Politics – Page 9 – The Pinocchio Theory

A new twist on immortality

Quite wonderfully, the conceptual artist Jonathon Keats (great name) has copyrighted his brain, and now is selling futures contracts on his neurons (via Die, Puny Humans). Since copyright holds for 70 years after the death of the creator, Keats is offering the rights to use his neurons for any computational purpose the buyer may wish, during that extended period. You buy now, and cash in when Keats actually dies (which may not be for quite some time, as he is 32). (The actual text of the IPO is available here).
This is brilliant on so many levels. In terms of “intellectual property,” and the commodification of art and intellect; in terms of what personal identity might mean, after death; in terms of the expectations of artificial intelligence research and interfacing neurons with silicon chips. Keats poses all these issues in a quite hilarious and provocative way (even though, or rather precisely because, Keats insists that he wants to be taken seriously).

Quite wonderfully, the conceptual artist Jonathon Keats (great name) has copyrighted his brain, and now is selling futures contracts on his neurons (via Die, Puny Humans). Since copyright holds for 70 years after the death of the creator, Keats is offering the rights to use his neurons for any computational purpose the buyer may wish, during that extended period. You buy now, and cash in when Keats actually dies (which may not be for quite some time, as he is 32). (The actual text of the IPO is available here).
This is brilliant on so many levels. In terms of “intellectual property,” and the commodification of art and intellect; in terms of what personal identity might mean, after death; and in terms of the expectations of artificial intelligence research and interfacing neurons with silicon chips. Keats poses all these issues in a quite hilarious and provocative way (even though, or rather precisely because, Keats insists that he wants to be taken seriously).
Since it’s only $10 for a million neurons, I sent in a check, requesting neurons located in the artist’s anterior cingulate cortex

Property is Theft

From an article by Daniel Akst in the business section of today’s New York Times:

Internet music sharing represents a profound assault on the very idea of intellectual property. Today it’s music, but tomorrow it will be movies and then books, and the justifications will be the same. The implications should be obvious to producers of intellectual property, but the outcry has been muffled in part because universities have come to own and operate so much of the nation’s intellectual life.

I am inclined to say, this is precisely the point. The notion of “intellectual property” is an egregiously bad one, and needs to be overturned. Congress will never, on its own, overturn the laws that define and govern “intellectual property”, because they get too many contributions from the industries that “own” such “intellectual property.” The widespread public feeling that there is nothing wrong with file sharing, and a public outcry at the spectacle of grandmothers and 12 year olds being sued by the RIAA, is the one thing that might cause a change in the laws.
Copyrighted material is not private property. The assimilation of copyright to property is itself deplorable; but the Supreme Court ruled, as recently as 1985, that copyright infringement and theft are two completely separate things, as I have already noted in these pages.
The whole notion of “intellectual property” is an extension of this false claim that copyrighted material is private property. Indeed, it represents a massive privatization of what used to be a common good. As such, it is anti-democratic, anti-freedom, and benefiting big corporations rather than the great mass of people.
The notion of “intellectual property” is incompatible with the freedom of ideas.
Limited copyright – which emphatically does not mean property ownership – was originally instituted in order to encourage innovation, by giving creators financial rewards for such innovation. But the virtually unlimited copyright laws of today in fact stifle innovation, since they prevent the reuse of previously existing cultural material.
Akst notes (correctly) that “If you live on an academic paycheck – instead of royalties – then the free electronic distribution of your scholarly works is probably preferable to having a university press print 500 copies bound directly for the deepest library stacks.” This is indeed my own situation, which of course could explain why my own self-interest is not tied up with preserving draconian notions of copyright.
But when Akst says that copyright is ” the legal concept that is essential to freedom and prosperity in the information age,” he is just engaging in doublespeak.
He ends his article with a terrifyingly totalitarian view of how to manage the Internet: “Sooner or later we will need to know who everyone on the Internet is, and who confirmed their identities. Internet access providers who admit unauthenticated users will have to be shut out, even if that means shutting out whole countries.”
Preserving “freedom” for corporations (who have benefited for a century from the inane legal fiction that they are “individuals”) means denying freedom to all those individuals who don’t happen to be wealthy corporations.

From an article by Daniel Akst in the business section of today’s New York Times:

Internet music sharing represents a profound assault on the very idea of intellectual property. Today it’s music, but tomorrow it will be movies and then books, and the justifications will be the same. The implications should be obvious to producers of intellectual property, but the outcry has been muffled in part because universities have come to own and operate so much of the nation’s intellectual life.

A Modest Proposal

Actually, it could be argued that “outing” a CIA agent is, relatively, a meritorious act: the outed agent is no longer able to work in the field and perpetrate all sorts of nefarious (and generally illegal and unethical) acts. But even if you don’t accept this reasoning, still the Bush Administration has done far more heinous things on an almost daily basis (like all the lies about the Iraq war, and the suspensions of civil liberties at home) than giving out the name of one former agent.
Still, since the agent’s outing does seem to be the issue du jour,I’d like to make a “modest proposal” (in the spirit of Jonathan Swift). I hereby propose that Bob Novak (who revealed the agent’s identity to the public) be arrested under the Patriot Act (which would mean that habeas corpus and other civil liberties guaranteed under the Bill of Rights would be denied him), tortured until he reveals the name of the White House official who leaked the information to him (again, the Patriot Act would allow us to suspend the usual rule of law according to which information so obtained would not be admissible in court), and then, together with the person who so informed him, put to death for treason. How could John Ashcroft object to such a process, even if Carl Rove, or Ashcroft himself, turned out to be the other guilty party?

File sharing (copyright infringement) is not theft

Despite what the music industry likes to say, the Supreme Court ruled in 1985
that “(copyright infringement) does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud… The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use.”
So, even if file sharing is not protected under fair use (which I believe it should be), it cannot be equated with stealing either. (Via Techdirt).

Despite what the music industry likes to say, the Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that copyright infringement “does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud… The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use.”
So, even if file sharing is not protected under fair use (which I believe it should be), it cannot be equated with stealing either. (Via Techdirt).

Meetups

Tonight I went to, not one, but two meetings arranged through meetup.com. The first (pictured) was for users of Movable Type, the software that runs this blog. The second was for supporters of drafting General Wesley Clark for President. Due to the fact that both meetings were at the same time, as well as that we needed to go home to put Adah to bed, I didn’t get to spend much time at either meeting. Hopefully I will get another chance to meet my fellow bloggers, all of whom seemed to be genuinely nice folks.
As for the Wesley Clark meeting, it was enormous, and showed that many people have great enthusiasm for a Clark Presidential run. Me, I’m supporting Clark, at least for the time being, because I think he has the best chance of actually being able to defeat Bush. Among the Democratic contenders, Kucinich and Sharpton are the two with whom I am most in ideological agreement, but neither of them has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning either the nomination or(if one of them did, by some fluke, get nominated) the general election. As for the party hacks who are in the race – Lieberman, Gephardt, Edwards, Kerry – they are all tired, and spell worse-than-Gore disaster in November 2004. That leaves Dean, who is in some ways admirable, and who is very popular in Seattle, but I don’t really believe he can defeat Bush either (not because he is too “liberal”, which he really isn’t, but because I think is appeal is too limited, and he is too unexciting a candidate; he could carry the northern tier of states (like New England and the Pacific Northwest) which more often than not go Democratic anyway, but not much else. Clark, however, is telegenic and smart – I really think he’s the only Democrat who could wipe the floor with Bush in a debate. I don’t know many of his stands in detail, but his defense of Enlightenment values and secular liberal democracy on Bill Maher last weekend was quite encouraging, and he can get away with it because he’s a General (no way Bush, Rove, and company will be able to impugn his patriotism).
So I guess you could say I am taking a Kierkegaardian leap of faith in endorsing Clark – just as Hunter Thompson did when he came out for Jimmy Carter.

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Tonight I went to, not one, but two meetings arranged through meetup.com. The first (pictured) was for users of Movable Type, the software that runs this blog. The second was for supporters of drafting General Wesley Clark for President. Due to the fact that both meetings were at the same time, as well as that we needed to go home to put Adah to bed, I didn’t get to spend much time at either meeting. Hopefully I will get another chance to meet my fellow bloggers, all of whom seemed to be genuinely nice folks.
As for the Wesley Clark meeting, it was enormous, and showed that many people have great enthusiasm for a Clark Presidential run. Me, I’m supporting Clark, at least for the time being, because I think he has the best chance of actually being able to defeat Bush. Among the Democratic contenders, Kucinich and Sharpton are the two with whom I am most in ideological agreement, but neither of them has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning either the nomination or(if one of them did, by some fluke, get nominated) the general election. As for the party hacks who are in the race – Lieberman, Gephardt, Edwards, Kerry – they are all tired, and spell worse-than-Gore disaster in November 2004. That leaves Dean, who is in some ways admirable, and who is very popular in Seattle, but I don’t really believe he can defeat Bush either (not because he is too “liberal”, which he really isn’t, but because I think is appeal is too limited, and he is too unexciting a candidate; he could carry the northern tier of states, like New England and the Pacific Northwest, which more often than not go Democratic anyway, but not much else). Clark, however, is telegenic and smart – I really think he’s the only Democrat who could wipe the floor with Bush in a debate. I don’t know many of his stands in detail, but his defense of Enlightenment values and secular liberal democracy on Bill Maher last weekend was quite encouraging, and he can get away with it because he’s a General (no way Bush, Rove, and company will be able to impugn his patriotism).
So I guess you could say I am taking a Kierkegaardian leap of faith in endorsing Clark – just as Hunter Thompson did when he came out for Jimmy Carter.

Zizek

Slavoj Zizek is the most fascinating of contemporary theorists: I always find him compelling, irritating, insightful, wrongheaded, inspiring, and obnoxious by turns – but never dull. He writes too much for me to keep up with, as well. The latest book of his that I have read, Welcome to the Desert of the Real!, is no exception…

Hereditary Succession

As far as I know, there are only five countries in the world today that are backward enough, or corrupt enough, to have hereditary leadership (I mean actual, effective leadership, not kings or queens as symbolic figureheads) today:

North Korea (Kim Jong Il, son of Kim Il Sung)
Congo (Joseph Kabila, son of Laurent Kabila)
Syria (Bashar Al-Assad, son of Hafez Al-Assad)
Indonesia (Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno)
United States (George W Bush, son of George Bush).

A Note on “Cracker”

Here’s something that has been puzzling me. I mentioned a few posts ago that my infant daughter’s first word was “cracker.” Now, nearly every white person I have told this to has immediately made some joke on the order of, “is she talking about her daddy?” (I am white; my wife and daughter are black). No black people to whom I have told this have had any such reaction. Indeed, my wife, and other black people, have expressed complete puzzlement as to why so many white people would spontaneously make this “joke.” So, my own question is this: why do so many white people seem obsessed with black people supposedly calling white people “crackas” (which they freely interchange with “cracker”)? What kind of strange racial imaginary is behind all this?

RIAA Lawsuits

Well, the other shoe has dropped. The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it will sue individuals who are engaging in unauthorized file sharing. We can expect hundreds of lawsuits by the end of the summer. Of course, everyone is commenting on this, usually either with outrage or grudging, fatalistic acceptance. I might as well put in my two cents too. Especially since there are certain aspects of this case that have not been sufficiently discussed…

Empire of Disorder

Alain Joxe’s Empire of Disorder is a deeply problematic book. The author often comes off as a pompous ass, he is overly Franco- and Eurocentric (and I mean that in the worst possible way), and his theorizations are often annoyingly opaque. But this is still a worthwhile book, because of one thing: Joxe is very clear on the vile nature of the current, US-sponsored world system, with its toxic combination of “free-market” economics and predatory military adventurism. He shows how the US insists on having its way everywhere in the world, whether through economic coercion or overwhelming military force, but without even offering the protection that past empires (Rome, Austria-Hungary, etc) at least provided to their subjugated peoples. The result is a new world disorder: the vicious ethnic conflicts (Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechenya) and Mafia- or druglord-sponsored civil wars (Columbia) that have sprung up in the poorer (and not only the poorer) parts of the world since the fall of the Soviet Union are direct results of American imperial ambitions. By imposing the “free market” under conditions that devastate whole peoples, and by using our military might so capriciously, we have undermined any possiblity for democracy, civil society, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts over large parts of the globe. Joxe is not wrong in describing the American Empire (the gentler version under Clinton, no less than the meaner version under Bush) as fascistic and genocidal in terms of its effects (and perhaps even in terms of its overt intentions).