On 12/9/06, Mark D Lew <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm sorry to have to tell you that you can't get far discussing "intellectual property" without it becoming political. It is an inherently political term, like "death tax" or "woman's right to choose".
Intellectual property is a new term btw: Here is a wonderful quote from an interview Stay Free Magazine! had with Siva Vaidhyanathan the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: Full interview here: http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/siva_vaidhyanathan.html Stay Free!: It's funny. You think of corporations as being so antideregulation, and with copyright, it's the complete opposite. Vaidhyanathan: Corporations are always pro regulation when it's to their benefit. Copyright law has been way below the public's radar largely because this stuff seems so complicated and so irrelevant to daily life, but I think that's changing. Stay Free!: Napster really raised the awareness level, although I'm not sure that's all good. I'm on an email list with lots of teachers, and when, say, a student uses a popular song in a video they've created, some teachers will refer to that as stealing. Vaidhyanathan: But when many people say they're stealing, they're joking. They giggle when they use peer-to-peer systems to download songs... Stay Free!: I think you can blame part of the problem on language. Where did the term "intellectual property" originate? Vaidhyanathan: In the late 1960s, the phrase started making its way into law school course catalogues. Within legal discourse, "property" does not mean what it means in popular discourse. So it wasn't a real problem until the phrase caught on with the public. When that happened, it allowed experts call the shots. Jack Valenti [president of the Motion Picture Association of America] will say, "This is theft, this is theft, this is theft," because we're talking about property. You could then use metaphors like "If I lock something up in my garage, you can't come in and take it." Or, "You can't break into my house to watch television." Stay Free!: But those arguments are pretty easy to shoot down, don't you think? Because real property isn't like copyrighted material. If someone takes something from your garage, then you don't have it anymore. But if, say, a store plays your song, you don't have any less of a song. Vaidhyanathan: Unfortunately, the property metaphor is addictive. Whenever we debate people who belong to the content world, we end up having to work within the metaphor. Now I tend to respond by saying, "You're not talking about real property, you're talking about a government-granted monopoly." And you have to get back to that point that copyright is not natural, it's something that we the people decided to give to a certain class of people in exchange for something. And so if we're not giving what we promised to this group of people, we need to ask whether the system is properly balanced. Kim Patrick Clow "There's really only two types of music: good and bad." ~ Rossini _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
