Comments on: A commons-inspired critique of Japan’s IP strategy

By: Andreas

Andreas — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 07:48:04 +0000

Thanks for the comments.

Carlos – I’m familiar with Lemley’s work, but McGowan is new to me. Thanks for the pointer.

Adamu – well, it would be effective indeed, but I doubt the USTR is going to listen ;-) . There’s also the “harmonization” problem of course: harmonization usually means that the country with less restrictions updates its legislation to a more restrictive framework, resulting in a sort of unstoppable arms race. And I’m afraid it’s gonna take a long time before nations start “downgrading” their copyright laws (as in: making them less restrictive).

By: Adamu

Adamu — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 07:11:55 +0000

Excellent piece. The pressure to amend IP protections to make them a welfare package for big business (including copyright term extension) comes not only from the Japanese business community and media but also from US (and I think EU?)- Japan bilateral economic negotiations. The US big businesses currently have the ear of the bureaucrats at the USTR who do the arm-twisting, so do you think it might be effective to get some pro-commons interest groups to try and convince the USTR to back off on IP issues?

By: Carlos Ovalle

Carlos Ovalle — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 04:31:23 +0000

I liked the article.

Out of curiousity, have you read Lemley’s work about Free Riding?
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=582602
or “Reducing Digital Copyright Infringement without Restricting Innovation?”
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=525662

They might be interesting.

McGowan’s Copyright Nonconsequentialism is also interesting, although maybe not as immediately relevant.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=540243

Just curious.