permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On 9/14/04 6:19 AM, "neotern-1@yahoo.com" <neotern-1@yahoo.com> wrote:

> "The signature implies ownership of language and ideas
> by the person signing, thus posing as the genius who
> supposedly originated these ideas.

Actually, copyright law (the author of Bart's quote might read it before
assuming it implies anything) specifically excludes ownership of ideas,
language, concepts, techniques, and systems. All you "own" is the right to
temporarily be the sole licensee of your particular arrangement of words or
images, and never, ever the ideas behind them. Occasionally some fool
assumes he owns the ideas, but any attempt to assert that gets nowhere fast.
I don't know of a single author or artist who is not absolutely aware that
their work exists only because of a huge body of work, credited and
uncredited, done by others. That's called culture.

How much writing or art would be done if no no were allowed to sign their
work? No Shakespeare, no Picasso? I realize it's not politically correct to
enjoy seeing your name in print, but for most writers, it's a very big day
when that first happens. Humans enjoy recognition--it's a fact of life, and
not an evil trait to be stamped out.

Here's one of my favorite stories about ownership. At a design course I
taught, the conveners handed us about 25 mugs and asked that everyone put
their name on one. For a week, each participant washed his or her mug every
day and returned it to the tea station. Then halfway through the course, the
mugs were sent through a dishwasher and the labels came off. Within 3 days,
every cup was dirty, half-full of moldy tea, strewn around the room, on
windowsills or spilled on the floor or under a couch, because no one had
ownership. And these were good, kind earth-people types! Ownership entails
responsibility; common property is abused. Read Garret Hardin's "The Tragedy
of the Commons" for countless more examples.