Re: <nettime> Indigenous IPR (was: Re: <nettime> Dark Markets: Whose Democracy?)

[Richard Sewell <richard@jarkman.co.uk>]

Let me try to make some wider context here.

Most knowledge is not property. Our collective strength as a species lies 
in our vast common storehouse of knowledge. We know about shoes, pasta, 
electric light, newsgroups, jokes, net art, and domesticated animals. By 
default, new knowledge becomes common, and is part of our shared wealth. 
That's a good thing, not 'pilfering'. Without it, we would all be poorer in 
a million ways.

A tiny, tiny fraction of all our knowledge is currently treated as property 
- new works of particular types (books, movies, inventions). The point of 
deeming them property is to reward the effort of their creation, to produce 
the conditions where creation is economically possible.

I think you're arguing from the position that knowledge is necessarily 
property and deserves compensation. I think the real question is, should we 
create a brand-new kind of intellectual property, a new exception to the 
rule that knowledge is free to share, and if we do how would we avoid the 
spaghetti tax ?

R.




At 02:11 15/10/02 -0400, eyescratch� wrote:
>This is the simplified view of existence where we can shove one product to 
>stand in the place of spheres of existence. The spaghetti tax, no really?
>
> [....]
>
>A subsistant economy is not an ill side effect, it is growth in the purist 
>form. This year I completed a twenty minute video on a pueblo in costa 
>rica - they had many ideas on what needs and issues they face, indirectly 
>focusing on the production of new knowledge through political exhistance 
>that might help them escape projects to be built on their soil put forth 
>by such organs as the World Bank. The video is meant as a tool so that 
>they might communicate, find a voice and has now found itself back in 
>their hands and in their players.
>
>

-
Richard Sewell
richard@jarkman.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1495 762385       Mobile: +44 (0)7973 775743

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