[Reader-list] re: reader, boell, lab, adorno, jail, textz.com

[Andreas Broeckmann]

dear frederic,

>what I mean, is that I truly see no ground for stating that the
>above message I
>just wrote is my intellectual property and I see no ground for the
>beatles (let
>alone EM fucking I) to claim that the white album is their intellectual
>property, same for adorno, sebastian, andreas and you name it

well, the 'grounds' are signed contracts and existing, enforcable
laws that don't go away just because you decide that intellectual
property sucks and everybody is copying all the time anyway. i don't
want to sound too stupid, but i believe that it is necessary to
address the reality of these laws.


Lawrence Liang wrote:

>B. Copyright, Information and the language of property
>(...) Shawís quotation about the sharing of the
>ideas is a simple yet effective demonstration of the
>nature of ideas and information goods. Information
>just does not share the same characteristics as
>classical ëreal propertyí. The dissemination of ideas,
>for instance, does not reduce their use value.
>Information is considered a ënon-rivalí good, in the
>sense that usage of that information cannot impair the
>utility to another user of that information. (...)

this analysis ignores the fact that the usage of or access to
information goods can be exploited - as in cinemas, exhibitions, or
the sale of books or software packages. of course, the texts of
Adorno and the insights one may take from them don't change when they
are distributed via textz.com; yet, Reemtsma's foundation gets a
share of the income generated from selling the texts, eg by the
publisher Suhrkamp, which is why they have a vested interest in
exclusively distributing the texts through people or companies that
pay for a license, or royalties.

'intellectual property' like a movie can also 'wear off' in the sense
that people will normally only see it once, and some of them will
even accept seeing Lord of the Rings 3 on a TV monitor, if they don't
have to pay for a ticket at the cinema box office. so the film
company will try to prevent the free circulation of copies of the
film not because the quality of the film narrative would suffer, but
because they can make money out of selling access to the film.

the Linux industry may prove that there are ways of making money from
'free' products; yet, it will have to be proven in all other cases
that this is also the case in other instances, and the battle of
convincing Reemtsma might be as much of a challenge as that of
convincing Bill Gates.


i thought that Britta's intervention was very important because she
reminds us to maybe start thinking about these issues from the
perspective of an 'owner': imagine something that you own personally
and that you use to make a living (a car, a computer, a contract, a
story to tell, a data-base of contacts, etc.) and imagine that
somebody demands to freely use your property because s/he does not
accept your property claim.


regards,
-a