Category: Economics

  • Catching Up…

    Been quiet here… which is probably a function of being very un-quiet elsewhere. So thought I’d mention a few of the things I’ve been doing / working on… Firstly, I have to mention The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach. It’s a big, wonderful novel which basically ate most of my time in the past…

  • There Is No Original | 3D Printing | Object Piracy

    Occasionally an article catches one’s eye that genuinely opens a raft of interesting new thoughts. That happened to the other day when I read this Guardian piece about a new area of Pirate Bay that offers templates for 3D printers to clone figures for Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Lord of the Rings table-top games. Up…

  • SOPA | Internet Piracy

    In the most high-profile action against the US Senate’s ‘Protect Intellectual Property’ Bill (PIPA) and the House of Representatives’ ‘Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Wikipedia has begun an English language black-out of its main site. As you’ll know if you read here often, I’m in the depths of a book-length piece on piracy. The aim…

  • If You’re Reading This, You Have a Duty to Listen to This | Chinese Piracy

    If you’re reading this blog post, you are almost certainly doing so on a digital device made in China. And that means you’re almost certainly doing so on a device made in Shenzhen. Don’t know where Shenzhen is? Neither did I. It’s here: View Larger Map It’s a city bigger than New York or London,…

  • Non-Excludable, Non-Rival : The Upside-Down Economics of Good Ideas

    Some thoughts to share on sharing thoughts… “If you have an apple, and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, then you and I will still have one apple. But if you have an idea, and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” George Bernard…

  • Gay Pirates

    I received a present the other day – a book through the post from an ex-colleague: ‘Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition.’ It’s a fascinating read. Admittedly, I was a little wary: there’s a long history of ‘actually, they were gay’ books which would have us believe that Jesus, St Paul, Shakespeare and even George Michael…