Law: Intellectual Property 
Essential
Copyrights and Property Rights
On April 26, the Cato Institute hosted a conference on “Copyright Controversies: Freedom, Property, Content Creation, and the DMCA.” Speakers included Cato’s director of information policy studies Jim Harper; David K. Levine, coauthor of Against Intellectual Monopoly; and Consumer Electronics Association president Gary Shapiro.
Recommended
Google On Trial
Legal disputes have arisen concerning Google’s forthcoming ‘Book Search' utility. Adjunct Cato scholar Timothy Lee discusses this issue in light of a settlement that Google has reached with a group of authors and publishers. Lee claims that the problem is not with Google's stance on the copyright issues, but the expansive powers that the settlement grants. He furthermore cites Librarian of Congress Marybeth Peters, who wrote that "the settlement proposed by the parties would encroach on responsibility for copyright policy that traditionally has been the domain of Congress." Judicial approval of the settlement could alter copyright law, and potentially grant Google with certain unchecked power. Lee concludes that the issue at stake is not the Google case alone, but the establishment of a precedent, stating “Congress, not the judicial branch, is responsible for making broad changes to rules of copyright.”
*(Lee wrote a follow-up article based on a discussion with a Google policy analyst, featured here.)
Ask the Expert: Timothy B. Lee
In this week's Ask the Expert series, Cato adjunct scholar, Timothy B. Lee, tackles the issue of intellectual property rights from the libertarian perspective.
Raw Deal
By Sallie James: "Hollywood had better hope that a services liberalization deal reached Dec. 17 between the United States and the European Union holds. Without a successful resolution to the long-running Internet gambling dispute, American movies, music and software could be vulnerable to copyright infringement."
Kurt Loder on Technology and Freedom
"A legend for his work in Rolling Stone and at MTV, Loder is an outspoken libertarian--and a harsh critic of the nanny state in all its manifestations. In this wide-ranging conversation, Loder discusses technology, freedom, the coming collapse of traditional news media (and why that's a good thing), the misguided (and ultimately ineffective) attempt to shut down free expression, and much more."
Intellectual Property and the Property Rights Movement
By Peter S. Menell: "Should intellectual property be accorded the same protections as tangible property?"
Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The philosophy of property rights and ideal objects.
By Tom Palmer: "Without scarcity, an argument based either on the realization of freedom or on finding a solution to coordination games cannot generate a property right. Tangible goods are clearly scarce in that there are conflicting uses. It is this scarcity that gives rise to property rights. Intellectual property rights, however, do not rest on a natural scarcity of goods, but on an 'artificial, self created scarcity.'"