________________________________________________________________________________ distribution of property I'm sceptical about accepting a weakening of property rights in the name of liberty, when it is *distribution* of property (among claimants, among types of property that have to be negotiated) that is the grounds for securing liberty in the first place. qualitative difference "'intellectual property' is really little more than the bourgeoisie's attempt to distinguish itself from the working classes by claiming that there's a qualitative difference between its own labors and that of its economic lessers. but that's not where things are headed, historically speaking--quite the opposite." owning the vector My concern is that if you can't 'propertise' the information, then all power resides with whoever owns the vector. The pipe -- the part that is still physical and material property -- will be where the power lies. The pipe guys will be king. fruits of the labor this is kind of a strange thing to say. marx says workers under capitalism are alienated from the fruits of their labor, not their property. one presumes he does not consider these to be the same thing, particularly given that he calls for the abolition of private property. class struggle is self-serving > I don't buy any argument that legitimizes self-serving > behavior by framing it as a class struggle issue. well, first of all, class struggle is self-serving, not philanthropy or altruism. just pointing out a category error. why does copyright ever end? but this is the whole point. what belongs to you and why? if intellectual property is a natural right (a la mckenzie and his locke reference), why does copyright ever end? why is there such a thing as public domain at all? is not the limitation of copyright essentially theft, according to your understanding? i'm serious. own the life > I'm sorry, but the bottom line is IF YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR > IT, IT ISN'T YOURS. hm. how much do i owe my parents for my life? or they their parents for theirs? and so on . . . do i even own the life that i invest in my works of art? by what right do i do so? is such a right naturally endowed by our creator? at what point? revolution i apologize for not having the answers (beyond revolution ;-), but it seems to me that the debate over napster and IP has fallen apart into fairly hyperbolic sets of positions. manual/mental the point made (in the "poverty of philosophy") is that the underlying differentiation between the fruits of manual labour and those of mental labour is dissolving, a point confirmed in ample measure as early as the 1940s and later reiterated by baudrillard. (yet i am befuddled by how sluggishly marxists are renovating marx's own approach to this issue when it is so pressing today) appropriation art i think there are more "grey areas" than you have permitted here. in the 1980s the art world roundly validated (even valorized) appropriation art, parallel with popular music's development of sampling. in almost every case, the law's flailing, fumbling attempts to draw the line between constructive appropriation and theft have resulted in a wobbly philosophical scribble. just ask an artist to draw a line between 'influence' and 'inspiration'. hopeless. sampling i find your claim that "if you didn't pay for it, it isn't yours" more than a little troublesome. try telling that to Picasso when he borrows one of Cezanne's figures for his Demoiselles. the more you investigate the circulation of artistic products, the more you find that "it" was never really "yours" at all, and that there was never a time when "it" was always paid for by every user. there was, however, a time when "it" was never paid for by any user. property is theft what about: "property is theft" - j.j. rousseau ... in this respect "intellectual property" is either a contradictio in adjecto, because every intellect which claims "property rights" shows a sign of a restricted intellect (restricted to the capitalization of its in- and outcomes) or it is a sign of the intellectual power of the property relations in our (capitalistic) society. its a power game, as far as i understand it. land is "property" In all the classical conversations of "private property", land was what was meant, as well as the (fixed) capital welded thereto later on. Same with Marx. He makes the distinction quite clearly between the two. Land is "property" in the argument you are trying to make sense of. ¬ simple possession Property alienation was an impossible concept before industrialisation. Why? because of the division of labour in the production of commodities. That's where Weber makes his mistake calling pre-capitalist piece work a form of capitalism. Otherwise we can just call the whole of the history of trade and simple possession capitalism. the first MAN THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." "hardening" digital code yes. and so far i only understand that digital code doesn't work the old way, where power was about disciplination. now its about the modes of control it says. i think gaining power out of digital code lays in it's rematerialization. encryption for example is "hardening" code, other modes define the individual, scan what codes go in and out. the third kind, and maybe the strongest one is perception management, the propaganda-spectacle. napster, in the end of the day, got a lot of press, a lot of hits, and therefore has a lot of "value". temporary freedom, yes. endless supply, yes. destruction first, reconstruction after. very modern indeed. we are all part of this process. contract law isn't copyright law a derivative law? intellectual property is not written down in any constitution, it's constantly changing, and belongs more to contract things like the nafta. just for a moment it seems that computer code is stronger then law, here the understanding will change, is already changing, to IP becoming a plain commodity, even under a more processual definition: mental labour or the smoothly shifting regime going under the name of "bio power". this is about much more advanced forms of control and competition including open source and gift giving battles. theft is freedom Actually the quote, which is most relevant here is the one on the pamphlett by Proudhon (sp?) which goes "Property is theft. Property is freedom". Lots of people, it seems, love to leave that last sentence off. But in defining the problems we can now add a couple of further notes - first in relation to the self-valorisation/ destructuratlon nexus. In the history of socialist thought and practice, the sense of proletarian self-valorisation has often been expressed with original intensity. (If Gramaci1s teachings can be retained in any useful sense today, it is certainly in this regard). But is never expressed in terms of separateness-rather it is always expressed in a dialectical sense in relation to the totality. Reciprocation takes the place of Opposition. In the social-anarchist tradition this reciprocity, this correspondence, has been played out in terms of the dialectic between centralisation and decentralisation. Thus it Is not difficult, In a critique that starts with Marx and stretches through to Foucault1s edItion of the Panopticon, to demonstrate the perfect compatibility of Proudhon and Bentham. But this compatibility also exists in the tradition of scientitic SocIalism - this time not extensive (between centrailsatlon and decentralisatlon), but intensive (between the general working class interest and the general interests of society, between socialism and democracy). This compatibility of the process of SeIf-valorisation with the productive structuration of society, is a myth. It is not Proudhon and Bentham, but Rousseau and Stalin who are the fathers of this much- loved synthesis. Personally, I have no time for the so calIed nouveaux philosophes, but I must say I am rather disconcerted when I see representatives of the historical parties of the working class, who have always been enamoured of the link between rationalism and productive Stalinism, insulting these young philosophers for having drawn attention to this mystifying connection. There are some, but they are misty and delusional in ways similar to Proudhon's, but then I'm hopelessly under the spell of Marx's polemics against Proudhonism and credit gratuit schemes. The problems are that 1) you can't have local money and a planetary division of labor, but you probably couldn't have, say, fiber optics without a planetary division of labor, and 2) as Negri said, money has one face, that of the boss. ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. post to the list: mailto:inbox@rolux.org. more information: mailto:minordomo@rolux.org, no subject line, message body: info rolux. further questions: mailto:rolux-owner@rolux.org. home: http://rolux.org/lists - archive: http://rolux.org/archive