Claims

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to distribute tools or information about circumventing copyright protection technologies, even for uses that would constitute fair use, effectively making law protect the technology of control rather than the substantive right to copy.

Of the 10,047 books published in 1930, only 174 remain in print in 2000, yet copyright law prevents Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive from making the 9,873 out-of-print works available digitally because identifying copyright owners and clearing rights is prohibitively expensive and legally risky.

The Supreme Court's 1984 decision in Sony v. Universal rejected the argument that manufacturers of VCRs are liable for user infringement, establishing that a technology enabling lawful uses cannot be banned merely because it also enables some infringing uses.

Formalities in copyright law (registration, renewal, marking) were abolished in 1976 when the U.S. followed European practice treating copyright as a natural right, but this created orphan works problem where copyright owners cannot be identified to obtain permission, blocking digital preservation.

The four-modality regulation model (law, norms, market, architecture) explains how copyright control operates: the Internet changed architecture (copying became costless), which prompted law changes to restore control through technology protection and legal expansion to maintain the prior balance.

Internet radio stations must pay significantly higher royalty rates than terrestrial radio stations for the same content, creating a regulatory barrier that stifles innovation in Internet radio distribution despite the potential for much greater competition and consumer benefit.

Fair use, while theoretically protecting noncommercial uses, is practically ineffective because the costs of defending a fair use claim in court (tens of thousands of dollars) exceed the value of most noncommercial works, and insurance companies and production companies demand legal clearance before using content, making fair use a theoretical right that few can afford to exercise.

In 1945, the Supreme Court in United States v. Causby held that the ancient doctrine that land rights extended to the heavens had no place in the modern world, establishing that property rights must adjust to new technologies.

Jesse Jordan, a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, built a simple search engine to index files on his university's local network in 2002-2003, causing the RIAA to sue him and three other students for $98 billion total in damages, eventually forcing Jordan to settle for his entire $12,000 life savings.

The Supreme Court's decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft upheld the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act by refusing to apply the limits-on-enumerated-powers doctrine from the Commerce Clause cases (Lopez, Morrison) to the Copyright Clause, treating copyright differently from commerce despite using identical constitutional language about enumerated powers with limits.

Radio stations do not have to pay recording artists when they play recordings on air (unlike paying composers), meaning the radio industry built its business on broadcasting the creative work of recording artists without compensation, creating a profitable industry built on 'piracy' of the artist's right to control public performance.

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended copyright terms by 20 years, meaning no copyrighted works have passed into the public domain since 1923, while 1 million patents will enter the public domain in the same period, demonstrating copyright's special treatment in law.

According to government estimates, between 43 million and 60 million Americans have participated in file sharing, meaning copyright law effectively criminalizes 20-30% of the population, weakening respect for law more broadly and creating civil liberties dangers.

Video Pipeline built a legal business distributing movie trailers to video stores for 15 years, then tried to distribute the same trailers online, but Disney sued for $100 million, forcing Video Pipeline to abandon its service and demonstrating how copyright law enables incumbent distributors to block business model innovation.

The constitutional Progress Clause requires that copyright terms be 'limited' and grants Congress power to promote progress, implying that if Congress can indefinitely extend existing terms, there is no practical limit and the Constitution's requirement becomes meaningless.

If copyright terms were short (14 years) with renewal requirements, as they were historically, the orphan works problem would be minimized because most creators would not bother renewing, automatically moving expired works into the public domain available for preservation.

Jonathan Donaldson v. Beckett (1774) established the public domain when the House of Lords held that copyright protection expires when statutory terms end, resolving the question of whether copyrights were perpetual under common law by creating for the first time an explicit public domain.

The Statute of Anne (1710) limited copyright terms to 14 years (renewable once for authors) deliberately as an anti-monopoly measure to prevent publishers from exercising perpetual control over culture, establishing that limited terms are not accidental but core to copyright's purpose.

The RIAA's decision to sue individual file sharers, including a 12-year-old girl and a 70-year-old man with no knowledge of file sharing, demonstrates that the litigation strategy targets scapegoats rather than addressing root causes, and that settlements ($2,000-$17,500) are cheaper than legal defense ($250,000+).

The Eldred v. Ashcroft Supreme Court case challenging copyright term extensions was lost because Lessig failed to argue that term extensions do concrete harm to culture and democracy; instead arguing abstract constitutional principle, which the Court deemed insufficiently important.

The law should require copyright registration and renewal to reduce uncertainty about ownership, enable licensing, and provide a financial incentive that would concentrate protection on works that actually have commercial value, modeling this system on the successful domain name registration system rather than the antiquated Copyright Office.

Prop 36 restored treatment-or-jail accountability

Proposition 36 passed overwhelmingly (about a 70-30 vote, in every California county) and brought balance back to drug courts after an era of over-incarceration was overcorrected into a revolving door on the streets and in ERs; it enhanced penalties for organized retail theft and created a 'treatment-mandated felony' so that on a third serious drug offense a judge can give a choice between treatment and incarceration—but the state has refused to fund it, which Mahan would fix first as governor.

CEQA lets anyone sue for almost any reason

California's Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is legendary for allowing anyone anywhere to sue over almost any reason, so investments can get caught up in courts for years and ultimately die under the cost, and the permitting/entitlement process to build zoned multi-family housing can take two years.

Construction-defect liability killed condo building

California no longer builds condos because construction-defect liability laws are so expensive—a building can be sued 10 years after construction because paint is bubbling or chipping, turning defects into a profit center for trial lawyers rather than something simply repaired—so new multi-family housing is almost always built for rent, contributing to California having the lowest homeownership rate in the country, 10% below the national average.

There is a fundamental tension between the principle of territorial integrity and the right to self-determination, which is a recurring problem all around the periphery of the former Soviet Union because of embedded ethnic autonomies, and it underlay the failure to reach a lasting Karabakh peace deal.

We must err on the side of tolerating the expression of any ideas and should not kick people out for merely saying despicable things; but the moment they move beyond talk—planning an attack, physically obstructing campus life, keeping Jews out of buildings, or bullying and assaulting people—that conduct is illegal and should result in prosecution and expulsion.

There is a different burden of proof and procedure once someone has been admitted with a green card versus keeping them out in the first place—it is better to keep people out than to admit them and then figure out how to respond—but a sufficiently despicable green card holder can have their status rescinded and be removed, since a green card holder is not a citizen.

The job of the next ethical president must be to conduct a post-mortem on this decade and design a system as immune as possible to the private derangement and corruption of a bad actor, codifying into law the norms that were merely informal and got violated.

Insiders are legally allowed to buy their own stock only when not in possession of material non-public information; breakthroughs like AI progress affecting revenue would qualify as material, so insiders are often barred from buying even when they know prospects are good — meaning lack of insider buying is not evidence of weak prospects.

Bitcoin can be held by US companies without the securities limits that apply to stocks because it is classified as a digital commodity rather than a security.

In a 2002 study, a crude statistical algorithm using only structural factors (was the government a party, region of origin, whether the lower court was liberal/conservative) predicted Supreme Court justices' affirm/reverse votes better than 83 legal experts, because the experts—though many had clerked on the Court—couldn't bring themselves to weight known patterns heavily enough (e.g., that the Court tends to reverse the Ninth Circuit).

GM cannot unilaterally terminate a franchise contract; by state law the franchisee is generally the only party who can end the contract unless the manufacturer can show cause (e.g., the dealer underperformed).

In 46 of the main U.S. states it is illegal for automobile companies to vertically integrate by owning their retail dealerships directly; dealers must be locally owned.

State laws prevent manufacturers from closing a dealership without the dealer's permission unless they pay back the entire franchise fee, which forces GM to keep manufacturing unprofitable lines (like Pontiac) because stopping production would trigger massive franchise-fee repayments to dealers nationwide.

There is a fundamental accountability problem: courts have limited power to judge what happens inside schools yet mandate spending levels with no reason to believe achievement will improve, and a judge who makes a poor funding decision faces no feedback loop—informational, financial, or otherwise—and thus no incentive to correct mistakes.

The New York Court of Appeals reduced the mandated increase (to about $2 billion per year) partly because the figure was so large and partly because being explicit about a dollar amount risked overstepping judicial authority under constitutional separation of powers—yet it preserved the principle that courts could appropriate funds if outcomes were deemed inadequate.

Although the US Supreme Court ruled education funding was not a federal matter, this effectively opened every state court to school finance lawsuits because each state constitution contains a vague education clause (e.g., requiring a 'thorough and efficient system of public schools'), which courts could interpret expansively.

The largest court influence on schools historically came through racial desegregation following Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which evolved from addressing de jure segregation in the South to de facto segregation in the North, until the recent Supreme Court ruling that race-based assignment policies (including busing) were unconstitutional.

In the late 1980s advocates pivoted to 'adequacy' lawsuits—arguing not that spending was unequal but that it was simply insufficient to provide a good education—which put courts on thin constitutional ice by having them effectively appropriate funds, a power traditionally reserved for legislatures and executives.

The Supreme Court initially struck down major New Deal programs, Roosevelt then threatened to expand (pack) the Court, and the Court subsequently became more accommodating—though there is genuine controversy over which way the causation runs.

Courts deciding how much should be appropriated for schools—a function traditionally reserved to legislatures—is shocking in a democracy; courts are not well suited to make these policies and lack the capacity, even setting aside constitutional interpretation.

Starting around 1970, advocates used state constitutions requiring states to fund schools to bring 'equity' lawsuits (beginning with Serrano v. Priest in California) arguing that locally-raised funding produced inequitable spending variation across districts; after about 20 years these wound down and advocates shifted to 'adequacy' suits arguing constitutions required more funding to make schools adequate.

New Jersey's Abbott districts (31 of 500+) were given essentially unlimited spending capacity—merely needing to ask the court for more money for a given purpose—with court cases dictating preschool provision and class sizes; qualification required both large concentrations of poor kids and historically low achievement, perversely rewarding poor performance with unlimited funds.

The 2009 federal Supreme Court case Flores v. Arizona (English language learners) produced a 5-4 majority strongly stating that courts should pay attention to student performance rather than how much money is spent, citing Hanushek's work and new book—offering optimism that adequacy litigation may face more skeptical judicial reasoning.

The intellectual property and copyright regime was mishandled because the political process is structured so that established business interests with a vested stake in the status quo speak loudly and outweigh diffuse, uncoordinated citizens who would benefit from change—producing laws that fail to coincide with what the technology wants.

Copies themselves don't have value; rather, value lies in the things you do with copies, and recognizing this 'things want to copy' principle should drive a more favorable philosophy of fair use and public domain—an insight our culture was slow to recognize over the past 20-30 years.

Blackmail reveals that the law objects not to the exchange of information itself (which is legal and may even be admirable) but specifically to charging money for it; the act of monetizing the threat is what makes it repulsive and illegal.

Namibia's 1996 legislation let local people create a conservancy if they met four criteria: identify a defined membership, define a boundary, write a constitution including provisions for managing wildlife and distributing benefits, and create a representative management committee.

Freehold property confers a thick bundle of rights (exclude, use, benefit, sell, bequeath), whereas communal property is still private but typically has fewer 'sticks' in the bundle, and CBNRM provides an intermediate, somewhat lesser form of secured rights.

Hunting quotas are split between government and community: the Ministry sets quotas for high-value/endangered species like leopards (e.g., zero or one per year), while communities themselves determine 'own use' harvest levels of antelope species like kudu and oryx for food and tourism viewing.