Author Archives: Ian Ayres

The Lessig blog community is pretty amazing. Self-regulating, constructive, challenging. Looking back I hope you can see how we paid off on our promise of informational incrementalism We’ve suggested that discrimination in the military might be ameliorated by asking a simple question. We’ve suggested that discrimination by the boy scouts might be ameliorated by mandating a private conversation. We’ve suggested that marriage discrimination might be ameliorated by collecting vacation pledges. We’ve suggested that employment discrimination might be ameliorated by certifications of legal promises not to discriminate. We’ve suggested that discrimination in a variety of contexts might be ameliorated by leaving… Continue reading →

A little over one year ago, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial court made history with its 2004 decision in Goodridge, generating a new option for gay couples: marriage. We all know the controversy (and state constitutional amendments) these changes have wrought. Much of the focus has been on same-sex couples and their choices: will they travel to marry? Will they seek to transport their marriages across state lines and impose them on unwilling home states? Less noted has been the new and difficult choice presented to heterosexual couples: Now that it is possible to marry in a jurisdiction that does not… Continue reading →

Name a type of intellectual property that the owner can’t practice?… Continue reading →

1. We’ll send a free book to the first person who gets a business with at least 10 employees to license the fair employment mark. 2. We’ll send a free book to the person who gets the largest number of employees covered by the license in the next month. 3. We’ll send a free book to anyone who gets a business with more than 100 employees to license the mark…. Continue reading →

Lots of the comments to Jennifer’s posts worried that managing information meant (a) lying or (b) burdening individuals’ rights of association. But here’s an informational proposal for dealing with the Boy Scouts’ discrimination that promotes both honesty and informed association…. Continue reading →

The Fair Employment licenses and the Creative Comment licenses face similar kinds of resistence. We often hear people say that no employer in its right mind would volunteer for legal liability. But this sounds a lot like people who say that noone in their right mind would ever throw away potential copyright revenues. But it turns out that there are lots of parallel reasons why adopting these licenses make plenty of sense…. Continue reading →

A little-known piece of intellectual property, the certification mark, provides a viable mechanism for employers to commit not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. With just a few clicks of the mouse, at www.fairemploymentmark.org any employer in the country can license the “Fair Employment Mark.” It is an innocuous symbol, an “FE” inside a circle: There are lots of parallels to the Creative Commons. Both are reinventions of traditional intellectual property licenses to make the world a better place. Employers that are committed to the idea of employment equality for gay and lesbian workers don’t have to wait… Continue reading →