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Last week I wrote about the Copyright Alert System (CAP) that is designed to educate users of copyright protected materials about those protections and the proper way to enjoy protected products; that is, don't steal them.

Not surprising for the beginning of a new Congress, last week the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus (10 years old this year) was looking for new members via a Dear Colleague letter from Reps. Bob Goodlatte and Adam Schiff. Unlike some caucuses which essentially define who can join, or rather who cannot, this one seems like an easy choice for everyone to join.

Punk musician East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys made headlines after sharing his insights on music piracy with college students at California’s Chico State University, warning that some of the biggest victims of piracy are future creators.

The Orion’s Nicole Gerspacher reports the rocker’s thoughts on piracy in the following article, citing IPI’s 2007 publication “The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy on the US Economy.”

IPI is getting the message out that IP theft has real damages, as evidenced by the front page of the Ames High School newspaper which recently cited our 2007 report, “The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy to the US Economy.”

In the report, Ames High School student Alex Qin also interviewed recording engineer Chad Jacobsen on the stark reality that illegal music downloading is a crime. 

The Washington Post’s Hayley Tsukayama says today fewer people are illegally downloading music as the availability of legitimate digital music is growing by leaps and bounds through new channels and subscription services.

It’s welcome news as more and more young people, including high school and college students, gain an awareness of the dangers of piracy and its threat to the US economy.

IPI’s 2007 publication, “The True Cost of Copyright Piracy to the US Economy” reported that widespread theft of copyright-protected products, including motion pictures, video games, sound recordings as well as business software, has cost the U.S. $58 billion in annual economic output and 373,375 jobs.

Several years ago I was at the doctor's office for an annual physical. I noted that this particular physical seemed more thorough than usual and included an electrocardiogram test. After the physical the nurse told me that the doctor wanted to talk to me and that she would be in shortly. I started doing the math and alarm bells went off...extra tests, I am getting older, doctor wants to chat with me. She came back and reported that everything looked fine, that the blood results would be back in a day or so, and then asked me two questions that at that moment I found peculiar—do I regularly wear my seat belt and how good do I feel about my life. Ok, alarm bells again!

As it turned out she was doing what she could to check my health as related to the two most likely causes of death for a 30 something male—car accidents and suicide. Men from 20 - 40 years old commit suicide as much as 3 to 4 times more often than women. Theories abound as to why, from broken relationships to work stress, but regardless the end result is an alarming, heart breaking, sad fact that is rarely discussed much less appropriately focused on.

Here are a couple of charts that hopefully will provide some perspective on the relative insignificance of the sequester cuts. First chart shows total federal spending for the next ten years. The blue bars are how much the federal government will continue to spend, and how much spending will continue to grow, even with the sequester cuts. All the other colors represent the sequester cuts. They're hard to see because they are INSIGNIFICANT.

Three cheers for Duquesne’s Julian Routh, a freshman journalism major. When it comes to criminal acts of intellectual property theft, Routh shows he gets it.

In his Duquesne Duke column, Routh writes that for those college students who illegally download music, the mindset is one of entitlement, calling the crime disrespectful to artists.

According to statistics from the Commerce Department, in 2012 Texas was the #1 exporting state in the country--and by a mile, too:

• Texas total exports for 2012 were $265.4bn compared to #2 California with $161.7bn

• Top destinations for Texas exports in 2012: Mexico ($94.8bn); Canada ($23.7bn); China ($10.3bn); Brazil ($10.0bn);  Netherlands ($9.5bn); South Korea ($7.8bn); Venezuela ($6.9bn); Singapore ($6.3); Colombia ($5.6bn); Japan ($4.7bn)

•  Texas' top exporting industry segments for 2012: Petroleum and Coal Product ($57.2bn); Chemicals ($47.0); Computer and Electronic Products ($45.2); Machinery, except electrical ($29.4); Transportation Equipment ($25.2); Electrical Equipment, Appliances and Components ($9.2); Fabricated Metal Products ($9.0); Primary Metal Manufacturing ($7.9); Food and Kindred Products ($5.4);  Oil and Gas ($5.3); Plastics and Rubber Products ($4.3); Agricultural Products ($4.3)  

Continuing with reflections on the Consumer Electronic Show policy track, one of the several panels was titled "Fighting the Patent Trolls." The assumption leading to the panel name, is that there are such things as patent trolls and that they are the problem. Both assumptions should be challenged.

Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show, several of the policy track panels discussed copyright but one panel focused on it, a panel titled "Beyond SOPA: Creating a Pro-innovation, Pro-artist Copyright Policy." Unfortunately the panel was very short on discussion as to how to create a pro-artist copyright policy. That discussion could have been quite insightful and thought provoking

I was honored to be the speaker tonight for the Flower Mound Area Republican Club's January meeting. The major topic was that it's relatively easy to balance the budget simply by getting spending modestly under control. 

I had prepared two PowerPoint slides to help illustrate the points, but due to a miscommunication I wasn't able to slow the slides. So here they are.

Good for Jon Stewart to see the insanity in Paul Krugman's $1 trillion magic coin idea.

The story is here from Politico.

As we've written, the idea is terrible economics and terrible politics, but that's par for the course with Krugman.

Can't you just picture a scene in the movie "Idiocracy" where President Camacho fires his automatic rifle into the sky and announces "I have a new plan that's going to fix everything! We're going to mint up some $1 trillion coins and that's going to fix EVERYTHING!"