There is a paper circulating around today by Aaron Schwabach of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. I was tipped off this morning by a friend at a local university, who heard about it from Randy Peerenboom, who I think posted something on a BBS. Tim Johnson has also read and commented on the paper on China Rises.

I love this paper. Hits some of my favorite subjects, including misperception of IP piracy by the media/public, improper valuation of lost sales due to piracy, and the way online piracy often drops out of the discussion simply because it is difficult to calculate rates of piracy.

This is my favorite IP paper of the year, next to IP Dragon's dissertation paper, of course.

I'm not going to comment in depth, the paper really hits a lot of the stuff I've been writing about for a long time. No need to repeat myself. One point I would like to make, however. Schwabach suggests that copyright piracy, particularly of digital media, gets a lot more attention than it deserves, so much so that it skews media reports on general IP piracy. However, Schwabach then bases his whole paper on piracy of digital media. Frustrating.

I would like to see a couple of additional pages on how the piracy rates in certain other industries are significantly lower, and yet media reports never catch on to this fact. I know – this was not the point of the paper. This is just a personal wish.

Anyway, great stuff. Go read it!