The Spring 2025 issue of Regulation magazine features an eye-opening article by Law Professor Jonathan M. Bartlett titled "The Perils of 'Free' Information." In the article, Mr. Bartlett tackles the narrative that IP owners are exploitative monopolists that inflate prices and bar competition and corresponding legal and policy strategies employed by certain tech platforms "to weaken IP rights to reduce the costs of securing content and tech assets, which are then monetized within a portfolio of complementary products and services."
One of Mr. Bartlett's insights is that "even [IP-free] markets usually restore some form of property rights—whether implemented by IP law, contract, or technology—to sustain incentives to invest in innovation." He describes how tech platforms have migrated toward closed-access subscription models that rely on technology and contracts to serve as a function equivalent of IP rights. The weakening of IP rights undermines innovation and market entry by new competitors. According to Mr. Bartlett, "[w]hile innovation in information-technology industries can sometimes persist in a weak-IP environment, it would likely take place principally within the bundled product-and-service ecosystem maintained by tech platforms or the vertically integrated structures maintained by large bricks-and-mortar producers."
Mr. Bartlett writes that "IP rights are often a precondition for sustaining the innovators and artists that drive knowledge ecosystems." He is in good company in writing this. The idea that creators and inventors require secure and exclusive rights in their writings and discoveries to fully realize their ideas and bring them to market goes back to the earliest days of our nation when the Framers of the U.S. Constitution drafted the Article I, Section 8 IP Clause.
Mr. Bartlett's article is worth reading in full. It is based on his important new book, The Big Steal: Ideology, Interests, and the Undoing of Intellectual Property (Oxford University Press, 2024).