Thursday, September 29, 2005
Regulation Without Frontiers
My colleague Adam Thierer has written extensively in this space about the danger of U.S. policymakers extending broadcast regulation to other visual media, such as cable, satellite and even the Internet. That could become a reality in Europe by the end of the year, as I pointed out this week in a Progress Snapshot titled "Regulation Without Frontiers: Europe Shows U.S. Policymakers How Not to Embrace Convergence."
Continue reading Regulation Without Frontiers . . .
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:20 PM | Communications, Digital Europe, Free Speech, Internet, Mass Media | TrackBacks (0)
Tuesday, March 1, 2005
Digital Europe photos
For those who weren't able to attend our Digital Europe events in Milan and Brussels, we've posted some photos from our conferences online.
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 5:13 PM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Monday, February 28, 2005
Radical Ideas Reviewed: Can Contracts Substitute for IP?
In Milan, Professor Pascal Salin of the Universite Paris Dauphine delivered a challenging talk going to the fundamentals of intellectual property--asking, in effect, how can one in principle support IP at all? For it conflicts with physical property rights; it raises the troubling question of rights in ideas. He suggested in closing that protection for innovation could be established by contract, by being first-to-market, or other practices. Other IP scholars on the free-market side have from time to time raised similar fundamental arguments with the whole idea of IP.
It is possible, of course, to endlessly philosophize about this subject, and, believe me, I would do so if given the slightest encouragement... One way to slice this Gordian knot is by thinking about practicalities. What would it mean, in practice, for contract to substitute for intellectual property?
Continue reading Radical Ideas Reviewed: Can Contracts Substitute for IP? . . .
- posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:05 PM | Digital Europe, General | TrackBacks (0)
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Trade Secret or Software Patents?
Following discussion of software patents in Milan, someone (I wish I could recollect who, but it might have been my colleague Jim Delong) made the point that part of the impetus behind patenting software in Europe came from the desire that code be "opened up." In the past, code kept under wraps would qualify for trade secret protection, but open code (obviously) does not.
I thought this well worth noting.
- posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:27 AM | Digital Europe, Patents, Software | TrackBacks (1)
Friday, February 18, 2005
IP & the Centre for the New Europe
Our partner for the recent events in Brussels was the Centre for the New Europe, which runs a regularly-updated blog on IP that is well-worth checking out.
- posted by James DeLong @ 8:58 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Thursday, February 17, 2005
EU Patent Fight
It appears that years of work in the EU on adopting a sensible approach to software patents will be thrown out and begun anew, according to an action taken here today in Brussels by the EU Conference of Presidents. While I face a steep learning curve on both patents and the byzantine nature of EU procedure, I want to relate my reaction to a press conference held by an alliance of radicals who stated fairly clearly their desire to never see software patented in Europe, even if it is obliged to do so under TRIPs. This EU issue has surfaced repeatedly during our time in Europe, highlighting the fortuitous timing of our presence.
Continue reading EU Patent Fight . . .
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:43 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
More on Standards
Let's hear it for Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, co-developers of the TCP/IP protocol that directs traffic on the Internet. Ray Gifford has repeatedly cited the success of TCP/IP here at our standards events in Milan and Brussels; he notes the protocol, being open and non-proprietary, has allowed all sorts of innovators to build upon it without fear of someone seeking royalties. However, Ray also has noted that the protocol is decades old, and being non-proprietary, there is no incentive for any party to improve upon it (look at the struggles related to adoption of IPv6, for example). Lesson? There is no magic bullet on standards, either open or closed, proprietary or non-proprietary. Wherever you fall on the spectrum graph, there are positives and negatives.
I mention this because I just read here in the International Herald Tribune that Kahn and Cerf have been awarded the prestigious 2004 A.M. Turing Award for their TCP/IP protocol. They're the 39th recipient of the award, named for the famed British mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing. Suprisingly, this award designed for computer science had never before gone to work in the area of computer networking. The market has gone in this direction for years now and isn't looking back; nice of the Association for Computing Machinery, the granters of the award, to catch up.
PFF was lucky enough to have Dr. Kahn give our first CEO luncheon of the year, a fascinating discussion on digital objects. A webcast of that event is free online at our site.
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:34 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (1)
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Software Patents: Prepared Remarks from Milan
The following are my prepared remarks from Milan, offering a partial rebuttal of some of the arguments against software patents. Note that showing that software patents are actually helpful is a task to leave for another day... My actual talk tracked this substance closely but not exactly:
Continue reading Software Patents: Prepared Remarks from Milan . . .
- posted by Solveig Singleton @ 5:58 AM | Digital Europe, International, Patents, Software | TrackBacks (0)
The "Open Source Community"
(Brussels): Some (many) Europeans refer to "the open source [software] community." A point we make in response is that we do not know exactly what that is, because we see four different groups, at least, involved in the FOSS movement.
1) Academicians, who want to invent code and circulate it freely for comment and improvement, and who do not want their creative efforts to be propertized by others. For this group, open source licenses make perfect sense. This is simply the principle of of free and open academic inquiry, as applied to research on software.2) The New Millennium Collectivists/IP Socialists/Cargo Cultists (see past blogs for definitions), who want to de-propertize and de-marketize software, initially, and then all IP. This group is associated with Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, Larry Lessig, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Continue reading The "Open Source Community" . . .
- posted by James DeLong @ 5:08 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Europe & the Free Culture Movement
(From Brussels): (No links in this one -- the hotel charges $1 for each 6 minutes of connectivity, so I don't want to take the time to find them. But at least there is no queue to use the business center's single computer.)
Yesterday, Ray and I spoke at the CNE/PFF lunch for people associated with the European Parliament and other opinion leaders. The topic was interoperability, open standards, and open source software.
One illuminating incident occurred when I mentioned the more grandiose ideas of the U.S. Free Culture Movement -- its concept that FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is a pilot program for other creative products, and that eventually all creativity should be distributed over the Internet for free, paid for by a government fund generated by taxes on hardware and connectivity.
The Europeans had not heard any of this, and at first they assumed that I was telling a joke. When they realized I wasn't, they were disbelieving -- how could anyone take such an idea seriously? (My sentiments exactly, of course.)
It was very interesting, because it means that the context of the discussion about FOSS is quite different on the two continents.
- posted by James DeLong @ 4:54 AM | Digital Europe, Free Culture Movement | TrackBacks (0)
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
European Think Tanks
Ray Gifford comments on the think tank scene in Europe.
- posted by James DeLong @ 4:26 PM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Europe's Vital Conservatives
The best part of Digital Europe 2005 has been to meet fellow "classical liberals" here in Europe (in the U.S. we would call them conservatives or libertarians). Not only is the Centre for New Europe a welcome outpost in the bureaucratic environs of Brussels (Bruxelles, if you want to be continental), there is Istituto Bruno Leoni in Italy. I also met Pierre Bessard, who is working with the newly-formed Institut Constant to be a classical liberal voice in french speaking Switzerland. The Stockholm Network, meanwhile, links them all together in a (loose, to be sure) liberty-loving confederation. Through the Stockholm Network, I found the delightfully named Edmund Burke Foundation in the Netherlands, working no doubt to make sure that the glory of Europe is not extinguished forever.
Continue reading Europe's Vital Conservatives . . .
- posted by Ray Gifford @ 11:25 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (2)
Openness, Closedness, Property and Standards
The discussion today in Brussels with the Centre for New Europe centered again on standards in the digital age. They are important and hard, I think we can agree. My main point was simple, and hopefully not simplistic: there is no a priori basis on which one can prefer proprietary to non-proprietary standards, open standards to closed standards. Therefore, the role for public policy and regulators is modest and diffident. Define and incrementally improve the intellectual property laws -- both copyright and patent -- but do no radical surgery on these institutions. Likewise, there being no metaphysical certainty about the most beneficial type of standard, governments should be wary of preferring one model to another, absent manifest collective action problems or antitrust violations.
- posted by Ray Gifford @ 11:10 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Monday, February 14, 2005
The Culture Front
On the PFF blog, Patrick wrote:
The Beatles apparently loved to stay at the Grand Duomo [in Milan], and listening to the high-pitched screams of Italian teens in the square, I thought maybe the Fab Four had returne.Well, he should have come to Rome with us over the weekend. Just down from our hotel was a stained glass window of -- The Beatles. And next to it, one of Elvis.
Good to see the 20th century culture added to the two millennia jumble of central Rome. I wonder what Hadrian, or Pope Alexander VI, would have thought.
- posted by James DeLong @ 4:02 PM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
On to Brussels
We arrived in Brussels today, where Ray will address a lunch tomorrow, and I will do a beer-and-pizza session on Wednesday evening.
The theme of each will be a variation on our theme in Milan last Friday -- interoperability is crucial to the digital world, but in this area, as in so many others, insofar as government intervention is concerned, the motto should be "less is more." Interesting things are going on in the private world of standard setting, and the private actors are working out novel solutions to the problems. It is a good time to let new ideas of property rights and contract develop from the bottom up, not impose them a priori according to the preconceived ideas of elites or bureaucrats.
In particular, it is important that the open source movement be seen for what it is -- another business model. Increasingly, Linus is funded by hardward companies and distributors, not by a hive of volunteers. There is nothing wrong with this model, if the hardware companies want to pursue it; but there is nothing morally superior about it, either.
In talking to Europeans, it seems to me that their understanding of this reality is a bit laggard. Many are still entranced by the hype. So the sessions over the next couple of days should be interesting.
- posted by James DeLong @ 3:50 PM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Thinking on Duomo Time
I've mentioned that our hotel and conference site overlooked the Duomo Cathedral, one of the largest in Europe. Having scampered all across its roof, sliding over flying buttresses and surfing down drainage channels - imagine the liability risks if that were permitted in the U.S.! - I was struck by the level of detail in the cathedral (900 life-size statues adorn its exterior), and also its remarkable engineering, particularly since it was designed during the Dark Ages. Our host, Alberto Mingardi, pointed out to me that the cathedral took over 400 years to build. He said when Italians tackle a tough task, they say it could be a Duomo-scale project. Of course, we Americans have a difficult time fathoming 400 years, let alone half that time, but Alberto's words stayed in my mind as I listened to the spirited debate at our conference. As Ray Gifford said at the beginning and end of the conference, standard-setting is hard. It's important to take a long view, I realize. I'm just not sure any market can wait as long as the Milanese did for the Duomo to be constructed.
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:50 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Open Source Vs. Proprietary
Much of the conference involved speakers from think tanks, academia and government. The last panel featured European business executives. The message? Interoperability is a natural result of marketplace forces. Economic growth is more likely to occur both in a market and for the market participants when interoperability is present. This market reality in no way pits open source software against proprietary software, both of which can embrace interoperability.
Continue reading Open Source Vs. Proprietary . . .
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:40 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
MTV
As I noted earlier, Milan is peculiar - to this Catholic at least - in that it begins Lent not on Ash Wednesday but on its own Ash Sunday. As a result, I got to see Milan's Carnival, its own version of Mardi Gras (and presumably a much older version).
It doesn't seem to involve the alcohol intake one finds in New Orleans - Italians love their wine, but they also understand moderation - but one nice feature was children dressing in costumes, from Hamtaro to Spiderman (I'm assuming in medieval times the costumes were slightly different). I've been missing my kids over here, but I smiled as I imagined how much fun they'd have running around Duomo Square, spraying silly string and taking balloons from smiling Italian women, all beautiful of course.
The square was directly outside our meeting room in the Hotel Grand Duomo, six flights down. For the most part this wasn't too much of a difficulty. However, late in the day MTV showed up, and exhorted the crowd in Italian to, well I don't know, but I gathered to get rowdy.
If so, the MTV folks succeeded. The Beatles apparently loved to stay at the Grand Duomo, and listening to the high-pitched screams of Italian teens in the square, I thought maybe the Fab Four had returne. I also learned that teenage girls, around the world, have a universal shriek.
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:35 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Government and Standards
Is competition in standards a good thing? Here at PFF, we're pretty much in favor of competition in any market, and our fellows made the same argument regarding standards.
Senior fellow Tom Lenard, addressing the EU debate regarding patents and open source, said it was important that Europe not preclude competition among standards. That's not a small point to make. As Wall Street Journal Europe editor Brian Carney noted, many in Europe are proud of the fact that the continent worked together to set one wireless standard - GSM - which many say was a major impetus in that industry growing more rapidly than that in the U.S. (To be fair, the EU's Simon Bensasson said another factor in that growth was Europe's adoption of caller-party-pays).
Continue reading Government and Standards . . .
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:30 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
EU Procurement Policy
When is a software purchasing decision more than a software purchasing decision? To many here, when the purchaser is the European Union.
The EU has no formal position on which is better, proprietary or open source software. To representatives of proprietary software in attendance, that was fine with them - they're happy to compete with both open source and proprietary software in the large European market. However, the EU's recent approach to procurement of software for its own computers appears to be undercutting the body's claim to technological neutrality. This was the subject of a spirited luncheon discussion with Simon Bensasson of the European Union and Tim Finton of the State Department.
Continue reading EU Procurement Policy . . .
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:25 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Salute!
I've lost count of the number of conferences I've attended over the years, most of them in the U.S. but some abroad. However, all of these conference hosts could learn something from the Italians, particularly our hosts at the Istituto Bruno Leoni. For all you conference planners out there, here's a proposed plan:
Begin the conference with industrial-strength coffee, the kind that my dad would say will "put hair on your chest." Serve a 3-course lunch complete with chocolate mousse that is so rich that you wonder how you can take another bite, but of course you do. End the lunch, at which fine wine was served, with magnificent espresso. Have an afternoon break complete with a return of that industrial-strength coffee, then conclude the conference with an outdoor reception featuring champagne. Bene!
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:20 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Pressure for Openness
I've mentioned earlier our attendee from Europe's Free Software Foundation. I'm not naming him as he was an attendee not a panelist, but we were happy to have him as he enriched the debate, and was in no way strident or disruptive, despite finding much with which to disagree. He knew the debate well, and was quick with a response to any argument made. However, my colleague Jim DeLong did seem to bring him up short at one point late in the day.
Throughout the day our FSF friend had been crusading against software patents. Naturally, he was also disdainful of proprietary software. In a late session, responding to an argument that proprietary software makers were pressing for more and more patents, Jim said if true that was only to be expected. "The pressure of the open source movement is pushing proprietary software to open up," Jim said. "That makes them [proprietary software makers] turn all the more to patent protection." After the session, our visitor from the FSF approached Jim and congratulated him on making an argument our FSF friend hadn't heard before.
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:15 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
The Need for Patents
Do we really need software patents? There's no question that some software patents are controversial, and most would agree that some reform is needed in the U.S. to prevent predatory patents or other roadblocks to further advancement by 2nd-generation programmers. But we are in Europe, and many on this continent would like to go further than that. In the not too recent past the European Union had a policy stating explicitly that no software should be patented. An attempt to protect software via copyright law has proved, shall we say, less than successful, and the EU has since tried to find a way to extend patents to software in a way that adheres to the TRIPs agreement. Just last month, that effort stalled once again, an ominous development indeed. That reality overshadowed the conference here, such that even when patents weren't specifically on the agenda, they were central to discussions.
Continue reading The Need for Patents . . .
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:10 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Real vs. Intellectual Property
I don't believe any reasonable person would disagree that there are distinct differences between real and intellectual property. PFF Senior Fellow James DeLong, director of our Center for the Study of Digital Property, said for much of his career he had viewed them as entirely distinct, but that over time he has come to see "very important continuities" between the two. A recurring theme at the Milan conference was the issue of property rights, and how those rights should be enforced, or whether they should even be recognized. In fact, there seemed to be in the audience an alignment between the so-called "Copyleft" that wants a commons of free goods and libertarians who don't believe property rights should exist and instead would rely on contract law. As what Ray calls a "practical libertarian," I was unnerved by this alliance, but repeatedly the conference speakers pointed out how it was all but impossible to talk about contract law without property rights.
Continue reading Real vs. Intellectual Property . . .
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:05 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Setting the Standard on Standards
Standards-setting comes about through a wide range of processes, and creates a spectrum of options that vary from open to closed and proprietary to non-proprietary. "Public policy should not foreclose any of these options."
That's how PFF President Ray Gifford opened our conference titled "Interoperability in the Digital World: Open Standards, Open Source, Property Rights and Markets." Co-sponsored with Istituto Bruno Leoni, the conference at the Grand Hotel Duomo in the heart of Milan was full of excellent speakers and insightful audience interaction, even if we had to compete with a pre-Lent Carnival in the Duomo plaza outside (it was two days after Ash Wednesday, but our host, the Istituto's Alberto Mingardi, informed me that Milan marches to the beat of a different Catholic drummer, and doesn't start Lent on Ash Wednesday, but rather the following Sunday).
Continue reading Setting the Standard on Standards . . .
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:00 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Thursday, February 10, 2005
The Shadow of Kazaa
Milan is a beautiful city, despite some signs of fatigue (most notably the everpresent graffiti). It's also a city that embraces modernity and commerce, and thus was a fitting site for our first leg of Digital Europe 2005.
Modernity has its limits, however. Staying in a hotel across from a centuries-old cathedral that took 400 years to build, one can't get upset at finding no Internet access in one's room. I am an e-mail addict, but it was probably good to be away from my laptop for lengthy periods of time.
I did occasionally feel the need to go online, however, and the hotel provided two computers in its lobby with Internet access. Once I mastered the peculiar keyboard - strike that, I never mastered the keyboard, I just learned to cope with it - I was online and e-mailing away.
Jim DeLong and I were struck, however, at how slow the computers were. The casings appeared fairly new, the operating system was up-to-date. I was baffled by this mystery.
Then I thought I saw part of the answer. On the desktop of the computer I was using was a Kazaa icon. Jim likes to say nothing is free. Well, I was paying the price, in terms of slowness from spyware, for someone else's free access to content on Kazaa.
- posted by Patrick Ross @ 8:39 PM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (0)
Friday, January 28, 2005
Digital Europe
New passports have arrived, tickets bought, and in a couple of weeks much of PFF's staff will be off to Milan and Brussels to talk about open standards, product and service interoperability, and open source software.
We will be reporting regularly, so keep track of the Digital Europe home page.
The topic may sound dry, though we have been working hard to punch up the descriptions with gratuitous sex and violence, but the issues are crucial to the development of the digital world. Further, the debate over standards -- whether they can and should sometimes be proprietary -- is a very important part of the debate over intellectual property specifically, property rights in general, and market society.
Specific events:
Continue reading Digital Europe . . .
- posted by James DeLong @ 10:00 AM | Digital Europe | TrackBacks (1)
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Digital Europe
PFF's Digital Europe web page, describing the activities we will be undertaking in Europe next month, went up this week. The events we will be co-hosting in Milan and Brussels will focus on Interoperability in the Digital World - a subject that encompasses a lot of issues. One idea that will be examined during the course of these conferences is the notion that open source software (OSS) is more conducive to "openness" and interoperability than proprietary software.
In fact, there are very strong incentives for firms in network industries generally, including the proprietary software industry, to maintain interoperability, as the economics literature demonstrates quite clearly. The reason is simple. Maintaining interoperability with complementary systems increases the value of a firm's product to its customers. There are some exceptions to this rule, but even these exceptions do not necessarily violate economic efficiency.
Software developers can pursue interoperability in a variety of ways--on their own or through voluntary industry standard-setting groups that develop common technical standards that can be used across industries in different products. This type of activity has been around for a very long time and is now being adapted to the information technology world.
Ironically, open source runs into trouble in the standard-setting process, precisely because it requires companies to share their intellectual property. Proprietary software developers are willing to share because they can receive royalties, frequently under "reasonable and non discriminatory" (RAND) terms. However, the charging of royalties is inconsistent with most OSS licenses--e.g., the GPL. Therefore, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to incorporate OSS technology in a consensus standard that also utilized proprietary technology that was subject to a royalty. Similarly, propriety software would not be shared in a standard with GPL software, if that (which it would) precluded charging royalties.
- posted by Tom Lenard @ 3:28 PM | Digital Europe, IP | TrackBacks (1)
