It's now illegal to turn on your computer

[Craig White]

On Sun, 2007-12-30 at 22:42 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> On 12/30/07, Kevin Brown <kevin_brown at qwest.net> wrote:
> > >>> cannot ignore the need for some level of province.  Without fences,
> > >>> there are no crops.
> > >> Really? Most of the farms I know of don't have fences. They seem to pull
> > >> in lots of crops.
> > >
> > >   Really?  I think I'll just go over there and get me some.  Who says
> > > whats wild and what is the farmers property?
> >
> > That they don't have fences does not mean that it is open access for
> > all.  I've lived in communities where fences were against building codes
> > for a few reasons.  One, they are unsightly and block people's view.
> > Two, they impeded the wildlife of the area.  Lots of farms (rather than
> > ranches) don't have them as it makes it easier to get access to the crop
> > areas with the farming equipment.  Ranches have some fences to contain
> > the animals so they can be tracked and less likely to be a problem
> > (cattle in the roads...)
> 
> 
>   ok... I think you may be missing my point here.  I'm not sure if
> Hans is trying to drive home some point, or hes trying to look daft by
> throwing wingnuts around.  The point is, whether you have a physical
> fence or not, there are boundaries.  One of the most basic, if not the
> most basic, form of property is land.  Most anthropologists beleive
> that our concepts of land ownership were introduced with the advent of
> agriculture.  The basic thing to establish is that, no farmer is going
> to invest in cultivating crops unless he is offered some kind of
> assurance that the land he works is his, or his /property/.  Call it a
> fence, call it a boundary, whatever you want.
> 
>   now, what we are currently trying to do is to extend our concept of
> property to the world of ideas.  Its not really a new development, as
> copyright has been around for a long time, however its introduction
> does appear to coincide with the beginning of 'modernism'.  However
> the current crisis is that we are starting to realize that were not
> dealing with land here, but we are treating it as such.  But, some of
> the aspects persist... no one is going to cultivate land, or in our
> case /ideas/, or /software/ or /art/, unless they know it will be
> their property.  So if we cease to support the notion of ideas as
> property... will production cease?
----
I have no interest in the borders/fences metaphors myself

There are legal constructs for the idea of racketeering, extortion, and
then of course, there is always the notion of what rights/restrictions
are conveyed upon purchase.

As for the notion of ideas as property, that of course is what the DMCA
has always been about and that clearly pits the consumers against the
producers as their interests clearly conflict. I think that if the
value / pricing curve were reasonable for consumers, there wouldn't be
that much of an issue. The fact remains that music CD's are
comparatively out of scale. It appears that the cause for these out of
scale prices is an antiquated system of control over production and
distribution that drives a massive wedge between the artists and the
consumers.

Corporate interests are always pitted against those of the public and if
I recall correctly, the Sherman Anti-Trust act was borne for precisely
these issues. Unfortunately, 12 years of Republican rule has pushed the
pendulum way too far to the corporate interests which is why we are
seeing things like health care costs skyrocket, etc. - not that the
Democrats have given any indication that this is going to change any
time soon. I think I stated early on that I didn't necessarily want to
turn this into a political discussion but you seem insistent on
parroting the rights of the corporations here.

Craig