(no subject)

illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/695354.html
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales. OLS estimates indicate a positive effect on downloads on sales, though this estimate has a positive bias since popular albums have higher sales and downloads. After instrumenting for downloads, most of the impact disappears. This estimated effect is statistically indistinguishable from zero despite a narrow standard error. The economic effect is also small. Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale. We also find that file sharing has a differential impact across sales categories. For example, high selling albums actually benefit from file sharing. In total the estimates indicate that the sales decline over 2000-2002 was not primarily due to file sharing.

Patenting Life

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/opinion/13crichton.html
YOU, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real.
The United States Patent Office misinterpreted previous Supreme Court rulings and some years ago began — to the surprise of everyone, including scientists decoding the genome — to issue patents on genes.
The results have been disastrous. Ordinarily, we imagine patents promote innovation, but that’s because most patents are granted for human inventions. Genes aren’t human inventions, they are features of the natural world. As a result these patents can be used to block innovation, and hurt patient care.