Orrin Hatch recommends destorying computers remotely as payback for filesharing

Thoughts, words, images, sounds, ideas. They're out there, and they're free. Take them, share them, resist all those who would stop you. Intellectual property rights is a code word for power grab. Stop them now.

We need laws to prevent intellectual property theft. And indeed, we had them 200 years ago. The problem now is that ALL the rights have been transferred to the property owner, to the detriment of society.

Even Thomas Jefferson -- anarchist extraordinare -- was persuaded that intellectual property rights were good for society. Jefferson proposed that the term be limited to that of a single generation -- no more than 20 years. (So that one generation's beneficial invention and limited monopoly would not impose itself on a new generation).

The trouble today is that copyright terms are perpetual. No copyright has fallen into the public domain in 80 years. Everytime Mickey Mouse's copyright term gets close to expiration, Congress RETROACTIVELY extends all copyrights.

Think about that for a second. Because it's truly infuriating. There is one point to intellectual property law, and one point only: The (monetary) benefit from a grant of limited monopoly will induce people to create useful works. Yet these works which Congress retroactively extends copyright protection to have already been created. We hardly need to induce anyone to create them -- they're already there.

Larry Lessig argued this very point recently, in Eldred v. Ashcroft. He argued that by retroactively extending copyright -- everytime copyrights are about to enter the public domain, since the 1920's -- Congress is violating the Constitution's "for a limited time" qualifier. Only John Paul Stevens agreed, offering a compelling dissent.

The other justices agreed the perpetual extensions were wrong, but didn't feel it rose to the level of being unconstituitonal.

We should protect copyrights -- we just shouldn't protect them for longer than the average of our natural lives.

name one intelectual who has a problem with their ideas , thoughts or images being spread freely???? they aren't talking about intellectual theivery.They are talking about corporations who own the rights to some artists work, how many artists are as passionate about this as the coporations who own their material?? have you ever lent out a book? or been to a library? where are the thought police then? it should be "popcrap property rights"

I'm not worried about political speech. Quite obviously, Noam Chomsky is going to write and speak whether he's paid or not; he wants his ideas spread.

Intellectual property goes far beyond that. And yes - it encompasses popular music, movies, tv shows, etc. The constitution does not say "to promote intellectual works." It says "to promote science and the Useful arts."

Without intellectual property rights, there would not be billions being invested in hydrogen fuel cell technology. (Note: There might be small groups working on such technology at college campuses, but it would not be nearly as prevalent). There would not be billions invested in drug therapies, to treat cancer, etc. (Note: There might be comparatively small groups working on such things at college campuses, but it would not be as prevalent).

And yes, we probably wouldn't have Britney Spears. Or N'Sync. Or The Hulk. Or Pixar. Or whatever else.

Remember that copyright law does not force intellectuals to sell their work for profit. They are, of course, free to distribute it as widely as they please. Furthermore, without copyright law, such things as the GNU General Public License would not exist. Open Source developers who rely on the GPL to distribute their work freely, but keep it out of closed source works would have no recourse. (This is true, because closed source works do not depend on copyright. The source of a compiled program can be held as a trade secret.)

Intellectual property rights were created for the benefit of society, not corporations. The fact that today they benefit corporations much more than society does not mean we need to entirely destroy intellectual property law. It just means it needs reform -- back to the way it was when first created. The constitution should be amended, to quantify the term "for a limited time," such that Congress cannot create de facto perpetual copyright terms.

But we need intellectual property rights.

Threatening to damage or destroy private property is terrorism under the Patriot Act.

i saw this article referenced on slashdot.org ... the first response to this article was a great one - thought i'd share it with PDX IMC for those that don't read /.

"Later in the discussion..." "...Sen Hatch went on to propose that cars be designed so that they explode when they exceed the speed limit - or "pirate drive" as he preferred to call it."

hahahahahhaahahahahhaha

"... cars be designed so that they explode when they exceed the speed limit ..."

Now, that is a great idea!

With luck, the same research can be modified to eliminate with extreme prejudice those cretins who insist upon risking everyone's lives by using cell phones while driving.

What our bought-and-paid-for "representatives" have been doing with copyright legislation over the last couple of decades- essentially destroying concepts of "public domain" and "fair use" whilst tipping the balance of power regarding copyright as far towards corporate entities as they can, totally sucks from an ethical perspsective and is probably positively harmful to genuine creativity in literature and arts.

But wha some of the comments above are talking about- encouraging scientific research and technical development by granting a time-limited monopoly on a new invention in return for disclosure of the principles of the invention- is the province of patent, not copyright law.

Patent rights, particularly as they relate to such things as the availability and price of needed medicines, have their own controversial aspects.

It don't pay to confuse the two.

They are indeed different, and I didn't confuse the two; I hope my comments were clear. (When I spoke to patent law, I used the generic term "intellectual property"). But conceptually, the same principle applies. You are granted a monopoly on the invention, or literature, or art, or what you as a means to entice the creation of the product or work.

There is little different between the two, and the benchmark length of time of "a generation" is a good standard to use for both. (Though you could certainly make an argument for shortening the term on certain types of patents, such as for pharmaceuticals).

A few things here ... first, patents vs. copyrights.

Patents and copyrights are similar, but they can have significant differences. Look at the following chart, from:

http://www.techtransfer.harvard.edu/News99_Glance.html

	Copyrights	Patents
Objects of Protection:	Original works of literary or artistic expression.	New and useful inventions.
Purpose:	Encourages creative expression.	Encourages innovation.
Scope:	Prohibits copying.	Prohibits others from using the invention (even if no copying is involved).
Method of Securing Rights:	Create work and fix in a tangible medium.	Apply for patent.
Registration Requirement:	No.	Yes.
Standard for Registration:	Originality.	Novelty, lack of obviousness, and utility.
Notice:	Not necessary if first published after March 1, 1989. Otherwise, "?", "Copyright", or "Copr." and the year of publication and name of copyright owner.	For pre-patent: "Patent Applied For" or "Patent Pending" is optional. Post-grant: "Patent" or "Pat." plus the registration number.
Term:	If created after 1977: Creator's life + 50 years, unless a work made for hire, which is 75 years after publication or 100 years from creation. (Congress has recently passed legislation adding another 20 years to these numbers.)	For utility or plant patent: 20 years. For design patent: 14 years.
Foreign Protection:	Usually protected under treaties without need to register.	Usually granted on a country-by-country basis.

Aside from differences in goals, there can be major differences between the two that the chart above doesn't flesh out. A key area is international law: while copyrights are supposedly protected internationally, just look at how western movies, books, and software are reprinted and copied abroad, especially in Asia, with full knowledge and acquiescence of the respective governments. Patents are much more forceful internationally, for many reasons, but I think a key reason is because they protect a process, whereas copyrights protect an expression. It's easy to copy an expression, but it can be difficult to replicate a process. In addition, securing a patent is a pain in the ass, often taking 18 months or more, and costing a lot of money.

Second, I agree with crimethinc ... intellectual property is about power. Specifically, it is about money, which is about power. I don't believe for a minute that the best way to encourage innovation (patents) or creativity (copyright) is through a monetary incentive. We're taught that, and we're told that no company would invest in research and development unless they could recoup their expenses (via patents & copyrights) by selling the fruits of their research. Why would you ever invent a widget when someone could take your work, do no research whatsoever, not sweat a drop, and start selling widgets as their own, shamelessly freeloading off your blood and frustration, laughing all the way to the bank?

Don't fall for such seductive sophistry! It seems perfectly reasonable at the outset, but it assumes that 1) unless they have a monetary carrot dangling in front of them, people are lazy sloths who would never invent anything to save their life, 2) the goal of r&d is to develop new products for market consumption, and 3) if you don't exploit your invention, someone else will.

1) we've been inventing things for thousands of years before money or capitalism ever came along, and we survived just fine without either. 2) this one sounds innocuous but it's probably the worst of all of them, because it contains all of marketing in a nutshell: who cares if people need this product, if this product is safe, or if this product is environmentally benign ... just whip up demand, mistress. 3) goes to show the exploitative nature of patents. Patents are there for you get a 14 or 20 year head start over everyone else, so you can learn all the pitfalls about your product and learn how to make lots more of them for lots less money, while adding features that allow you to charge much more than you ever thought you could. This head start is designed to enable you to be in the best position to maintain your monopoly after your patent has expired, and this, of course, is your just reward for all of your hard work.

On the other hand, for all their rhetoric about encouraging creativity and innovation, patents and copyrights are often stupid, or for stupid things. That doesn't diminish their legality, however. Last year, a seven year old (helped by his dad) famously patented a new method of swinging ... first by pulling on one string, and then on the other. Someone even patented the *crustless* peanut butter sandwich. See http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/local/chi-0302,0,7319176.story.

The best way to encourage innovation and creativity, in my opinion, is via necessity. By necessity, I don't mean market 'necessity,' as in your company needs more revenue, but true hardship and need. If your mom or neighbor has breast cancer or hiv, that should be plenty of motivation to innovate the hell out of your research. If you are running out of water, or oil, or whatever, then you'll be motivated to find ways to conserve. 'Necessity is the mother of invention.' Market necessity brings plastic crap and trinkets from China to our local Wal-Marts. Have you ever looked at all the complete crap in our stores ... so much of it is cheap claptrap, made from toxic ingredients by sweatshop workers, designed to break soon after it's opened or first used so you'll need to buy another! If you manufacture necessity, as it were, you only create a series of problems ... usually environmental degradation and garbage generation ... and solve none, aside from the 'problem' of adding to your bottom line. Necessity does not ever need to be manufactured; everyday living presents us with a host of challenges.

Take GM foods, for instance. It's a timely topic, with sacramento around the corner, and it is all driven by patents. If you want to know what this is doing to farmers and communities, see http://www.percyschmeiser.com/ and http://www.nwrage.org/ . The short version is that multinationals such as monsanto feel that the future market for GM foods will bear only a handful ... say four to six ... large corporations (due to a whole host of reasons, from efficiency (infrastructure is expensive) to a lack of expertise (which is often very project-specific)). In light of this, corporations are now scrambling for market share, much like micro$oft, ibm, and others were in the late 70s, 1980s and into the 90s. To achieve market dominance, these corporations will use help from ... patents!!

It goes like this: contaminate as many farmers' fields as possible with your GM crop. Once a field is contaminated, the farmer cannot prove that a given grain of wheat (or whatever) is "hers," i.e. that it does not contain any genes (they are actually referred to as intellectual property) from the invasive GM species. Even if the farmer did not want GM crops on her land, she still must pay monsanto (or whomever) for their intellectual property that is growing on her land. A canadian court, in the case of percy schmeiser, said that since he cannot prove that a given canola plant is not contaminated, he must pay monsanto for *his entire crop*, even though less than 1% of his total crop was infected with GM canola. In his case, his fields were contaminated by genetic drift, when GM canola from a neighbor crossed property lines and started growing in a corner of his fields. See how ingenious this is? Nature ... birds, wind, insects ... can be your salesperson and spread your seeds everywhere!

It bothers me a lot to see seeds treated like software, something to be annually licensed. Yet this is the predatory route monsanto and others have taken. Many african countries have gone so far as to not only refuse GM food aid (and that's a powerful statement right there: to have a hungry person refuse food would definitely send up warning flags to me that maybe something's not right with it), but to even refuse to transport GM food through their countries on rail or trucks, for fear it would contaminate their fields. They are afraid of not only the health and environmental effects of GM crops, but also the effects of international patent law! Farmers who have been saving their seeds for generations do not want to have to pay a multinational corporation annual fees for something that has been free for them for thousands of years.

This is a little off-topic, but seeing Hatch use the phrase "P2P" repeatedly throughout his statement before the senate judiciary committee was highly amusing to me. I wonder if he could sit down and explain the basics of peer to peer networking to me. I doubt he's even used Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster or Napster, yet he writes so authoritatively about them (or at least his staff does). Note he never cites to personal experience but to "recent developments," "recent studies," and then deliberately, with great gravity, reaches the deliciously pretentious "I do believe that peer-to-peer file-sharing networks are here to stay."

http://www.senate.gov/~hatch/index.cfm?FuseAction=Statements.Detail&PressRelease_id=205148&Month=6&Year=2003.

White Lilac -

You've made many good points. Yet I came away a bit confused. Do you believe patents are more acceptable than copyrights? If so, I'll confess that I fail to see the distinction. Indeed, to my mind copyright protection is more important than patent protection, specifically because it is so much easier to copy a literary or artistic work. I certainly wouldn't argue in favor of our current system though; just the concept.

Intellectual property does not have to be about any one thing. It can be about power, money and the promotion of innovation and creation all at the same time. And it is.

As I touched upon in my previous comments, I do account for the fact that altruism, the desire for fame and the desire for admiration do have a certain encouraging affect upon innovation. Yet such human motivations can coexist with the capitalist's motivator; money.

Do you believe the influence of money on the process has a suffocating effect on the others? I don't believe the evidence would bear that out -- multinational pharmaceuticals are working on breast cancer treatments with profits in mind, while university researches are working on it for the other reasons.

Another thing to consider is the actual ability of the individual or group to create a literary work or ingenius invention for the above mentioned reasons. After all, men must eat; when you are hungry, I guess authoring a great novel holds little appeal. And while a sick mother would motivate many to search for a cure, what's the likelihood the child has the skills necessary to perform such a search?

If you accept that as true, then your only argument could be that while money does motivate some to create works and widgets that they otherwise might not, it isn't enough of an influence to warrant a limited grant of monopoly. (That the detriment to society outweighs the enticement of the individual, on average).

Given the Jeffersonian concept of intellectual property law which does not impose itself upon future generations, I don't believe that's true.

More than just enticement, copyright law is about control. Which is what I was getting at in my GPL arguments.

The GNU General Public License -- the copyleft license -- is a fantastic little document. Open Source developers using the GNU GPL most often release their works for Free public use. (Free as in Freedom AND free as in beer.) In exchange, they ask that anyone building upon their work also release their source code, for the betterment of the community. Not at all an unreasonable demand. But what of the fact that without copyright protection, such a demand would not be possible?

I'm not well informed of the GM food arguments, but I was aware of the Canadian case involving Monsanto. It's certainly a problem. And I see no clear solution. On the one hand, this capitalist believes protection should be afforded Monsanto. On the other hand, I have serious problems with a court decision placing the burden of prove on the defendant, that he should prove he did NOT deliberately plant Monsanto GM canola. Especially when it does seem so likely that "natural contamination" may take place.

Terminator seeds would seem to solve such problems, yet there're (far fetched, IMHO. But I wouldn't argue the point strongly, since I'm not well informed on the subject.) risks associated with that too.

(In general, it seems to me the current generation of GM foods suck. Yet I believe in the future, they may hold much promise.)

There do exist, of course, many stupid patents. Yet their existence, while good for a laugh, do not spell disaster for the concept. In the U.S., and most other countries, simply getting a patent does not mean it's enforceable. It's the duty of the applicant to perform an exhaustive prior art search. And prior art is always a patent nullifier -- so the crustless P&J sandwhich would probably not stand-up in court.

"who cares if people need this product, if this product is safe, or if this product is environmentally benign"

This does not seem to be an appropriate argument against patents. If this were truly what was going on, patent protection would be pointless. Why would another company want to produce a useless, unsafe, environment damaging-product? Is the market segment for useless products really so large? I doubt it. You might expect many such products to carry a "patent-pending" label. (Which would mean they spent $800 to file and a couple hours to draw up a bogus application). But I doubt many companies would go through the time, energy and expense of actually patenting an unneeded product.

So yes, I do believe David Copperfield would have been written, even without copyright protection. (Which did exist as English common law). I do believe the Guternberg Press would have been invented. (Well, it was...so I guess I better believe that). Yet I believe in countless other cases, extremely useful technologies and Arts would not exist, were it not for intellectual property rights.

Also, I believe very strongly that patent law enforcement should only be expected between countries on equal technological footing. Pressuring undeveloped nations to sign patent treaties is immoral. South Africa, for example, should be free to produce as many AIDS drugs as they can -- using the descriptions and instructions in U.S. patents. This creates an enforcement problem at home (keeping the counterfeited items out of a developed nation). But that's not society's problem. It should be upto the patent holder to identify such items to authorities.

As an aside, what are your thoughts on land ownership? The same principles are involved. It's an invented right -- there is no natural right to the ownership of land. Though allowing for private property entices the upkeep of the land, improvement of the land, etc. Yet there are clearly aspects detrimental to society.

Some may find this link particularly amusing:

 http://amish.blogmosis.com/archives/012511.html#012511

It seems Mr. Hatch's website uses pirated Javascript code. Maybe we ought to destroy his computers, to "teach him a lesson about copyrights."

James,

First, I don't believe patents are more acceptable than copyrights. Both are anathema to the idea that people are more important than corporations and businesses. My discussion on this was (and remains) admittedly weak, largely because a full discussion would take the length of a long chapter or small book which I don't have time to write. The overarching idea is that intellectual property knows little about true creativity and innovation, but much about business. The two are (in my mind) incompatible.

One could point to, say, van Gogh's paintings, and argue that creativity can work with business (in the case of Portrait of Dr. Gachet, to the tune of $82.5 million). Yet that argument looks a little ridiculous when confronted with the reality that the artist so revered today died a pauper and business scorned him throughout his life. If business really wanted to reward creativity, why didn't someone sponsor him throughout his ten or eleven year career, secure copyrights to his works, and thereby make a killer long-term investment?? Business cares nothing for creativity, only profit ... to me this seems elementary. Business only recognizes creativity in hindsight, and then only to capitalize upon it. When employment ads say 'creative people wanted,' they mean they're looking for people who can come up with creative new ways of making more money while paying fewer taxes, rather than people who are starving and living in canvas-littered lofts.

So to recap: my view is that the creativity and innovation that is used to justify the whole idea of intellectual property is a farce. IP has nothing to do with creativity and innovation as they are commonly understood ... it's about making money, granting exclusive monopolies, and concentrating power.

Second, I don't understand what you mean when you say that GPL wouldn't work without copyright. Why wouldn't it? GPL is a good example of why we don't need copyrights in the first place ... because individual expressions are unique. They are easy to copy, but hard to duplicate. It's one thing to take a Harry Potter book and photocopy it without paying Scholastic or Ms. Rowling, or even to take the entire series and republish it under your own name. It's another thing entirely to add a sixth book to the series. Here, in the case of software, if you've worked on a specific piece of software (writing a device driver for an obscure ethernet card, say), then it isn't as if you somehow become irrelevant, unimportant or unwanted if you don't copyright your code. In fact, you are very important because it would be redundant for someone else to cover ground you already have ... and so while the code is public, it will most likely be you who will update it and maintain it. A similar analogy can be drawn to almost every copyright ... you can copy a john lennon song, but you can't duplicate the uniqueness of a song like imagine, because it is a unique expression by john.

Third, I absolutely believe the influence of money undermines genuine creativity and innovation. Your example of breast cancer research is a good one ... you assume some work for profit, while others with tenure can afford to be more altruistic. I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but overall I would disagree ... it's all about money, period. Researchers can only do research if their work is funded, and funding comes from public and private sources, both of which are highly susceptible to the whim of industry because of the political and fiscal power it wields. When an "independent" researcher evaluates a new drug for treating breast cancer, guess who pays for the study? The drug manufacturer ... who is required to do so by the FDA in order to get approval for new drugs. Of course, if the "independent" reviewer doesn't endorse the product, you can be sure the manufacturer will find another reviewer next time around ... and when word gets around, the researcher soon has no money.

With money in the picture, you can't even trust your doctor to take care of you. Suppose your doctor gets together with some friends and they all pitch in to buy a new MRI machine (which run from say $.5 to $2.5 million), that may seem all well and good for all the patients involved. But when you look behind the scenes, you realize that the practice needs to pay thousands of dollars a month to pay off the machine ... and that means they need throughput. So they hang out a sign, clutter up the NY times with adds for 'free' or low-cost MRI scans, and line people up to get their protons scrambled! It has nothing to do with making you healthier, but is simply a way of paying off the machine. Line up, lie down, in you go, watch your head ... sorry to trouble you sir, but we found a little spot here, looks like you'll need more tests. This is how western medicine works ... its linchpin (for consumers) is a belief system that your doctor knows best and (for doctors) that "science" knows best. They so often do not ... and today's standard of care often becomes tomorrow's barbaric practice of yesteryear.

This actually isn't a rant, and I hope to stay close to the idea of money undermining creativity and innovation.

In the case of breast cancer, remember the stir a couple of years ago about mammograms/early detection and whether or not it prevented breast cancer? The fury was started with a study published in the lancet in october 2001, which I've attached. It basically said that decreases in breast cancer mortality cannot be attributed to mammography screening per se. This prompted most everyone in the field to denounce the researchers' findings, to discredit them personally, and to reaffirm that getting an annual mammogram is important. The Radiological Society of North America, for example, was quick to denounce the study, but now is a bit less hasty. See  http://www.radiologyinfo.org/content/news/nd021402-1.htm for their "neutral" presentation. Everyone turned to them (and similar professional organizations for advice on how to interpret the studies because they are the experts who deal with mammograms on a day to day basis. But what no one is pointing out (at least in my experience) is that if these folks agreed with the dutch study, and told women not to come in for their annual mammogram because it wouldn't make any difference anyway, they would lose (in many cases) over half their business per year!! Their opinion can hardly be considered objective or even expert ... it's a simple knee-jerk reaction. It's like telling a logger that she is killing an ecosystem. Be thankful if she doesn't saw off your head, because at that point it isn't about logic anymore.

Money is always the elephant in the room that no one talks about. It is always, always there. Don't tell me breast cancer researchers, aids researchers, or anyone else has my best interests at heart! By necessity, they have their own interests at heart. If radiologists don't x-ray people, they don't eat. My solution is to remove money from the equation, and then let real necessity (saving people you love from dying) to take over. If you don't have to worry about whether or not you're going to eat, whether or not you'll have a place to live, and whether or not you can make your MRI payment this month, you'll be in a much better position to pay attention to basic science instead of the commercial drivel we have now. The explosive medical literature we have today is mostly garbage, bought and paid for by companies with vested interests in the outcomes of their sponsored studies.

4. This brings me to your next question about land ownership. If you haven't guessed by now, i'm opposed to land ownership as well. Proudhon said it so neatly: property is theft, end of story. (When we talk of property, of course, we aren't talking about personal possessions such as your toothbrush, clothes, or car ... although shared cars ala flexcar seem much more sensible than personal cars to me, if you can even call a car sensible to begin with.)

Land ownership in this country (as with every other) is a history covered with blood. You can read the cliffs notes version by reading Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, available here:  http://www.utulsa.edu/law/classes/rice/USSCT_Cases/JOHNSON_V_MCINTOSH_1823.HTM

Chief Justice Marshall wrote: "On the discovery of the immense continent, the great nations of Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of it as they could respectively acquire. Its vast extent offered an ample field to the ambition and enterprise of all; and the character and religion of its inhabitants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendancy. The potentates of the old world [and the new] found no difficulty in convincing themselves, that they made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the new, by bestowing on them civilization and Christianity, in exchange for unlimited independence."

He rattles on with other racist justifications for the genocide of native americans and why it didn't matter that they possessed the land before the colonizers arrived. His reasoning is largely based on Locke's labor theory of property, which holds that although "the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men," each person has "a property in his own person." The idea is that by laboring, by taking raw materials and natural resources and shaping them into something else via labor, a person could take something out of the commons (the "state of nature") and make it her own property. So the trees originally belonged to all of us, but if I make a cabin out of them, it becomes mine, because of my labor. Similarly, if I work the land ... by mining, tilling, plowing, grazing, clearcutting, bulldozing and otherwise raping it ... it is removed from the commons and becomes my own personal property. Marshall argued that since the indians had not "improved" the land enough, i.e. did not rape it or otherwise leave their permanent mark upon it, it was still in a state of nature, and was ripe for the colonizers to assume as their personal (or national) property.

My main objection to land ownership (and all property, for that matter) is that it rests upon power--vicious, bloody, terrorizing power. Property confers power, and yet simultaneously depends upon power. Your deed to your house means nothing if you can't prevent me from living in your basement ... how can you call it your house when I live there against your will, or when I evict you against your will? (Cf. Baath party members' houses in Baghdad.) That is, all forms of property require a state to back them up (and if it's not clear, I think states are bad ideas). Property actually bestows upon owners a form of sovereignty over others, because the whole idea driving property is that a sovereign state stands behind the owner's assertion of right.

The whole idea of possession reflects the attitude that we are separate from nature. The idea of land ownership was completely baffling, even laughable to most native americans. How can you own the air, or the water, or the animals? Yet we believe we can ... the FAA and FCC regulate our airspace, and private property owners own the water and wild animals on their property. This has nothing but a colonizing effect upon the world around us, as we draw up tax maps, roll out the survey stakes, and measure our domains. [In a similar vein, many indigenous people are (or have been) absolutely opposed to the idea of number or measure, feeling that by numbering animals, trees, or people, you assert power over them and they suddenly lose wildness (wildness is a modern idea, but the closest articulation I can find).]

Land ownership gives you enormous power: you can give the land to the person of your choice upon your death, you have the right to exclude the whole world from setting foot on your lawn, you can develop it and modify it as you see fit (within parameters), you own the ground beneath it and the airspace above it (for a limited space in each direction), and you legally own all non-human life on the land. What a sick, twisted power-hungry idea!

The whole idea of land, as with intellectual property, is to concentrate power, formerly belonging to all, in the hands of a few. This is why property it is theft. Its pathological nature is revealed when you consider that it depends upon the existence of a state, and specifically allows you to summon state violence to defend your claim.

Your deed to your land is nothing more than a guarantee that the state will enforce your claim to ownership by lethal force if necessary. A deed, if you will, is a tiny piece of state sovereignty, that confers upon its owner a whole arsenal of weapons, from the judiciary to law enforcement to the army, designed to defend the owner's title from all challenges.

It's positively scary to me!

The argument that private property leads to better upkeep of land is far too simple for me. I mean, look around (or into the past), who are better stewards of their lands, societies without private property or those with it?? Actually, private property allows you to pass the buck and sweep the dirt under the rug. It doesn't create a responsible of stewardship, but rather allows you to abdicate responsible to another party. Don't want pcbs on your land? Dump them in the Hudson, where they'll float "away." It just means you have to keep your land clean by asserting your economic and physical wherewithal, and then use that same power to dump your waste elsewhere. Result: duh, impoverished communities and minorities who are unable to defend themselves end up bearing the majority of the pollution in the country. Thanks to the good folks in warren county, north carolina who started the environmental justice movement, a general accounting office study in the mid 1980s showed that 3 of every 5 black and hispanics lived in a community containing unregulated toxic waste sites.

This is what private property leads to.

Native americans and other first nations people, on the other hand, took a collective, communal view of land. Land wasn't good just for human nations and tribes, but for the deer nation and the mink nation and the salmon nation. It wasn't that a given person might be indifferent to good stewardship of the the land ... that one might trash spot A because they weren't invested in it and then move on to spot B. Quite the opposite: every individual had a direct and personal relationship with the land, it clothed her, fed her, nurtured her, sustained her. Many first nations people make no distinction between themselves and the land.

The closest we (non-indigenous people) come to understanding that idea (being inseparable/indistinguishable from your environment) is with endangered species: somehow a california condor in a cage doesn't seem "saved" to us, because we instinctively know that a condor is more than a particular sequence of DNA, that it is more than an animated assemblage of feathers, bones, and lice. The condor is nothing without the majestic landscape that gives it a defining context and meaning. A condor in a cage is still gymnogyps californianus to science, but to us it is nothing compared to the wonderful creature that soared through the valleys of big sur.

Because each person had an individual bond to and interest in their surroundings, to such an extent that there was no distinction between the land and a tribe or person, indigenous people treated their lands with exponentially greater respect and reverence than we do today.


5. To selectively enforce patent law based upon the technological sophistication of the nation in question seems to undermine the whole idea of patents to begin with. If you used selective enforcement, people would soon ask why shouldn't we be able to have aids treatment in the us cost $300 a year, instead of $15,000? Treatment should of course be free, and not cost $300 ... but even if free i would question the value of the toxic aids cocktails.

6. Am I the only one who gets the idea that Hatch knows so little about computers that he apparently thinks they will blow up if you push the wrong buttons??

White Lilac -

Sorry I haven't had more time to respond to that last post. It's deserving of a well thought out post, but unfortunately I still don't have the time to write one. I wanted to get something down before this dropped off the front page though. So here goes.

It seems to me that your argument with regard to intellectual property rights is predicated on idealism. Everyone providing for the common good, everyone pulling their fair weight, etc. Because without a monetary incentive to produce such artistic works and new widgets, only the independently wealthy could do so.

This is the common path our debates usually follow.

"Money" is, I believe, a symbol for human greed in your arguments against it. Your arguments against money -- that it undermines creativity, causes doctors to perform unnecessary work, etc -- are clearly not simply because of currency. It's the objectified version of greed.

Further, your point about doctors performing unnecessary work would make sense...if I accepted the premise. Which I don't. It assumes that noone ever needs an MRI, or an X-Ray, when at times we clearly do. That's not to say some bottom-feeders would try and bamboozle us, for personal gain. But I believe that's the exception, not the norm.

I think you've read too much into the flap over mammograms, and other early-detection methods. I doubt it was really so conspiratorial and sinister. Science often becomes dogma and many are unwilling to dismiss their dogma. Similar to the Atkins diet -- many organizations at first wrote it off as suicidal, but now organizations such as the AHA are re-examining it.

The GPL would not work without copyright law because it assumes the author of the software is the "owner" of the software. The GPL is a copyright license. It licenses anyone to use the code, for any purpose whatsoever, provided that they too release any source code used with the software. No such demand could be made if there was no ownership of the software. Because nothing could prevent someone else from taking the code, writing their own code around it, but keeping their own code as a trade secret. (Even if they released the binary form of the software).

Intellectual property rights are not extended only to corporations. So the van Gogh argument, for example, makes little sense. van Gogh would automatically have been extended copyright protection of his work -- ownership. And he would be free to sell his paintings to whomever he pleased. He could even sell the paintings while retaining the copyright. There's would be no reason for him to sell his copyright to a business. Without copyright protection, van Gogh would only have owned the paint and the canvas, which he could sell. But the buyer could then turn around and sell copies of the painting, thus preventing van Gogh from eeking out any living at all.

Land Ownership --

I can't get too into this...far too much to talk about. But let me just say you're right about private property being based on organized violence. (Or threats thereof). But that's just part of the social compact. The same is true of rape, is it not? Most anarchists I've come across are not opposed to the idea of the state entirely. Most (I believe?) think the state should exist, and should have a monopoly on justice. I'm not saying trespassing rises to the same level as rape, just making a point.

Maybe more under a different heading later...:)