[p2p-research] [Commoning] Information sector: a qualitative different mode of production?

[Don Marti]

begin j.martin.pedersen quotation of Mon, Jan 03, 2011 at 02:33:10PM +0000:

> I paste it below, but to answer your first question: the FSF and leading
> Free Culture advocates want to see and conceptualise copyright as
> policy, not property. I argue against that.
> 
> Also, I have posted the exceprt here for easier reading and access to
> original text with footnotes and page numbers:
> http://commoning.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/is-copyright-policy-or-property-a-critique-of-the-fsfs-position/

Good essay.  Stallman comes from the USA, though,
and some of the basis for treating information
monopolies differently from property seems to come
from the Constitution.  The US Constitution puts
patents and copyrights into Article I, Section 8, the
miscellaneous powers of Congress section, along with
"post roads" and "letters of marque and reprisal".
All of that section is stuff that Congress is
_allowed_, but not _required_, to do.  Under the
Constitution, I don't have the right to a patent,
a post road running past my house, or permission
to raid enemy ships--Congress has the right to give
them to me if it wants.  Actual property rights are
separate, in the 5th Amendment.

If the Framers of the Constitution had wanted us
to have property rights in the exclusive use of
information, they could have put them in as rights,
not as one of the economic development programs that
Congress has permission to run.

The language of private property rights has powerful
appeal in the USA, so many seekers of government
benefits put their appeals in that form.  So the fact
that someone who wants a patent from the government
calls it "property" is probably not a strong argument
for calling it that.

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti at zgp.org