Thursday, January 17, 2008
So Now I’m a Republican
I guess. Sort of.
It’s been a few years since the Democratic Party abandoned its historic commitment to the growth of human rights and liberalism abroad.
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Friday, November 30, 2007
The SF Chronicle uncovers the Secret
The San Francisco Chronicle, which published the first review of Digital Phoenix way back in May 2005, has come through for me again. Today’s paper contains a very nice review of The Secret Circuit--though somehow, my own hardcopy of the paper seems to be missing the alleged “M” section.
Yet one more pointer that I belong in San Francisco. . .
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Tuesday, October 02, 2007
New Publications
Well, it’s been far too long since I’ve posted anything here. I guess some years the mood hits fairly often, and others it just doesn’t. It’s not like nothing interesting has occurred in the past six months--just that it has all unfolded without my comments. Yet somehow, the world seems to be muddling through. Disturbing. It is entirely possible that it’s not all about me. (Then again, I’m just throwing that out there as a possibility).
Meanwhile though, things have been happening in my own little corner of the universe. In particular, some of my publications have cleared the publication queues, and are now in print:
Publication information is as follows:
The Secret Circuit: The Little-Known Court where the Rules of the Information Age Unfold (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
Intellectual Property and the Alleged Collapsing of Aftermarkets, Rutgers L.J. 38(2) 399-472, 2007.
India’s Journey Towards an Effective Patent System, World Bank Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 4301.
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Monday, April 30, 2007
A Cautionary Tale of our Times
Continuing with my theme of making up for April’s delinquency, here’s another disturbing story.
A few weeks ago, The San Francisco Chronicle ran a bizarre, largely fictional anti-Israel screed written by Omar Ahmad. At the end of the article, the newspaper identified the author:
“Omar Ahmad is the founder and chairman emeritus of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He is the CEO of a Silicon Valley technology company.”
This identification interested me for two reasons. First, it is disconcerting to see major media outlets running posts from CAIR. CAIR is a well-known apologist for Islamic terror, funded by foreign sources unfriendly to the U.S. and the West. Ample documentation explains who CAIR really is. Nevertheless, its leaders continue to dupe major media outlets into accepting it as a valid spokes-organization for the “mainstream” American Muslim community. It is precisely this sort of misidentification that makes life difficult for people who wish to be both good Americans and good Muslims; it alienates liberal Muslims by elevating the status of soft-spoken radicals.
It was the second point of interest that motivated this posting, however: I have a friend named Omar Ahmad who heads a Silicon Valley technology company.
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Copyright v. Freedom
I’ve been a bit delinquent in my blogging lately (it does tend to come in phases), but I have encountered a number of items worthy of an entry. A week-and-a-half ago, for example, the Institute for International Education (IIE) invited me to meet with a delegation visiting from China. I met four Chinese “scholars,” though it was not clear to me that they were all scholars. Two were from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau; they said little or nothing. Wang Yefei, the deputy director of the Copyright Bureau, did most of the talking (actually, I did, but among the four of them, he was responsible for the lion’s share of the dialog). Zhao Hongshi, also from the Copyright Bureau and somewhat Mr. Yefei’s junior, also asked several questions. (The whole thing took place in simultaneous translation; none of the visitors spoke English).
The topic of our conversation was copyright enforcement—which was, apparently, the theme of their entire trip.
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Saturday, March 31, 2007
Podcast Now Available
A podcast of my Boston radio preview (from a couple of months back) is now available.
Here’s a link to a link
Monday, March 19, 2007
Viacom v. Google: A Puzzlement
A couple of people have asked me about the Viacom/Google battle. It seems (surprise!) that some of the people who post videos on YouTube (a Google subsidiary) post clips from Viacom broadcasts. That gives Google potential vicarious third-party exposure for contributory or induced infringement. At least, that’s what Viacom thinks. Google, I’m certain, has numerous legal arguments to counter Viacom’s claim, with fair use playing a central role in the overall scheme of its argument. Viacom, however, feels that it has a good enough case to have sued Google for a cool billion dollars.
So various folks have asked me why I haven’t posted anything about this case yet. After all, it sounds like it should be right up my alley. The answer is that it is right up my alley. In fact, its soooooooooo up my alley that I’ve already said everything substantive that I have to say about it. I wrote about this case roughly five years before it was filed, omitting only the proper nouns (see Digital Phoenix). To recap:
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
Inchoate Imperialism Part II: Policy Prescriptions
A week-or-so ago I posted an essay arguing that if we want to devise reasonable policies for dealing with the Middle East, we must first understand the region. That assertion is uncontroversial. The rest of my argument was likely more so: I explained that the fundamental idea that has shaped the modern Middle East is an inchoate sense of imperialism among the region’s Sunni Arabs. A second toxic philosophy entered the mix with Khomeinism, an expansionist revolutionary movement in the spirit of nineteenth century European socialism and anarchism, though cloaked in the language of Shiism. The region’s other philosophies, including both Zionism (which has long played a significant role) and Kurdish nationalism (which is growing in importance rapidly) are expressions of self-determination among the region’s ethnic minorities—and thus inherently antithetical to both inchoate imperialism and revolutionary Khomeinism.
This essay picks up where that one left off. It addresses the questions that really interest people: So what? Assuming that my explanation is correct, what should the U.S. (and the broader West) do about it? What, if any, policy prescriptions flow from this understanding? And how do they differ from what we are doing now?
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