There are a bunch of recent events I haven’t written about here. One is the birth control and abortion controversies. Here’s why:

via Grumpy Rumblings of the Untenured.

The second thing I haven’t commented on was SOPA. I didn’t comment because I knew I was going to have an unpopular position and I’m not an expert. However, Gabriel Rossman, who is much closer to this field than I am has two really good blog posts that capture what I’m thinking about the IP rules.

Sympathy for the IP Industry…my favorite quote pretty much hits all I had to say about the controversy:

In the arguments over SOPA, I’ve seen a few arguments from people I respect that piracy basically doesn’t matter. These arguments strike me as somewhat plausible but probably wrong and grounded in wishful thinking that a solution being unpleasant means that the problem it addresses is nonexistent. This is not to say that I support SOPA, for I do not. My main intuition on this is that an industry that sponsored the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act has forfeited its claim to our sympathies….Nonetheless I think it’s important to clarify just how complicated estimating the effects of piracy are.

This was cross-posted on the National Review’s blog.

The second: Fewer Movies or Smaller Mansions appears here.