Lawrence Solum has a good thoughtful post today considering the RIAA’s recent tactic of threatening to file numerous lawsuits against people who share many copyrighted songs on peer-to-peer networks.

Go read it.

I agree with Solum that this strategy is not likely to be successful, and that the future of file-trading depends on the evolution of “copynorms” (the informal social attitudes about the rightness or wrongness of duplicating material that is copyrighted).

I think this topic is fascinating and I’m very curious to see how this all plays out.

I used to think these issues were straightforward. It seemed clear to me that artists and authors should have complete intellectual property rights over their works and should be able to dictate the terms of their distribution and use. But, over time, things began to look a bit murkier. Digital copies are different from objects whose use by one person excludes its use by another. It seems that there are limits to what kind of control over these copies the creator should have.

I’m not very confident that our legal system will strike the right balance, but I hope that markets and the common sense of most people will get us to a reasonable state where artists are compensated for their efforts and fans have enough flexibility to explore and enjoy the works without onerous restrictions

It should be an interesting ride.

Today is Milton Friedman‘s 91st birthday.

I saw his Free To Choose series on PBS in 1980 and was very impressed; not just with how bright and convincing he was, but with how thoughtful, kind, and
patient he was with people who didn’t understand his arguments.

The series inspired me to go out and read Free To Choose, and then Capitalism and Freedom.

Milton Friedman was an important influence on me, and I’m sure he’ll continue to be a great influence on others for many years to come.

I heard him on a radio interview a few months ago and he still seemed very sharp. I hope he’s having a great time!

The Smoking Gun has already picked its 2003 Legal Document of the Year.

It’s hard to argue with their confidence.

Does anybody have any insight about why people let hearing words upset them so much? I can understand how hearing horrible ideas could be upsetting, but this kind of thing always struck me as incredibly foolish.

Bob Hope died late last night at 100.

I’ve always enjoyed and admired Hope for his great humor and cleverness; but also for his tireless efforts to entertain American troops wherever they were stationed.

He said he wanted to be remembered “for the laughs.”

He will be, and for much more.

Tyler Cowen has been blogging about telemarketing at the Volokh Conspiracy here, here, here, here and here.

In that last post Tyler says:

YOU ARE EMBOLDENING ME: Being a contrarian by nature, the more you all attack telemarketing, the more I like it.

The ideal situation would be to have a market in telemarketing. That is, you could contract for how many calls you would receive, and what kind of calls. You might, for instance, get a discount on your phone service for allowing ten calls a month, or whatever. Plus we can imagine various kinds of intermediaries, perhaps computer-based in nature, to “screen” your calls, offering to take them at varying prices, based on your previous instructions.

I can imagine fifteen reasons why this is impractical, but I bet that lasts only for a short time. Europe has already experimented with lower cost phone service, if you are willing to hear an ad before you place a call (see my What Price Fame? on this, updates on where it has gone, if anywhere, would be welcome).

So five years from now we could have such a market. Now, does the do not call list hasten or slow down this development? On one hand, it may hasten it, by forcing telemarketers to buy consent. On the other hand, the blanket prohibition of the list may make it harder to arrange these future transactions. After all, you would first have to get your name off the list, I wonder how responsive our government would be, and how liability would work if there were mistakes, lags, etc.

I could imagine that a do not call list could make it harder to make the transition to a real market in unsolicited phone calls. In which case we are back to the do not call list as perhaps being a bad thing.

I think he’s right that we should have a market in phone-call access. Telemarketing isn’t all bad. Some people like to get these calls. Most of us wouldn’t mind an occasional interruption if it was for something that we’d be likely to be interested in, and/or if we could get paid for it a price we specify. And it’s an interesting question whether the Do-Not-Call list will help or hinder our path to this.

I currently think it will help, because before we can have a market in phone-call access, we need a legal framework that obliges marketers to comply with the wishes of the recipients. The Do-Not-Call program is a crude, but first, attempt at this.

We probably also need a similar mechanism to address e-mail spam. And, perhaps, even snail mail junk-mail since unwanted snail mail imposes costs on us, too. It takes our time to sort through, and if we get a lot of junk mail we’re more likely to miss an important message in the pile.

But, I think he’s wrong to consider this as a purely economic issue. I think there are rights involved and these should supersede consideration of whether violating them maximizes aggregate want-satisfaction. I think people should be able to avoid unwanted interruptions in their home by taking steps to declare which messages are welcome, which are not, etc. This should be respected, and violating these wishes is wrong, even if some people actually want interruptions and allowing interruptions would lead to more genuine want-satisfaction than a simple “No Solicitors” mechanism would.

To see what I mean, consider this: If you were to find that there would be an aggregate increase of true want-satisfaction if men forced themselves on women who said “No” (some of them really mean “Yes” and many of the men are really interested, etc.), would you advocate allowing it?

So, I agree that telemarketing can be a good thing, but I insist that it must be voluntary. I think it’s important to give recipients control of who can access them in their homes.

I’m now the #1 result for “Reasonable Man” in a Google search.

You can’t argue with that (and be right, too)!

This exchange between congressman John Dingell and Ward Connerly is amusing but embarrassing to me as a citizen (as is this recent incident).

The congressman was so proud of his stupid letter that he put a link to it on his web page. What an idiot!

I’m glad Connerly’s response got published. It’s pretty good.

We just got the Fourth Season DVD set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and we’re loving it. Excellent quality and some cool special features.

I was a latecomer to Buffy. I saw the movie a long time ago and didn’t like it that much. And, I’m not usually big on fantasy stories that center on magic and demons, etc.. But, lately, I’ve been watching old epsodes (captured by Tivo) with my son and having a blast. The writing is excellent. The dialog is great, the action is fun, the characters are interesting, and the stories often involve interesting and important ideas.

So, if you aren’t already into Buffy, you might want to check it out. And if you are, but don’t have the DVDs, I can at least recommend the Fourth Season set. The descriptions of the earlier seasons’ sets didn’t strike me as being quite as compelling (hard to say why), but they might be worthwhile also.

Steven Den Beste has a great review of what the War On Terror is all about and why many of the current criticisms of the war, and its justifications, are mistaken.

Check it out.

Wow. I just noticed that somebody hit this site by searching Yahoo for: anti-Masturbation device for your son.

I’m hoping that it was just a search out of morbid curiosity, and not out of an intent to inflict such a thing on someone.

Let there be no ambiguity. This blog supports the right of people to masturbate. And to dance. And to do weird web searches. Any attempts to prohibit people from ever doing these things are evil.

Ok?