[governance] Speaking of property rights...

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Willie Currie [mailto:wcurrie at apc.org]
> 
> This is a v insightful paper and raises important points about
> informational property rights.

Thanks, Willie

> I think that the notion of info-communism is a red herring, (excuse
the
> pun) and can't be taken seriously - there is a some kind of radical
chic
> at play there in the iconography - Che Guevara has become a mainstream

Let's say "communalism" rather than communism; if so, no it is not a red
herring, there is still a lot of confusion around that issue as I hoped
I documented well in the article.

> While the claims of freedom, the individual and constitutionality are
v
> important, they do need to be balanced with the claims of the social.

Sure. But the dialogue was in the context of the debate over "free"
software and how freedom related to property rights. You are raising
larger issues that I didn't address. 

> This is a key faultline in contemporary gloabl politics that is at
play
> in all sectors of society and the economy at present - particularly in
> the crisis around global financial markets. Freedom, individual
property
> rights and extreme deregulation led to the crisis in which the whole
> system of global finances was threatening to become severely unhinged,

Well, off topic really for me, but your diagnosis may lack something.
E.g., the financial crisis here has as much to do with government
policies lowering interest rates too far and too long, and with moral
hazards created by state bailouts, as it does with "freedom" and
"deregulation." 

> market to intervene. In the space of intellectual property rights
there
> is a similar extremism at play in the maximalist regime for IPRs that
> was, until challenged by social forces, willing to let masses of
people
> in developing countries die of HIV/AIDS, aided and abetted by
> neo-conservatives like Thabo Mbeki in South Africa (to our shame).

But my point about IPR is that it often requires an extreme
pro-regulatory stance. It is, e.g., the trademark and copyright lawyers
who want to concentrate power in ICANN, or to hardwire protection
standards into equipment, or even to ban equipment altogether. 

So do not saddle us advocates of freedom with that side of the political
equation.

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance