Author Archives: bhaggart

What would copyright law look like if economists held the pen?

Posted on March 19, 2013 by bhaggart

So yet another study finds that there is a small, positive correlation between illegal downloading and music sales (h/t Geist, Knopf, Torrent Freak and others). In basic English: Illegal downloads don’t harm music sales. Let’s put it even more simply: At the … Continue reading →

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SOPA and online social movements: Thinking transnationally, acting locally

Posted on March 5, 2013 by bhaggart

Just noticed that Susan Sell, a big influence on my own studies – her Private Power, Public Law (online for free at the link!) was one of the starting points for my dissertation – has cited me in an article on … Continue reading →

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ACTA comes to Canada: Will protests follow?

Posted on March 5, 2013 by bhaggart

On Friday the Conservative government introduced legislation that would implement the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (h/t Geist). Four quick comments: The government’s being a bit sneaky with its briefing materials. C-56 primarily amends the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act, but … Continue reading →

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Mark Carney, Stephen Gordon and the Globe and Mail’s credibility problem

Posted on December 19, 2012 by bhaggart

I’ve been following Stephen Gordon since he was the first to really publicize the Harper government’s unconscionable scrapping of the mandatory long-form census. His economic analyses in the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s and Worthwhile Canadian Initiative have been for the … Continue reading →

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What a century-old political science theory can tell us about the future of online activism (spoiler: a heck of a lot)

Posted on December 11, 2012 by bhaggart

One of my old Carleton professors, Glen Williams, always used to make time in his first-year political science intro course to teach about Robert Michel’s Iron Law of Oligarchy, which Michels came up with almost a century ago, in 1911. … Continue reading →

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