Yesterday I was a Guest panelist on Denise Howell’s This Week in Law, Episode 97, entitled “God Creates. We Patent.” TWiL is part of Leo Laporte’s impressive and growing private TWiT (This Week in Tech) netcast network (I regularly listen to the TWiT network’s This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, and TWiL, in addition to my some of my other favorite podcasts, such as Mises podcasts, Lew Rockwell, and the Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest.)
In addition to Howell and me, there were two other IP/tech lawyers. We had a very civil and wide-ranging discussion of a number of topics, from the Google vs. Bing “search cheating” dispute, Internet access rights as “human rights,” abolishing IP and gene patents, defensive patent publishing, lawyers as vigorous representatives of their clients’ interests, and more (most of the topics we discussed are linked on Howell’s Delicious bookmarks page for that episode).
I already knew Howell was a very good host, having seen the show before, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised at how tolerant and even libertarian-leaning the other lawyers were of my very radical anti-state, anti-IP views. We had a very good conversation and the other panelists were very receptive to my outspoken libertarian stance. Maybe there is hope!
The video is below; it’s also on the TWiL page for this episode; you can also subscribe to the audio or video podcast for this show; here’s their FaceBook page.
