Intellectual Property

Google’s recent “Report: How Google Fights Piracy,” begs cross-examination, for the same reason courts and Congress employ the tool of cross examination and the process of adversarial hearings to get to the real truth. 

We all are familiar with the legal oath: “Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?”

Please don’t miss my latest op-ed: “Congress: Restore Our Rightful Privacy Ownership” – here.

It makes the case that privacy is a form of property under the Constitution and that Congress must step up and legislate in order to restore Americans’ reasonable expectation of privacy online -- regardless of what technology is involved.

Own your privacy.

Privacy Theft Series

Please find the new Precursor online Research Library -- here -- which will be kept up-to-date going forward.

• It presently catalogues links to ~270 pieces of Precursor research in ~20 ongoing research series.

This should make it much easier to scan and find particular research of interest by subject and theme.

• An outline of subjects and themes are below.

Thank you.

Scott Cleland

Precursor LLC – Proven Thought Leadership

Yet again, Google has violated the first rule of holes; when in a hole, stop digging.

Google is unwisely keeping the story alive that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said this to Charlie Rose on air: [Google] “took our stuff and … that was wrong. This really bothers me. I don’t see how [Larry Page] thinks you can just copy someone else’s stuff.” 

In a Google+ post to his followers, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt responded: “We typically try to avoid getting dragged into public battles with other companies. But I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Larry Ellison’s claims that Google “took [Oracle’s] stuff”.  It’s simply untrue -- and that’s not just my opinion, but the judgment of a U.S. District Court.” 

Does Google really want to engage in a broader public conversation about the truth and facts of Google’s serial disrespect for the property of others?

Information may want to be free, but physical networks are costly.

Few proponents of net neutrality appreciate the trillions of dollars of investment it has taken to build and upgrade the Internet’s vast and varied infrastructure that we all enjoy today. Simply, the Internet is not free of cost.

Economical policies have made the Internet universal and have enabled users to access the content, apps, and devices of their choice – what net neutrality is supposedly all about. On the other hand, uneconomical policies that discourage economic growth, return-on-investment, or respect for property can have unintended consequences and can threaten the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs.      

Please see my latest Daily Caller Op-ed on proposed A la carte TV Legislation -- here. 

• It is Part 11 of my Defending First Principles Series.

* * * * *

Defending First Principles Series

Part 1: Debasing Free Speech as No-Cost Speech

Please click here for Google-YouTube's Internet Video Distribution Dominance -- Part XII of my seven-year, Googleopoly research series. 

• This is must read for anyone interested in: Google antitrust; Google's liability for willful blindness to piracy and copyright infringement, and the legal implications of Google trying to solve its access-to-quality-video content-problem by acquisition of Dish, DirecTV or a major studio/TV network.

Google-YouTube’s Internet Video Distribution Dominance -- Part XII of Googleopoly Research Series

• Why Internet video distribution competition is substantially lessened;

• How Google-YouTube anti-competitively gained Internet video distribution dominance; &

Google Inc. has a rap sheet longer than any Googler’s arm. See it here. It shows:

• 142 incidents in 13 countries and the EU, involving 6 continents;
• 34 official actions against Google: 1 criminal, 7 fraud, 4 theft, 11 antitrust, and 11 privacy;
• 6 near-record fines in 3 countries;
• 11 nations and the EU have Google under antitrust investigation;
• 11 official privacy sanctions in multiple countries;
• 12 different industries have sued Google for theft; and
• 20+ cyber-security lapses have surfaced in the last 2 years.

This evidence shows Google to be the worst corporate scofflaw in modern American history.

It is timely and relevant given that America’s Attorneys General are meeting in Boston June 18^th to discuss Google’s alleged aiding and abetting of criminal activity broadly. Google CEO Larry Page and General Counsel Kent Walker have been invited to the closed meeting to discuss the matter.

Bubbles happen because people ignore economics and assume away reality in their excitement over a new idea. “Virtual currencies” could be the latest tech “economics of abundance” bubble in the making. Fans of abundance economics imagine that the free and open Internet’s near zero marginal cost of borderless transactions will ultimately slay traditional economics of scarcity.

Cyber-utopians imagine that currency, or money, is a simple function, like any other product or service that they have made openly available to everyone in the world at virtually no cost on the Internet. They imagine the only thing that matters with the business of money is how money is transmitted.

They assume creating money is just a coding and crowd-sourcing task. How hard could that be? What possibly could go wrong? It’s only money.

For anyone interested in intellectual property rights, there is a new must read post by the Free State Foundation entitled: "The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property," by Randy May and Seth Cooper.

It is simply outstanding. It has great clarity of thought, scholarship and wisdom.

It should become a succinct go-to piece that explains the philosophical and Constitutional underpinnings of property rights generally and intellectual property rights specifically.

Don't miss it, and please let others know about it.