Re: [DMCA_Discuss]Re: Dangerous Distance between the Private and the Commons

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>]

Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> 
> > Our Dangerous Distance between the Private and the Commons
> > Americans have retreated into Cocoons of the like-minded where all they 
> > hear
> > is echoes of Themselves.
> > by Jonathan Rowe
> >
> > Thursday, May 27, 2004
> > Christian Science Monitor
> > ...
> > A reason for today's bitter, polarized politics is that people don't
> > have to talk with those they don't agree with anymore. They just
> > retreat into their cocoons of the like-minded where all they hear is
> > echoes of themselves. They lose the capacity to tolerate - let alone
> > listen to - anyone who thinks differently.
> 
>         Bleh. Glurge. Let us recall such glorious tolerance of yesteryear:
> 
> "White Fountain/Colored Fountain (Separate But Equal)"
> "NINA - No Irish Need Apply"
> "No Jews Or Dogs Allowed"
> 
>         When Groucho Marx quipped he wouldn't join any club which would
> have him as member, he wasn't merely making a logical recursion joke.
> He meant - and this is lost on modern ears - he didn't care for the
> company of snobs who would ordinarily blackball any Jew, but were
> willing to make a specific exception in his case because of his celebrity.
> 
>         There's certainly changes, as some of the dividing lines in
> social architecture move from being based as firmly in race/religion
> _per se_, to rely more on income as an excluder. But having some
> Noble Savage story isn't helpful.


I found most of this article terribly off the mark.  The example of the
dividing dikes that Mr. Rowe presents strikes me as a cogent illustration of
an aspect of the pertinence of the commons, though an example that seems to
load the "we need to balance" argument by means of making a great deal out
of dividing lines as such.  And his leap to the conclusions in the
particular paragraph you pulled out above, struck me as lacking any basis in
any of the details he presents up to that point.

I'm just not going to comment on your "noble savage" take on the article --
I have other kinds of issues with the article.

The singular aspect of the article that struck me was the way it ended up on
the commons issue with respect to code freedom -- an indication of the fact
that some are seeing that fight as increasingly pertinent to broader
political issues.  Because this isn't really an article about that, nor
about the whole bugaboo about online file discovery tools that we find
discussion going on and on and around and around about in places like the
Pho list.  It's about completely different issues, yet it 1) points at code
freedom as a pertinent issue, and 2) it points at that rather than the
much-ballyhooed yet shallow discussions surrounding online file discovery
and the reactionary RIAA/MPAA/WIPO responses to the ubiquity of that
technology, that are getting attention from what so many people still seem
willing to call "the press" these days.

The main problems I find with the article are:

1) Its theme of there being something somehow wrong about like-minded people
being able to associate to an unprecedented degree, with its bizarre leap to
the statement that the polarization of politics these days is because
"people don't have to talk with those they don't agree with anymore."  I
read that as Mr. Rowe's attempt to find support within the information
freedom constituencies, for his half-baked thesis connecting communications
technologies with the polarization.

2) The analysis of exclusive rights policy in terms of the "limited times" /
eventual passing into the public domain argument, rather than in terms of
the intrinsic freedom of information.  Published information is
intrinsically shared wealth, is intrinsically free, intrinsically makes up a
commons; it needs simple recognition that this is well-established in our
legal tradition as a self-evident truth, much more than any artful
illustrations, amplified by somewhat reverent accounts of life on Philippine
rice farms or of civic life in the past.


Seth

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