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cc-eyebeam - Re: [cc-eyebeam] Quote from MLK Jr.

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Subject: Creative Commons-Eyebeam Forum 2003 November 12-19

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  • From: Glenn Otis Brown <glenn AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: Creative Commons-Eyebeam Forum 2003 November 12-19 <cc-eyebeam AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-eyebeam] Quote from MLK Jr.
  • Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 23:37:06 +0000



I tend to agree with your point here, Joseph. My own view is that property rights and human rights aren't necessarily rivalrous rights. Personal property and the right to protect it is critical to being a citizen, I think; it allows for personal autonomy. I'm a big fan of the fact that the government, or my boss, or my creditors, can't come take my property without due process.

And remember, it's property that makes the GPL (and our share alike licenses) magic: the copyleft requirement protects free software from being coopted into closed code. Only a strong property right can provide this anti-exploitation protection.

Here is food for your thought: Is it wrong for authors and artists
to exercise property rights in their writings and art? How is this
different from RIAA? Is it possible for authors and artists to
misuse their property rights? Do the authors and artists consider
their property rights more important than users? How does this
reconcile with the above quotation?


I think these questions are getting to the point. We seem to be most uncomfortable with notions of property the farther they are removed from the personal. This is why the RIAA's pleadings that it is representing artists' interests comes across as insincere; how much do these artists' contracts actually let them control their own creations?

There's one thing that we don't talk much about on the Creative Commons website -- simply because it's beyond our scope -- but that's pretty relevant to this point: the increasing trend of distribution of intellectual property away from people and to organizations and companies. The work for hire doctrine, absurdly lopsided recording contracts, trade secret law -- all of these things weaken personal property rights (and therefore personal autonomy and expression) in the name of big-picture (and big firm) efficiency. Beware: when you start calling for the weakening of personal property rights in the context of copyright, you can bet that organizations and companies will use that as a pretext to strengthen their own.


Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo AT voicenet.com>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
post in the public domain.

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This discussion runs 2003 November 12-19. Submissions are licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
license <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/>.





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