Copyright maths

Rob Reid has a TED talk where he explains copyright maths in The $8 billion iPod.

Pirates buy more music

Betsy Isaacson reports that Music Pirates Buy 30 Percent More Songs Than Non-Filesharers: Study.

But as Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica points out, pirates are not necessarily good for the industry just because they buy more music. "It's possible, for example, the most avid music fans are also the most likely to be drawn to peer-to-peer networks," he writes. "Perhaps without those networks they would have purchased even more music from legitimate services."

Even so, the music industry likely should not ignore the news that pirates are some of its best consumers -- and thus perhaps a bad demographic to alienate.

Problems with patent protection

Ross Gittins, in It's patently obvious that the system is broken, takes a looks at the issue of intellectual property. He finishes by noting that:

It's got so bad in the US that, according to the calculations of a leading campaigner for patent reform, James Bessen, of Boston University school of law, for all US patents bar those for chemicals and pharmaceuticals, earnings from their patents are more than exceeded by the cost of litigation to protect those patents. He calls this a ''patent tax''.

If he's right, the intellectual property system has degenerated to the point where it's actually inhibiting innovation. We're being forced to pay higher prices, but getting nothing in return.