innovation is over, by any means. As is typical in times of disruption, many many artists are still struggling greatly to figure out how the new world works. The rules have changed drastically (with many new ones being written and rewritten on the fly). There are plenty of failures, but a growing number of success stories. And that should only increase as more people learn to harness these new technologies and services, realizing they're not quite as scary have some have made them out to be. But there is a learning curve and it's a painful curve for some.

Either way, it's great to see Jeff lay out all of this in one place, and it shows that he's still thinking about the nature of the industry and where it's heading next. While many from the old industry still look at the future and try to figure out how to hold it back, more and more are realizing that the right play is to move forwards, quickly.

The fact that textbooks are too expensive is something that has been documented pretty well here. For example we have the stories of students paying over $180 for an art history book that contains no images, and a student being sued for copyright infringement for selling legally purchased imported textbooks for cheaper than the publishers want. The high cost of textbooks is such a problem that even some governments are taking steps to mitigate that cost.

vmanda sends news that the government of Guyana has begun buying pirated copies of textbooks for its public schools because the publishers charge way too much.

The government of Guyana is making no apologies about the fact that it is buying pirated textbooks for public schools as a cost-saving measure.

Cabinet Secretary Roger Luncheon says officials are buying pirated books from printing firms and companies that photocopy books because of their high quality and lower prices. Luncheon said the government's move is justified.

Of course the publishers of those books are not too happy. In a statement from Emma House of the Publishers Association, she states that the government is breaking many laws.

The Cabinet’s decision in Guyana to procure pirated textbooks for public schools is an indisputably illegal act. This decision is in contravention of Guyanese law, Caribbean law (CARICOM’s revised Treaty of Chaguaramas) and the international Berne Convention.

Of course, what the PA seems to be overlooking is just why Guyana has chosen to ignore international copyright. It feels that the books are just way too expensive. By insisting on high prices, the publishers who make up that organization have put themselves out of reach of this country. Further, the fact that the government is willing to pay for books from pirate book printers is proof that the publishers could do much more to get Guyana to buy legally. Instead, the publishers have chosen to bully the country into paying out more for books than it can.

This is once again the result of copyright holders refusing to adapt to the marketplace, even a marketplace they have built their business around. These publishers have gotten so used to price gouging their customers that they do not know how to properly respond to someone choosing a cheaper alternative. Because the publishers have blinded themselves from reality, they are failing here. If they were actually willing to learn, they would take a step back and work with the government of Guyana to come up with a pricing plan that would actually work. Of course, that might be too much to ask from some companies.

Update: vmanda has provided an update stating that, at the behest of the Publishers Association, a Guyanese court has granted an injunction against local companies that illegally copy textbooks. This means the the government will no longer be able to buy pirated textbooks for the time being. There is no word yet on the government's response to the injunction.

A "conservative" website apparently reported that Chinese hackers broke into a White House military office computer system with a "spear-phishing attack (like regular phishing, but directly targeted at a victim)". The White House has confirmed the story while saying that nothing sensitive was accessed:

A White House official speaking on background late Sunday confirmed there was an attempted hack but said that it affected an unclassified network, was “isolated” and that there was no evidence that any data had been stolen.

I'm not a huge fan of any sort of conspiracy theories, but it does seem questionable that this comes out just as the White House is circulating an executive order dealing with "cybersecurity," and so soon after the administration's preferred Cybersecurity Act got rejected by the Senate. The Free Beacon website that first broke the story seems to use it to suggest that the administration is "soft" on security -- though it was conservatives in the Senate who blocked the Cybersecurity Act from passing in the first place.

Either way, it seems likely that people are trying to hack into key networks all the time. This doesn't sound like much of a big deal, but the fact that the White House is confirming the news just as it's pushing this exec order (while still hoping to get legislation through in the lame duck session), at least makes you wonder if the whole thing isn't being "leaked" on purpose to get cybersecurity stories back into the press to push for the exec order or for a revival of the bill.

An interesting story over at Hypebot highlights how some "big name" musicians are threatening to "strike" and withhold new albums if they're not happy with how the sale of the label Parlophone goes down. As you may recall, with Universal Music getting approval to buy EMI, it has to sell off Parlophone, the iconic label that's home to a bunch of well known artists. And while Hypebot's title says that they're striking over the sale of EMI to UMG, that doesn't appear to be the case at all. The concern has to do solely with the sale of Parlophone:

Many of the label’s artists are unhappy being viewed merely as “assets” or “pawns” in a game that is set to be in the best interest for the powers that be. To protest this move, the rockers of Blur have joined forces with a number of Parlophone label-mates to collectively lobby potential bidders for the company and calling on them to place the interests of artists first, as reported by The Independent. If the musicians don’t find the new Parlophone owners to their liking, they could withhold all future releases and effectively go on "strike". 

"Artists are the only people currently being left out of the conversation, which is unfortunate,” said Blur drummer Dave Rowntree to The Independent. “If the staff at the label are unhappy with the new arrangements they are free to leave, but the artists are not."

I'm sympathetic to the artists here, because it almost certainly does suck for them... but I'm not quite sure what they're expecting here. For the labels, they are an asset and have always been just that. That's why they signed a contract in the first place. If they didn't like it, they shouldn't have signed a contract. Threatening to void the contract because they don't like some completely unrelated piece of business doesn't seem like a particularly reasonable response.

To be honest, it seems like in selling off Parlophone, the label might actually wind up somewhere more progressive and open to a future that embraces what technology allows, rather than holds it back. Perhaps the artists shouldn't make a big stink until they see what results. But, either way, if this was such a big concern, why didn't they write into their contracts that the deals were null & void should the label be sold?

Over at The Atlantic, Jordan Weissmann has a great article covering the latest paper from economists Michele Boldrin and David Levine (names that, I hope, are familiar to Techdirt readers), which argues why it might make sense to abolish the patent system entirely, even while admitting that patents may have some benefits in some cases. You can read the full paper here (pdf) where it makes "the case against patents." While this may sound similar to Boldrin and Levine's earlier works, this one goes further, and is definitely worth the read. In effect, they argue that not only do patents rarely help innovation, but, even worse, the existence of patents (even where they help) will only lead to the system being expanded to where they do more harm than good:

The initial eruption of small and large innovations leading to the creation of a new industry -- from chemicals to cars, from radio and TV to personal computers and investment banking -- is seldom, if ever, born out of patent protection and is, instead, the fruits of highly competitive-cooperative environments. It is only after the initial stages of explosive innovation and rampant growth end that mature industries turn toward the legal protection of patents, usually because their internal grow potential diminishes and the industry structure become concentrated.

A closer look at the historical and international evidence suggests that while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side-effects, strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side-effects. Both theoretically and empirically, the political economy of government operated patent systems indicates that weak legislation will generally evolve into a strong protection and that the political demand for stronger patent protection comes from old and stagnant industries and firms, not from new and innovative ones. Hence the best solution is to abolish patents entirely through strong constitutional measures and to find other legislative instruments, less open to lobbying and rent-seeking, to foster innovation whenever there is clear evidence that laissez-faire under-supplies it.

The report does a good job highlighting how innovative firms and innovative industries almost never use patents (or use them sparingly). This should indicate that the basis of the patent system (that it's needed to encourage innovation) is shaky at best. But, they note that what little research there is on this tends to be ignored. They even highlight research that finds that IP strengthening almost always happens during times of "deregulation" where researchers (including Judge Richard Posner) struggle to figure out why that would be. Boldrin and Levine argue that the confusion here is mainly due to thinking of patents as "property" rather than as a monopoly restriction:

In fact, neither Landes and Posner nor, apparently, most industrial organization researchers, seem interested in figuring out why patents are either ignored or scarcely used in new and competitive industries while being highly valued and over-used in mature and highly concentrated ones. The point here seems to be that, being themselves strong advocates of the usefullness of patents in fostering innovations, the authors fail to recognize the intrinsic problem with the design of the institution itself. Being not a “property” right but rather a “monopoly” right, patent possessors will automatically leverage whatever initial rents their monopoly provides them with in order to increase their monopoly power until all potential rents are extracted and, probably, dissipated by the associated lobbying and transaction costs.

Boldrin and Levine also hit back at the charge that abolition of the patent system is too extreme given that it already exists. They note that other bad laws of a similar nature have been ditched as well:

Economists fought for decades – and ultimately with great success – to abolish trade restrictions. It will not escape the careful reader that patents are very much akin to trade restrictions as they prevent the free entry of competitors in national markets, thereby reducing the growth of productive capacity and slowing down economic growth. The same way that trade restrictions were progressively reduced until reaching (almost complete) abolition, a similar (albeit, hopefully less slow) approach should be adopted to “get rid” of patents. Moreover the nature of patents as time-limited makes it relatively easy to phase them out by phasing in ever shorter patent durations. This conservative approach has also the advantage that if reducing patent terms indeed has a catastrophic effect on innovation the process can easily be reversed.

They admit that the poster child for the patent system, the pharma industry, may have to face the biggest changes, but also suggest that there are plenty of ways to still create the necessary incentives, including both lowering the costs of clinical trials and using prizes to award key drug treatment developments.

It's an interesting read. I will admit that I'm not fully convinced that the argument makes sense -- but I find the argument a lot more persuasive than most others I've seen.