A Manifesto on the Abolition of Copyright Protections

This piece lays out in detail why we are worse off with copyrights than without. With a historical perspective on the development of both media and communication, as well as the convergence of the two domains with the advent of the internet, it covers in easy to understand terms both the economic and social costs of continuing to impose a rule system developed in and for a departed era.

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A Social Utility Model of Intellectual Property Enforcement

This is a companion paper to the manifesto above, going into greater and more academic detail with some of the claims therein. Starting from the markets for both original intellectual production and information reproduction, it builds a model by which we can plot total social utility as a function of how stringent we are in enforcing intellectual property rights. Then, the more practical issue is addressed, not only of how does a government maximize the welfare of its citizens, but can it?

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