It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty.

The solution: A simple tool everyone can use to do the right thing with the click of a button. That’s why we’re building Open Attribute, a suite of tools that makes it ridiculously simple for anyone to copy and paste the correct attribution for any CC licensed work. These tools will query the metadata around a CC-licensed object and produce a properly formatted attribution that users can copy and paste wherever they need to.

sigur rós - homage or fromage?: http://bit.ly/dBFuCf

Lawrence Lessig's essay on how copyright laws in the US are ill-equipped to deal with emerging (and indeed established) technologies.

"How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? The question is more urgent than ever following the recent settlement between Google and the authors and publishers who were suing it for alleged breach of copyright."