A profile of Kevin Murphy, called by some the smartest economist in America, mentions Murphy’s research on outsized gains from medical research. What happens when Murphy starts to think a little harder about innovation? Although they are still “working some” on the economics of health and medicine, Murphy and Topel also have started to “think…

PBS TeacherSource blogger Andy Carvin has a great article on Encouraging Student Creativity with Creative Commons: I’m often amazed by the lack of discussion in education technology circles about copyright. Sure, people talk about it occasionally, but given the increasing number of young people (read: millions of them) uploading their own content to the Internet,…

Last year the Linux media player Amarok created a demo LiveCD using CC licensed music from the WIRED CD. In the meantime Amarok developers have added many features and have now added access to Magnatune within the player. (We’ve mentioned Magnatune here many times, but for new readers, it is an innovative record label that…

Canadian history writer Christopher Moore, a really nice guy, writes in a Creators’ Copyright Coalition Op-Ed: I discussed much the same issue with Mike Linksvayer of Creative Commons USA at Copycamp last month. Nice guy, full of enthusiasm for the technology. But we never could clarify just how the “commercial rights reserved” part of a…

Matt Haughey, who was Creative Commons’ first designer, writes about an annoying encounter with copyright paranoia in a distinctly non-digital field: Last year I moved into a new house with a big backyard, but the yard faces directly south, so it bakes in the summertime. I decided to find a local architect to help build…