http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2006/08/20/2006-08-20_cop_horse_whoopi-ng_it_up.html
COP HORSE WHOOPI-NG IT UP
BY ALISON GENDAR DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF
Sunday, August 20th 2006, 7:06AM
THE NYPD HORSE injured when he bolted into traffic had to give up police work, but he's now living large on a farm owned by actress Whoopi Goldberg.
Ferguson, a 14-year-old gelding, was one of two retired police horses the actress adopted.
A spokesman for Goldberg confirmed she's given two NYPD mounts a new home, but declined to discuss any details about her generous offer.
"Ferguson's living the good life as a lawn ornament - no work, just pure retirement," a police source said.
Ferguson was hit by two cars in February when he bolted into traffic near W. 24th St. and Ninth Ave. in Chelsea.
His handlers were puzzled by the sudden panic attack because he was known as a calm and steady presence ever since he joined the NYPD in 1999, cops said at the time.
But any animal can bolt when spooked, and Ferguson's regular rider was not at the reins that day.
He suffered a broken nose and a hairline jaw fracture, and had to put up with a tracheotomy tube to help him breathe while his nose healed.
After he recuperated, doctors and mounted officers decided it was best for him to retire.
In the past, retired police mounts have been sent to a farm upstate. That arrangement was scrapped once cops realized the farmer was reneging on part of the deal by making the retired beasts do some work to earn their keep.
Goldberg agreed to the terms that retired NYPD mounts are truly retired - and don't have to work.
Ferguson was treated at Mid-Atlantic Equine Medical Center in Ringoes, N.J., which treats injured steeds from across the country.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Against Intellectual Property
http://deoxy.org/aip.htm
There is a strong case for opposing intellectual property. Among other things, it often retards innovation and exploits Third World peoples. Most of the usual arguments for intellectual property do not hold up under scrutiny. In particular, the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas provides no justification for ownership of ideas. The alternative to intellectual property is that intellectual products not be owned, as in the case of everyday language. Strategies against intellectual property include civil disobedience, promotion of non-owned information, and fostering of a more cooperative society.
The original rationale for copyrights and patents was to foster artistic and practical creative work by giving a short-term monopoly over certain uses of the work. This monopoly was granted to an individual or corporation by government. The government's power to grant a monopoly is corrupting. The biggest owners of intellectual property have sought to expand it well beyond any sensible rationale.
There are several types of intellectual property or, in other words, ownership of information, including copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, design rights and plant breeders' rights. Copyright covers the expression of ideas such as in writing, music and pictures. Patents cover inventions, such as new substances or articles and industrial processes. Trademarks are symbols associated with a good, service or company. Trade secrets cover confidential business information. Design rights cover different ways of presenting the outward appearance of things. Plant breeders' rights grant ownership of novel, distinct and stable plant varieties that are "invented."
The type of property that is familiar to most people is physical objects. People own clothes, cars, houses and land. But there has always been a big problem with owning ideas. Exclusive use or control of ideas or the way they are expressed doesn't make nearly as much sense as the ownership of physical objects.
Many physical objects can only be used by one person at a time. If one person wears a pair of shoes, no one else can wear them at the same time. (The person who wears them often owns them, but not always.) This is not true of intellectual property. Ideas can be copied over and over, but the person who had the original copy still has full use of it. Suppose you write a poem. Even if a million other people have copies and read the poem, you can still read the poem yourself. In other words, more than one person can use an idea—a poem, a mathematical formula, a tune, a letter—without reducing other people's use of the idea. Shoes and poems are fundamentally different in this respect.
Technological developments have made it cheaper and easier to make copies of information. Printing was a great advance: it eliminated the need for hand copying of documents. Photocopying and computers have made it even easier to make copies of written documents. Photography and sound recordings have done the same for visual and audio material. The ability to protect intellectual property is being undermined by technology, Yet there is a strong push to expand the scope of ownership of information.
This chapter outlines the case against intellectual property. I begin by mentioning some of the problems arising from ownership of information. Then I turn to weaknesses in its standard justifications. Next is an overview of problems with the socalled "marketplace of ideas," which has important links with intellectual property. Finally, I outline some alternatives to intellectual property and some possible strategies for moving towards them.
Problems with intellectual property
Since intellectual property can be sold, it is usually the rich and powerful who benefit. The rich and powerful, it should be noted, seldom contribute much intellectual labour to the creation of new ideas.
Governments generate large quantities of information. They produce statistics on population, figures on economic production and health, texts of laws and regulations, and vast numbers of reports. The generation of this information is paid for through taxation and, therefore, it might seem that it should be available to any member of the public. But in some countries. such as Britain and Australia, governments claim copyright in their own legislation and sometimes court decisions. Technically, citizens would need permission to copy their own laws. On the other hand, some government-generated information, especially in the US, is turned over to corporations that then sell it to whomever can pay. Publicly funded information is "privatised" and thus not freely available.1
Dorothy Nelkin, Science as Intellectual Property: Who Controls Research? (New York: Macmillan, 1984).
The idea behind patents is that the fundamentals of an invention are made public while the inventor for a limited time has the exclusive right to make, use or sell the invention. But there are quite a few cases in which patents have been used to suppress innovation.2 Companies may take out a patent, or buy someone else's patent, in order to inhibit others from applying the ideas. From its beginning in 1875, the US company AT&T collected patents in order to ensure its monopoly on telephones. It slowed down the introduction of radio for some 20 years. In a similar fashion, General Electric used control of patents to retard the introduction of fluorescent lights, which were a threat to its sales of incandescent lights. Trade secrets are another way to suppress technological development. Trade secrets are protected by law but, unlike patents, do not have to be published openly. They can be overcome legitimately by independent development or reverse engineering.
Richard Durford, "The suppression of technology as a strategy for controlling resource dependence," Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 32, 1987, pp. 512-525.
Biological information can now be claimed as intellectual property. US courts have ruled that genetic sequences can be patented, even when the sequences are found "in nature," so long as some artificial means are involved in isolating them. This has led companies to race to take out patents on numerous genetic codes. In some cases, patents have been granted covering all transgenic forms of an entire species, such as soybeans or cotton, causing enormous controversy and sometimes reversals on appeal. One consequence is a severe inhibition on research by non-patent holders. Another consequence is that transnational corporations are patenting genetic materials found in Third World plants and animals, so that some Third World peoples actually have to pay to use seeds and other genetic materials that have been freely available to them for centuries.
More generally, intellectual property is one more way for rich countries to extract wealth from poor countries. Given the enormous exploitation of poor peoples built into the world trade system, it would only seem fair for ideas produced in rich countries to be provided at no cost to poor countries. Yet in the GATT negotiations, representatives of rich countries, especially the US, have insisted on strengthening intellectual property rights.3 Surely there is no better indication that intellectual property is primarily of value to those who are already powerful and wealthy.
Peter Drahos, "Global property rights in information: the story of TRIPS at the GATT." Prometheus, Vol. 13, No. 1, June 1995, pp. 6-19 Surendra J. Patel. "Intellectual property rights in the Uruguay Round: a disaster for the South?" Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 24, No. 18, 6 May 1989, pp. 978-993; Darrell A. Posey and Graham Dutfield, Beyond Intellectual Property: Toward Traditional Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. 1996).
The potential financial returns from intellectual property are said to provide an incentive for individuals to create. In practice, though, most creators do not actually gain much benefit from intellectual property. Independent inventors are frequently ignored or exploited. When employees of corporations and governments have an idea worth protecting, it is usually copyrighted or patented by the organisation, not the employee. Since intellectual property can be sold, it is usually the rich and powerful who benefit. The rich and powerful, it should be noted, seldom contribute much intellectual labour to the creation of new ideas.
These problems—privatisation of government information, suppression of patents, ownership of genetic information and information not owned by the true creator—are symptoms of a deeper problem with the whole idea of intellectual property. Unlike goods, there are no physical obstacles to providing an abundance of ideas. (Indeed, the bigger problem may be an oversupply of ideas.) Intellectual property is an attempt to create an artificial scarcity in order to give rewards to a few at the expense of the many. Intellectual property aggravates inequality. It fosters competitiveness over information and ideas, whereas cooperation makes much more sense. In the words of Peter Drahos, researcher on intellectual property, "Intellectual property is a form of private sovereignty over a primary good information."4
Peter Drahos, "Decentring communication: the dark side of intellectual property," in Tom Campbell and Wojciech Sadurski (eds.). Freedom of Communication (Aldershot Dartmouth, 1994). pp 249-279, at p. 274.
Here are some examples of the abuse of power that has resulted from the power to grant sovereignty over information.
The neem tree is used in India in the areas of medicine, toiletries, contraception, timber, fuel and agriculture. Its uses have been developed over many centuries but never patented. Since the mid 1980s, US and Japanese corporations have taken out over a dozen patents on neem-based materials. In this way, collective local knowleilge developed by Indian researchers and villagers has been expropriated by outsiders who have added very little to the process.5
Vandana Shiva and Radha Holla-Ehar, "Intellectual piracy and the neena tree," Ecologist, Vol. 23 No. 6, 1993, pp, 223-227.
Charles M. Gentile is a US photographer who for a decade had made and sold artistic posters of scenes in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1995 he made a poster of the I.M. Pei building, which housed the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. This time he got into trouble. The museum sued him for infringing the trademark that it had taken out on its own image. If buildings can be registered as trademarks, then every painter, photographer and film-maker might have to seek permission and pay fees before using the images in their art work. This is obviously contrary to the original justification for intellectual property, which is to encourage the production of artistic works.
Prominent designer Victor Papanek writes: "... there is something basically wrong with the whole concept of patents and copyrights. If I design a toy that provides therapeutic exercise for handicapped children, then I think it is unjust to delay the release of the design by a year and a half, going through a patent application. I feel that ideas are plentiful and cheap, and it is wrong to make money from the needs of others. I have been very lucky in persuading many of my students to accept this view. Much of what you will find as design examples throughout this book has never been patented. In fact, quite the opposite strategy prevails: in many cases students and I have made measured drawings of, say, a play environment for blind children, written a description of how to build it simply, and then mimeographed drawings and all. If any agency, anywhere, will write in, my students will send them all the instructions free of charge.6
Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985, 2nd edition), p. xi.
In 1980, a book entitled Documents on Australian Defence and Foreign Policy 1968-1975 was published by George Munster and Richard Walsh. It reproduced many secret government memos, briefings and other documents concerning Australian involvement in the Vietnam war, events leading up to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and other issues. Exposure of this material deeply embarrassed the Australian government. In an unprecedented move, the government issued an interim injunction, citing both the Crimes Act and the Copyright Act. The books, just put on sale, were impounded. Print runs of two major newspapers with extracts from the book were also seized.
The Australian High Court ruled that the Crimes Act did not apply, but that the material was protected by copyright held by the government. Thus copyright, set up to encourage artistic creation, was used to suppress dissemination of documents for whose production copyright was surely no incentive. Later, Munster and Walsh produced a book using summaries and short quotes in order to present the information.7
George Munster, Secrets of State: A Detailed Assessment of the Book They Banned (Australia: Walsh & Munster, 1982).
Scientology is a religion in which only certain members at advanced stages of enlightenment have access to special information, which is secret to others. Scientology has long been controversial, with critics maintaining that it exploits members. Some critics, including former Scientologists, have put secret documents from advanced stages on the Internet. In response, church officials invoked copyright. Police have raided homes of critics, seizing computers, disks and other equipment. This is all rather curious, since the stated purpose of copyright is not to bide information but rather to stimulate production of new ideas.8
Wendy M. Grossman, "alt.scientology.war," Wired, Vol. 3, No. 12, December 1995, pp, 172-177, 248-252.
The following examples show that the uncertainty of intellectual property law encourages ambit claims that seem to be somewhat plausible. Some targets of such claims give in for economic reasons.
Ashleigh Brilliant is a "professional epigrammatist." He creates and copyrights thousands of short sayings, such as "Fundamentally, there may be no basis for anything." When he finds someone who has "used" one of his epigrams, he contacts them demanding a payment for breach of copyright. Television journalist David Brinkley wrote a book, Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion, the title of which he attributed to a friend of his daughter. Brilliant contacted Brinkley about copyright violation. Random House, Brinkley's publisher, paid Brilliant $1000 without contesting the issue, perhaps because it would have cost more than this to contest it.9
David D. Kirkpatrick,"Brilliant minds may think alike, but Brilliant lines can cost you," Wall Street Journal, 27 January 1997, p. B1.
Lawyer Robert Kunstadt has proposed that athletes could patent their sporting innovations, such as the "Fosbury flop" invented by high jumper Dick Fosbury. This might make a lot of money for a few stars. It would also cause enormous disputes. Athletes already have a tremendous incentive to innovate if it helps their performance. Patenting of basketball moves or choreography steps would serve mainly to limit the uptake of innovations and would mainly penalise those with fewer resources to pay royalties.
The US National Basketball Association has sued in court for the exclusive right to transmit the scores of games as they are in progress. It had one success but lost on appeal.10
Lance Rose, "Technical foul: the NBA double dribbles on intellectual property," Wired, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1997, p. 96.
A Scottish newspaper, The Shetland Times, went to court to stop an online news service from making a hypertext link to its web site. If hypertext links made without permission were made illegal, this would undermine the World Wide Web.11
Rob Edwards, "Scottish court case could unravel the Web," New Scientist, 16 November 1996, p. 5.
These examples show that intellectual property has become a means for exerting power in ways quite divorced from its original aim—promoting the creation and use of new ideas.
Critique of standard justifications
Intellectual property is built around a fundamental tension: ideas are public but creators want private returns. To overcome this tension, a distinction developed between ideas and their expression. Ideas could not be copyrighted but their expression could. This peculiar distinction was tied to the romantic notion of the autonomous creator who somehow contributes to the common pool of ideas without drawing from it. This package of concepts apparently justified authors in claiming residual rights—namely copyright—in their ideas after leaving their hands, while not giving manual workers any rationale for claiming residual rights in their creations.
Edwin C. Hettinger has provided an insightful critique of the main arguments used to justify intellectual property, so it is worthwhile summarising his analysis.12 He begins by noting the obvious argument against intellectual property, namely that sharing intellectual objects still allows the original possessor to use them. Therefore, the burden of proof should lie on those who argue for intellectual property.
Edwin C. Hettinger, "Justifying intellectual property," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter 1989, pp. 31-52, quotes at pp. 39 and 42. See also David Vaver, "Intellectual property today: of myths and paradoxes," Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 69, No. 1, March 1990, pp. 98-128.
The first argument for intellectual property is that people are entitled to the results of their labour. Hettinger's response is that not all the value of intellectual products is due to labour. Nor is the value of intellectual products due to the work of a single labourer, or any small group. Intellectual products are social products.
Suppose you have written an essay or made an invention. Your intellectual work does not exist in a social vacuum. It would not have been possible without lots of earlier work both intellectual and nonintellectual—by many other people. This includes your teachers and parents. It includes the earlier authors and inventors who provided the foundation for your contribution. It also includes the many people who discussed and used ideas and techniques, at both theoretical and practical levels, and provided a cultural foundation for your contribution. It includes the people who built printing presses, laid telephone cables, built roads and buildings and in many other ways contributed to the "construction" of society. Many other people could be mentioned. The point is that any piece of intellectual work is always built on and is inconceivable without the prior work of numerous people.
Hettinger points out that the earlier contributors to the development of ideas are not present. Today's contributor therefore cannot validly claim full credit.
Is the market value of a piece of an intellectual product a reasonable indicator of a person's contribution? Certainly not. As noted by Hettinger and as will be discussed in the next section, markets only work once property rights have been established, so it is circular to argue that the market can be used to measure intellectual contributions. Hettinger summarises this point in this fashion: "The notion that a laborer is naturally entitled as a matter of right to receive the market value of her product is a myth. To what extent individual laborers should be allowed to receive the market value of their products is a question of social policy."
A related argument is that people have a right to possess and personally use what they develop. Hettinger's response is that this doesn't show that they deserve market values, nor that they should have a right to prevent others from using the invention.
A second major argument for intellectual property is that people deserve property rights because of their labour. This brings up the general issue of what people deserve, a topic that has been analysed by philosophers. Their usual conclusions go against what many people think is "common sense." Hettinger says that a fitting reward for labour should be proportionate to the person's effort, the risk taken and moral considerations. This sounds all right—but it is not proportionate to the value of the results of the labour, whether assessed through markets or by other criteria. This is because the value of intellectual work is affected by things not controlled by the worker, including luck and natural talent. Hettinger says "A person who is born with extraordinary natural talents, or who is extremely lucky, deserves nothing on the basis of these characteristics."
A musical genius like Mozart may make enormous contributions to society. But being born with enormous musical talents does not provide a justification for owning rights to musical compositions or performances. Likewise, the labour of developing a toy like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that becomes incredibly popular does not provide a justification for owning rights to all possible uses of turtle symbols.
What about a situation where one person works hard at a task and a second person with equal talent works less had? Doesn't the first worker deserve more reward? Perhaps so, but property rights do not provide a suitable mechanism for allocating rewards. The market can give great rewards to the person who successfully claims property rights for a discovery, with little or nothing for the person who just missed out.
A third argument for intellectual property is that private property is a means for promoting privacy and a means for personal autonomy. Hettinger responds that privacy is protected by not revealing information, not by owning it. Trade secrets cannot be defended on the grounds of privacy, because corporations are not individuals. As for personal autonomy, copyrights and patents aren't required for this.
A fourth argument is that rights in intellectual property are needed to promote the creation of more ideas. The idea is that intellectual property gives financial incentives to produce ideas. Hettinger thinks that this is the only decent argument for intellectual property. He is still somewhat sceptical, though. He notes that the whole argument is built on a contradiction, namely that in order to promote the development of ideas, it is necessary to reduce people's freedom to use them. Copyrights and patents may encourage new ideas and innovations, but they also restrict others from using them freely.
This argument for intellectual property cannot be resolved without further investigation. Hettinger says that there needs to be an investigation of how long patents and copyrights should be granted, to determine an optimum period for promoting intellectual work.
For the purposes of technological innovation, information becomes more valuable when augmented by new information: innovation is a collective process. If firms in an industry share information by tacit cooperation or open collaboration, this speeds innovation and reduces costs. Patents, which put information into the market and raise information costs, actually slow the innovative process.13
Thomas Mandeville, Understanding Novelty: Information, Technological Change, and the Patent System (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996).
It should be noted that although the scale and pace of intellectual work has increased over the past few centuries, the duration of protection of intellectual property has not been reduced, as might be expected, but greatly increased. The US government did not recognise foreign copyrights for much of the 1800s. Where once copyrights were only for a period of a few decades, they now may be for the life of the author plus 70 years. In many countries, chemicals and pharmaceuticals were not patentable until recently. This suggests that even if intellectual property can be justified on the basis of fostering new ideas, this is not the driving force behind the present system of copyrights and patents. After all, few writers feel a greater incentive to write and publish just because their works are copyrighted for 70 years after they die, rather than just until they die.
Of various types of intellectual property, copyright is especially open for exploitation. Unlike patents, copyright is granted without an application and lasts far longer. Originally designed to encourage literary and artistic work, it now applies to every memo and doodle and is more relevant to business than art. There is no need to encourage production of business correspondence, so why is copyright applied to it?14
David Vaver, "Rejuvenating copyright," Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 75, March 1996, pp. 69-80.
Intellectual property is built around a fundamental tension: ideas are public but creators want private returns. To overcome this tension, a distinction developed between ideas and their expression. Ideas could not be copyrighted but their expression could. This peculiar distinction was tied to the romantic notion of the autonomous creator who somehow contributes to the common pool of ideas without drawing from it. This package of concepts apparently justified authors in claiming residual rights—namely copyright—in their ideas after leaving their hands, while not giving manual workers any rationale for claiming residual rights in their creations.15 In practice, though, the idea-expression distinction is dubious and few of the major owners of intellectual property have the faintest resemblance to romantic creators.
Junes Boyle, Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Social Construction of the Information Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
The marketplace of ideas
"If you talk about the whole subject with the word "property" you're prejudging the most basic question in the whole area which is, "how do we treat this thing or that thing or the other thing?" The most basic question would include alternatives such as making it somebody's property, and maybe various other alternatives. But if you call the whole subject "property" you've prejudged that." Richard Stallman on the concept of "Intellectual Property"
The idea of intellectual property has a number of connections with the concept of the marketplace of ideas, a metaphor that is widely used in discussions of free speech. To delve a bit more deeply into the claim that intellectual property promotes development of new ideas, it is therefore helpful to scrutinise the concept of the marketplace of ideas.
The image conveyed by the marketplace of ideas is that ideas compete for acceptance in a market. As long as the competition is fair—which means that all ideas and contributors are permitted access to the marketplace—then good ideas will win out over bad ones. Why? Because people will recognise the truth and value of good ideas. On the other hand, if the market is constrained, for example by some groups being excluded, then certain ideas cannot be tested and examined and successful ideas may not be the best ideas.
Logically, there is no reason why a marketplace of ideas has to be a marketplace of owned ideas: intellectual property cannot be strictly justified by the marketplace of ideas. But because the marketplace metaphor is an economic one, there is a strong tendency to link intellectual property with the marketplace of ideas. As discussed later, there is a link between these two concepts, but not in the way their defenders usually imagine.
There are plenty of practical examples of the failure of the marketplace of ideas. Groups that are stigmatised or that lack power seldom have their viewpoints presented. This includes ethnic minorities, prisoners, the unemployed, manual workers and radical critics of the status quo, among many others. Even when such groups organise themselves to promote their ideas, their views are often ignored while the media focus on their protests, as in the case of peace movement rallies and marches.
Demonstrably, good ideas do not always win out in the marketplace of ideas. To take one example, the point of view of workers is frequently just as worthy as that of employers. Yet there is an enormous imbalance in the presentation of their respective viewpoints in the media. One result is that quite a few ideas that happen to serve the interests of employers at the expense of workers—such as that the reason people don't have jobs is because they aren't trying hard enough to find them—are widely accepted although they are rejected by virtually all informed analysts.
There is a simple and fundamental reason for the failure of the marketplace of ideas: inequality, especially economic inequality.16 Perhaps in a group of people sitting in a room discussing an issue, there is some prospect of a measured assessment of different ideas. But if these same people are isolated in front of their television sets, and one of them owns the television station, it is obvious that there is little basis for testing of ideas. The reality is that powerful and rich groups can promote their ideas with little chance of rebuttal from those with different perspectives. As described in chapter 2, the mass media are powerful enterprises that promote their own interests as well as those of governments and corporations.
C. Edwin Baker, Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
In circumstances where participants are approximate equals, such as intellectual discussion among peers in an academic discipline, then the metaphor of competition of ideas has some value. But ownership of media or ideas is hardly a prerequisite for such discussion. It is the equality of power that is essential. To take one of many possible examples, when employees in corporations lack the freedom to speak openly without penalty they cannot be equal participants in discussions (see chapter 5).
Some ideas are good—in the sense of being valuable to society—but are unwelcome. Some are unwelcome to powerful groups, such as that governments and corporations commit horrific crimes or that there is a massive trade in technologies of torture and repression that needs to be stopped. Others are challenging to much of the population, such as that imprisonment does not reduce the crime rate or that financial rewards for good work on the job or grades for good schoolwork are counterproductive.17 (Needless to say, individuals might disagree with the examples used here. The case does not rest on the examples themselves, but on the existence of some socially valuable ideas that are unwelcome and marginalised.)
On these points, see respectively Jeffrey Ian Ross (ed.), Controlling State Crime: An Introduction (New York: Garland, 1995); Steve Wright, "The new technologies of political repression: a case for arms control?" Philosophy and Social Action, Vol. 17, Nos. 3-4, July-December 1991, pp. 31-62; Nils Christie, Crime Control as Industry: towards Gulags, Western Style (London: Routledge, 1994, 2nd edition); Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and other Bribes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993).
The marketplace of ideas simply does not work to treat such unwelcome ideas with the seriousness they deserve. The mass media try to gain audiences by pleasing them, not by confronting them with challenging ideas.18
Robert M. Entman, Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
The marketplace of ideas is often used to justify free speech. The argument is that free speech is necessary in order for the marketplace of ideas to operate: if some types of speech are curtailed, certain ideas will not be available on the marketplace and thus the best ideas will not succeed. This sounds plausible. But it is possible to reject the marketplace of ideas while still defending free speech on the grounds that it is essential to human liberty.
If the marketplace of ideas doesn't work, what is the solution? The usual view is that governments should intervene to ensure that all groups have fair access to the media. But this approach, based on promoting equality of opportunity, ignores the fundamental problem of economic inequality. Even if minority groups have some limited chance to present their views in the mass media, this can hardly compensate for the massive power of governments and corporations to promote their views. In addition, it retains the role of the mass media as the central mechanism for disseminating ideas. So-called reform proposals either retain the status quo or introduce government censorship.
Underlying the market model is the idea of self-regulation: the "free market" is supposed to operate without outside intervention and, indeed, to operate best when outside intervention is minimised. In practice, even markets in goods do not operate autonomously: the state is intimately involved in even the freest of markets. In the case of the marketplace of ideas, the state is involved both in shaping the market and in making it possible, for example by promoting and regulating the mass media. The world's most powerful state, the US, has been the driving force behind the establishment of a highly protectionist system of intellectual property, using power politics at GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Courts may use the rhetoric of the marketplace of ideas but actually interpret the law to support the status quo. For example, speech is treated as free until it might actually have some consequences. Then it is curtailed when it allegedly presents a "clear and present danger," such as when peace activists expose information supposedly threatening to "national security". But speech without action is pointless. True liberty requires freedom to promote one's views in practice.19 Powerful groups have the ability to do this. Courts only intervene when others try to do the same.
Baker (see note 16).
As in the case of trade generally, a property-based "free market" serves the interests of powerful producers. In the case of ideas, this includes governments and corporations plus intellectuals and professionals linked with universities, entertainment, journalism and the arts. Against such an array of intellectual opinion, it is very difficult for other groups, such as manual workers, to compete.20 The marketplace of ideas is a biased and artificial market that mostly serves to fine-tune relations between elites and provide them with legitimacy.21
Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How Mass Media Promotes State Power (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
Stanley Ingber, "The marketplace of ideas: a legitimizing myth," Duke Law Journal, Vol. 1984, No. 1, February 1984, pp. 1-91.
The implication of this analysis is that intellectual property cannot be justified on the basis of the marketplace of ideas. The utilitarian argument for intellectual property is that ownership is necessary to stimulate production of new ideas, because of the financial incentive. This financial incentive is supposed to come from the market, whose justification is the marketplace of ideas. If, as critics argue, the marketplace of ideas is flawed by the presence of economic inequality and, more fundamentally, is an artificial creation that serves powerful producers of ideas and legitimates the role of elites, then the case for intellectual property is unfounded. Intellectual property can only serve to aggravate the inequality on which it is built.
The alternative
The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to.
The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to.
One example of how this might operate is language, including the words, sounds and meaning systems with which we communicate every day. Spoken language is free for everyone to use. (Actually, corporations do control bits of language through trademarks and slogans.)
Another example is scientific knowledge. Scientists do research and then publish their results. A large proportion of scientific knowledge is public knowledge. There are some areas of science that are not public, such as classified military research. It is usually argued that the most dynamic parts of science are those with the least secrecy. Open ideas can be examined, challenged, modified and improved. To turn scientific knowledge into a commodity on the market, as is happening with genetic engineering, arguably inhibits science.
Few scientists complain that they do not own the knowledge they produce. Indeed, they are much more likely to complain when corporations or governments try to control dissemination of ideas. Most scientists receive a salary from a government, corporation or university. Their livelihoods do not depend on royalties from published work.
University scientists have the greatest freedom. The main reasons they do research are for the intrinsic satisfaction of investigation and discovery—a key motivation for many of the world's great scientists—and for recognition by their peers. To turn scientific knowledge into intellectual property would dampen the enthusiasm of many scientists for their work. However, as governments reduce their funding of universities, scientists and university administrations increasingly turn to patents as a source of income.
Language and scientific knowledge are not ideal; indeed, they are often used for harmful purposes. It is difficult to imagine, though, how turning them into property could make them better.
The case of science shows that vigorous intellectual activity is quite possible without intellectual property, and in fact that it may be vigorous precisely because information is not owned. But there are lots of areas that, unlike science, have long operated with intellectual property as a fact of life. What would happen without ownership of information? Many objections spring to mind.
Plagiarism
Many intellectual workers fear being plagiarised and many of them think that intellectual property provides protection against this. After all, without copyright, why couldn't someone put their name on your essay and publish it? Actually, copyright provides very little protection against plagiarism.22 So-called "moral rights" of authors to be credited are backed by law in many countries but are an extremely cumbersome way of dealing with plagiarism.
Laurie Stearns, "Copy wrong: plagiarism, process, property, and the law," California Law Review, Vol. 80, No. 2, March 1992, pp. 513-553.
Plagiarism means using the ideas of others without adequate acknowledgment. There are several types of plagiarism. One is plagiarism of ideas: someone takes your original idea and, using different expression, presents it as their own. Copyright provides no protection at all against this form of plagiarism. Another type of plagiarism is word-for-word plagiarism, where someone takes the words you've written—a book, an essay, a few paragraphs or even just a sentence—and, with or without minor modifications, presents them as their own. This sort of plagiarism is covered by copyright—assuming that you hold the copyright. In many cases, copyright is held by the publisher, not the author.
In practice, plagiarism goes on all the time, in various ways and degrees,23 and copyright law is hardly ever used against it. The most effective challenge to plagiarism is not legal action but publicity. At least among authors, plagiarism is widely condemned. For this reason, and because they seek to give credit where it's due, most writers do take care to avoid plagiarising.
Thomas Mallon, Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989); Ari Posner, "The culture of plagiarism," The New Republic, 18 April 1988, pp, 19-24.
There is an even more fundamental reason why copyright provides no protection against plagiarism: the most common sort of plagiarism is built into social hierarchies. Government and corporate reports are released under the names of top bureaucrats who did not write them; politicians and corporate executives give speeches written by underlings. These are examples of a pervasive misrepresentation of authorship in which powerful figures gain credit for the work of subordinates.24 Copyright, if it has any effect at all, reinforces rather than challenges this sort of institutionalised plagiarism.
Bran Marim, "Plagiarism: a misplaced emphasis," Journal of Information Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1994, pp. 36-47.
Royalties
What about all the writers, inventors and others who depend for their livelihood on royalties? First, it should be mentioned that only a very few individuals make enough money from royalties to live on. For example, there are probably only a few hundred self-employed writers in the US.25 Most of the rewards from intellectual property go to a few big companies. But the question is still a serious one for those intellectual workers who depend on royalties and other payments related to intellectual property.
Vaver, 1990 (see note 12).
The alternative in this case is some reorganisation of the economic system. Those few currently dependent on royalties could instead receive a salary, grant or bursary, just as most scientists do.
Getting rid of intellectual property would reduce the incomes of a few highly successful creative individuals, such as author Agatha Christie, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Publishers could reprint Christie's novels without permission, theatre companies could put on Webber's operas whenever they wished and Spielberg's films could be copied and screened anywhere. Jurassic Park and Lost World T-shirts, toys and trinkets could be produced at will. This would reduce the income of and, to some extent, the opportunities for artistic expression by these individuals. But there would be economic resources released: there would be more money available for other creators. Christie, Webber and Spielberg might be just as popular without intellectual property to channel money to them and their family enterprises.
The typical creative intellectual is actually worse off due to intellectual property. Consider an author who brings in a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars of royalty income per year. This is a tangible income, which creators value for its monetary and symbolic value. But this should be weighed against payments of royalties and monopoly profits when buying books, magazines, CDs and computer software.
Many of these costs are invisible. How many consumers, for example, realise how much they are paying for intellectual property when buying prescription medicines, paying for schools (through fees or taxes), buying groceries or listening to a piece of music on the radio? Yet in these and many other situations, costs are substantially increased due to intellectual property. Most of the extra costs go not to creators but to corporations and to bureaucratic overheads—such as patent offices and law firms—that are necessary to keep the system of intellectual property going.
Stimulating creativity
What about the incentive to create? Without the possibility of wealth and fame, what would stimulate creative individuals to produce works of genius? Actually, most creators and innovators are motivated by their own intrinsic interest, not by rewards. There is a large body of evidence showing, contrary to popular opinion, that rewards actually reduce the quality of work.26 If the goal is better and more creative work, paying creators on a piecework basis, such as through royalties, is counterproductive.
Kohn (see note 17).
In a society without intellectual property, creativity is likely to thrive. Most of the problems that are imagined to occur if there is no intellectual property—such as the exploitation of a small publisher that renounces copyright—are due to economic arrangements that maintain inequality. The soundest foundation for a society without intellectual property is greater economic and political equality. This means not just equality of opportunity, but equality of outcomes. This does not mean uniformity and does not mean levelling imposed from the top: it means freedom and diversity and a situation where people can get what they need but are not able to gain great power or wealth by exploiting the work of others. This is a big issue. Suffice it to say here that there are strong social and psychological arguments in favour of equality.27
John Baker, Arguing for Equality (London: Verso, 1987); Morton Deutsch, Distributive Justice: A Social-psychological Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985): William Rvan, Equality, (New York: Pantheon, 1981).
Strategies for change
Intellectual property is supported by many powerful groups: the most powerful governments and the largest corporations. The mass media seem fully behind intellectual property, partly because media monopolies would be undercut if information were more freely copied and partly because the most influential journalists depend on syndication rights for their stories.
Perhaps just as important is the support for intellectual property from many small intellectual producers, including academics and freelance writers. Although the monetary returns to these intellectuals are seldom significant, they have been persuaded that they both need and deserve their small royalties. This is similar to the way that small owners of goods and land, such as homeowners, strongly defend the system of private property, whose main beneficiaries are the very wealthy who own vast enterprises based on many other people's labour. Intellectuals are enormous consumers as well as producers of intellectual work. A majority would probably be better off financially without intellectual property, since they wouldn't have to pay as much for other people's work.
Another problem in developing strategies is that it makes little sense to challenge intellectual property in isolation. If we simply imagine intellectual property being abolished but the rest of the economic system unchanged, then many objections can be made. Challenging intellectual property must involve the development of methods to support creative individuals.
Change thinking
Talking about "intellectual property" implies an association with physical property. Instead, it is better to talk about monopolies granted by governments, for example "monopoly privilege." This gives a better idea of what's going on and so helps undermine the legitimacy of the process. Associated with this could be an appeal to free market principles, challenging the barriers to trade in ideas imposed by monopolies granted to copyright and patent holders.
As well, a connection should be forged with ideals of free speech. Rather than talk of intellectual property in terms of property and trade, it should be talked about in terms of speech and its impediments. Controls over genetic information should be talked about in terms of public health and social welfare rather than property.
The way that an issue is framed makes an enormous difference to the legitimacy of different positions. Once intellectual property is undermined in the minds of many citizens, it will become far easier to topple its institutional supports.
Expose the costs
It can cost a lot to set up and operate a system of intellectual property. This includes patent offices, legislation, court cases, agencies to collect fees and much else. There is a need for research to calculate and expose these costs as well as the transfer of money between different groups and countries. A middle-ranking country from the First World, such as Australia, pays far more for intellectual property—mostly to the US—than it receives. Once the figures are available and understood, this will aid in reducing the legitimacy of the world intellectual property System.28
These two strategies are proposed by Peter Drahos, "Thinking strategically about intellectual property rights," paper prepared for the Forum of Parliamentarians on Intellectual Property and the National Working Group on Patent Laws, 1996.
Reproduce protected works
From the point of view of intellectual property. this is called "piracy." (This is a revealing term, considering that such language is seldom used when, for example, a boss takes credit for a subordinate's work or when a Third World intellectual is recruited to a First World position. In each case, investments in intellectual work made by an individual or society are exploited by a different individual or society with more power.) This happens every day when people photocopy copyrighted articles, tape copyrighted music, or duplicate copyrighted software. It is precisely because illegal copying is so easy and so common that big governments and corporations have mounted offensives to promote intellectual property rights.
Unfortunately, illegal copying is not a very good strategy against intellectual property, any more than stealing goods is a way to challenge ownership of physical property. Theft of any sort implicitly accepts the existing system of ownership. By trying to hide the copying and avoiding penalties, the copiers appear to accept the legitimacy of the system.
Openly refuse to cooperate with intellectual property
This is far more powerful than illicit copying. The methods of nonviolent action can be used here, including noncooperation, boycotts and setting up alternative institutions. By being open about the challenge, there is a much greater chance of focussing attention on the issues at stake and creating a dialogue. By being principled in opposition, and being willing to accept penalties for civil disobedience to laws on intellectual property, there is a much greater chance of winning over third parties. If harsh penalties are applied to those who challenge intellectual property, this could produce a backlash of sympathy. Once mass civil disobedience to intellectual property laws occurs, it will be impossible to stop.
Something like that is already occurring. Because photocopying of copyrighted works is so common, there is seldom any attempt to enforce the law against small violators—to do so would alienate too many people. Copyright authorities therefore seek other means of collecting revenues from intellectual property, such as payments by institutions based on library copies.
Already there is mass discontent in India over the impact of the world intellectual property regime and patenting of genetic materials, with rallies of hundreds of thousands of farmers.29 If this scale of protest could be combined with other actions that undermine the legitimacy of intellectual property, the entire system could be challenged.
The magazine Third World Resurgence has regular reports on this issue. See for example Martin Khor, "A worldwide fight against biopiracy and patents on life," Third World Resurgence, No. 63, November 1995, pp. 9-11, and the special issues on patenting of life: No. 57, May 1995 and No. 84, August 1997.
Promote non-owned information
A good example is public domain software, which is computer software that is made available free to anyone who wants it. The developers of "freeware" gain satisfaction out of their intellectual work and out of providing a service to others. The Free Software Foundation has spearheaded the development and promotion of freeware. It "is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on people's right to use, copy, modify and redistribute computer programs" by encouraging people to develop and use free software.
A suitable alternative to copyright is shareright. A piece of freeware might be accompanied by the notice, "You may reproduce this material if your recipients may also reproduce it." This encourages copiers but refuses any of them copyright.
The Free Software Foundation has come up with another approach, called "copyleft". The Foundation states, "The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted. But this permits proprietary modified versions, which deny others the freedom to redistribute and modify; such versions undermine the goal of giving freedom to all users. To prevent this, 'copyleft' uses copyright in a novel manner. Typically copyrights take away freedoms; copyleft preserves them. It is a legal instrument that requires those who pass on a program to include the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code; the code and the freedoms become legally inseperable.30 Until Copyright is eliminated or obsolete, innovations such as copyleft are necessary to avoid exploitation of those who want to make their work available to others.
GNU's Bulletin, January 1995 (Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston MA 02111-1307, USA; gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu). See http://www.gnu.org/ for the latest description.
Develop principles to deal with credit for intellectual work
This is important even if credit is not rewarded financially. This would include guidelines for not misrepresenting another person's work. Intellectual property gives the appearance of stopping unfair appropriation of ideas although the reality is quite different. If intellectual property is to be challenged, people need to be reassured that misappropriation of ideas will not become a big problem.
More fundamentally, it needs to be recognised that intellectual work is inevitably a collective process. No one has totally original ideas: ideas are always built on the earlier contributions of others. (That's especially true of this chapter!) Furthermore, culture—which makes ideas possible—is built not just on intellectual contributions but also on practical and material contributions, including the rearing of families and construction of buildings. Intellectual property is theft, sometimes in part from an individual creator but always from society as a whole.
In a more cooperative society, credit for ideas would not be such a contentious matter. Today, there are vicious disputes between scientists over who should gain credit for a discovery. This is because scientists' careers and, more importantly, their reputations, depend on credit for ideas. In a society with less hierarchy and greater equality, intrinsic motivation and satisfaction would be the main returns from contributing to intellectual developments. This is quite compatible with everything that is known about human nature. The system of ownership encourages groups to put special interests above general interests. Sharing information is undoubtedly the most efficient way to allocate productive resources. The less there is to gain from credit for ideas, the more likely people are to share ideas rather than worry about who deserves credit for them.
Alfie Kohn, The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 1990).
For most book publishers, publishing an argument against intellectual property raises a dilemma. If the work is copyrighted as usual, this clashes with the argument against copyright. On the other hand, if the work is not copyrighted, then unrestrained copying might undermine sales. It's worth reflecting on this dilemma as it applies to this book.
It is important to keep in mind the wider goal of challenging the corruptions of information power. Governments and large corporations are particularly susceptible to these corruptions. They should be the first targets in developing a strategy against intellectual property.
Freedom Press is not a typical publisher. It has been publishing anarchist writings since 1886, including books, magazines. pamphlets and leaflets, Remarkably, neither authors nor editors have ever been paid for their work. Freedom Press is concerned with social issues and social change, not with material returns to anyone involved in the enterprise.
Because it is a small publisher, Freedom Press would be hard pressed to enforce its claims to copyright even if it wanted to. Those who sympathise with the aims of Freedom Press and who would like to reproduce some of its publications therefore should consider practical rather than legal issues. Would the copying be on such a scale as to undermine Freedom Press's limited sales? Does the copying give sufficient credit to Freedom Press so as to encourage further sales? Is the copying for commercial or noncommercial purposes?
In answering such questions, it makes sense to ask Freedom Press. This applies whether the work is copyright or not. If asking is not feasible, or the copying is of limited scale, then good judgement should be used. In my opinion, using one chapter—especially this chapter!—for nonprofit purposes should normally be okay.
So in the case of Freedom Press, the approach should be to negotiate in good faith and to use good judgement in minor or urgent cases. Negotiation and good judgement of this sort will be necessary in any society that moves beyond intellectual property.
Chapter 3 of Information Liberation, Challenging the corruptions of information power by Brian Martin, London: Freedom Press, 1998. The entire book is available online.
top ^ thoughtcrime > deoxy.org
deoxy.org > forum > chatter news · off · window
Tiger attack on Elephant, first time ever footage! : Watched
New : Video : Psychonauts documentary w/ English subtitles (2006)News : Perl CPAN Forum » [Net-Appliance-Session] Timeout during command execution
and all is quiet...
helppastcastlogincloudonline
There is a strong case for opposing intellectual property. Among other things, it often retards innovation and exploits Third World peoples. Most of the usual arguments for intellectual property do not hold up under scrutiny. In particular, the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas provides no justification for ownership of ideas. The alternative to intellectual property is that intellectual products not be owned, as in the case of everyday language. Strategies against intellectual property include civil disobedience, promotion of non-owned information, and fostering of a more cooperative society.
The original rationale for copyrights and patents was to foster artistic and practical creative work by giving a short-term monopoly over certain uses of the work. This monopoly was granted to an individual or corporation by government. The government's power to grant a monopoly is corrupting. The biggest owners of intellectual property have sought to expand it well beyond any sensible rationale.
There are several types of intellectual property or, in other words, ownership of information, including copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, design rights and plant breeders' rights. Copyright covers the expression of ideas such as in writing, music and pictures. Patents cover inventions, such as new substances or articles and industrial processes. Trademarks are symbols associated with a good, service or company. Trade secrets cover confidential business information. Design rights cover different ways of presenting the outward appearance of things. Plant breeders' rights grant ownership of novel, distinct and stable plant varieties that are "invented."
The type of property that is familiar to most people is physical objects. People own clothes, cars, houses and land. But there has always been a big problem with owning ideas. Exclusive use or control of ideas or the way they are expressed doesn't make nearly as much sense as the ownership of physical objects.
Many physical objects can only be used by one person at a time. If one person wears a pair of shoes, no one else can wear them at the same time. (The person who wears them often owns them, but not always.) This is not true of intellectual property. Ideas can be copied over and over, but the person who had the original copy still has full use of it. Suppose you write a poem. Even if a million other people have copies and read the poem, you can still read the poem yourself. In other words, more than one person can use an idea—a poem, a mathematical formula, a tune, a letter—without reducing other people's use of the idea. Shoes and poems are fundamentally different in this respect.
Technological developments have made it cheaper and easier to make copies of information. Printing was a great advance: it eliminated the need for hand copying of documents. Photocopying and computers have made it even easier to make copies of written documents. Photography and sound recordings have done the same for visual and audio material. The ability to protect intellectual property is being undermined by technology, Yet there is a strong push to expand the scope of ownership of information.
This chapter outlines the case against intellectual property. I begin by mentioning some of the problems arising from ownership of information. Then I turn to weaknesses in its standard justifications. Next is an overview of problems with the socalled "marketplace of ideas," which has important links with intellectual property. Finally, I outline some alternatives to intellectual property and some possible strategies for moving towards them.
Problems with intellectual property
Since intellectual property can be sold, it is usually the rich and powerful who benefit. The rich and powerful, it should be noted, seldom contribute much intellectual labour to the creation of new ideas.
Governments generate large quantities of information. They produce statistics on population, figures on economic production and health, texts of laws and regulations, and vast numbers of reports. The generation of this information is paid for through taxation and, therefore, it might seem that it should be available to any member of the public. But in some countries. such as Britain and Australia, governments claim copyright in their own legislation and sometimes court decisions. Technically, citizens would need permission to copy their own laws. On the other hand, some government-generated information, especially in the US, is turned over to corporations that then sell it to whomever can pay. Publicly funded information is "privatised" and thus not freely available.1
Dorothy Nelkin, Science as Intellectual Property: Who Controls Research? (New York: Macmillan, 1984).
The idea behind patents is that the fundamentals of an invention are made public while the inventor for a limited time has the exclusive right to make, use or sell the invention. But there are quite a few cases in which patents have been used to suppress innovation.2 Companies may take out a patent, or buy someone else's patent, in order to inhibit others from applying the ideas. From its beginning in 1875, the US company AT&T collected patents in order to ensure its monopoly on telephones. It slowed down the introduction of radio for some 20 years. In a similar fashion, General Electric used control of patents to retard the introduction of fluorescent lights, which were a threat to its sales of incandescent lights. Trade secrets are another way to suppress technological development. Trade secrets are protected by law but, unlike patents, do not have to be published openly. They can be overcome legitimately by independent development or reverse engineering.
Richard Durford, "The suppression of technology as a strategy for controlling resource dependence," Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 32, 1987, pp. 512-525.
Biological information can now be claimed as intellectual property. US courts have ruled that genetic sequences can be patented, even when the sequences are found "in nature," so long as some artificial means are involved in isolating them. This has led companies to race to take out patents on numerous genetic codes. In some cases, patents have been granted covering all transgenic forms of an entire species, such as soybeans or cotton, causing enormous controversy and sometimes reversals on appeal. One consequence is a severe inhibition on research by non-patent holders. Another consequence is that transnational corporations are patenting genetic materials found in Third World plants and animals, so that some Third World peoples actually have to pay to use seeds and other genetic materials that have been freely available to them for centuries.
More generally, intellectual property is one more way for rich countries to extract wealth from poor countries. Given the enormous exploitation of poor peoples built into the world trade system, it would only seem fair for ideas produced in rich countries to be provided at no cost to poor countries. Yet in the GATT negotiations, representatives of rich countries, especially the US, have insisted on strengthening intellectual property rights.3 Surely there is no better indication that intellectual property is primarily of value to those who are already powerful and wealthy.
Peter Drahos, "Global property rights in information: the story of TRIPS at the GATT." Prometheus, Vol. 13, No. 1, June 1995, pp. 6-19 Surendra J. Patel. "Intellectual property rights in the Uruguay Round: a disaster for the South?" Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 24, No. 18, 6 May 1989, pp. 978-993; Darrell A. Posey and Graham Dutfield, Beyond Intellectual Property: Toward Traditional Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. 1996).
The potential financial returns from intellectual property are said to provide an incentive for individuals to create. In practice, though, most creators do not actually gain much benefit from intellectual property. Independent inventors are frequently ignored or exploited. When employees of corporations and governments have an idea worth protecting, it is usually copyrighted or patented by the organisation, not the employee. Since intellectual property can be sold, it is usually the rich and powerful who benefit. The rich and powerful, it should be noted, seldom contribute much intellectual labour to the creation of new ideas.
These problems—privatisation of government information, suppression of patents, ownership of genetic information and information not owned by the true creator—are symptoms of a deeper problem with the whole idea of intellectual property. Unlike goods, there are no physical obstacles to providing an abundance of ideas. (Indeed, the bigger problem may be an oversupply of ideas.) Intellectual property is an attempt to create an artificial scarcity in order to give rewards to a few at the expense of the many. Intellectual property aggravates inequality. It fosters competitiveness over information and ideas, whereas cooperation makes much more sense. In the words of Peter Drahos, researcher on intellectual property, "Intellectual property is a form of private sovereignty over a primary good information."4
Peter Drahos, "Decentring communication: the dark side of intellectual property," in Tom Campbell and Wojciech Sadurski (eds.). Freedom of Communication (Aldershot Dartmouth, 1994). pp 249-279, at p. 274.
Here are some examples of the abuse of power that has resulted from the power to grant sovereignty over information.
The neem tree is used in India in the areas of medicine, toiletries, contraception, timber, fuel and agriculture. Its uses have been developed over many centuries but never patented. Since the mid 1980s, US and Japanese corporations have taken out over a dozen patents on neem-based materials. In this way, collective local knowleilge developed by Indian researchers and villagers has been expropriated by outsiders who have added very little to the process.5
Vandana Shiva and Radha Holla-Ehar, "Intellectual piracy and the neena tree," Ecologist, Vol. 23 No. 6, 1993, pp, 223-227.
Charles M. Gentile is a US photographer who for a decade had made and sold artistic posters of scenes in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1995 he made a poster of the I.M. Pei building, which housed the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. This time he got into trouble. The museum sued him for infringing the trademark that it had taken out on its own image. If buildings can be registered as trademarks, then every painter, photographer and film-maker might have to seek permission and pay fees before using the images in their art work. This is obviously contrary to the original justification for intellectual property, which is to encourage the production of artistic works.
Prominent designer Victor Papanek writes: "... there is something basically wrong with the whole concept of patents and copyrights. If I design a toy that provides therapeutic exercise for handicapped children, then I think it is unjust to delay the release of the design by a year and a half, going through a patent application. I feel that ideas are plentiful and cheap, and it is wrong to make money from the needs of others. I have been very lucky in persuading many of my students to accept this view. Much of what you will find as design examples throughout this book has never been patented. In fact, quite the opposite strategy prevails: in many cases students and I have made measured drawings of, say, a play environment for blind children, written a description of how to build it simply, and then mimeographed drawings and all. If any agency, anywhere, will write in, my students will send them all the instructions free of charge.6
Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985, 2nd edition), p. xi.
In 1980, a book entitled Documents on Australian Defence and Foreign Policy 1968-1975 was published by George Munster and Richard Walsh. It reproduced many secret government memos, briefings and other documents concerning Australian involvement in the Vietnam war, events leading up to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and other issues. Exposure of this material deeply embarrassed the Australian government. In an unprecedented move, the government issued an interim injunction, citing both the Crimes Act and the Copyright Act. The books, just put on sale, were impounded. Print runs of two major newspapers with extracts from the book were also seized.
The Australian High Court ruled that the Crimes Act did not apply, but that the material was protected by copyright held by the government. Thus copyright, set up to encourage artistic creation, was used to suppress dissemination of documents for whose production copyright was surely no incentive. Later, Munster and Walsh produced a book using summaries and short quotes in order to present the information.7
George Munster, Secrets of State: A Detailed Assessment of the Book They Banned (Australia: Walsh & Munster, 1982).
Scientology is a religion in which only certain members at advanced stages of enlightenment have access to special information, which is secret to others. Scientology has long been controversial, with critics maintaining that it exploits members. Some critics, including former Scientologists, have put secret documents from advanced stages on the Internet. In response, church officials invoked copyright. Police have raided homes of critics, seizing computers, disks and other equipment. This is all rather curious, since the stated purpose of copyright is not to bide information but rather to stimulate production of new ideas.8
Wendy M. Grossman, "alt.scientology.war," Wired, Vol. 3, No. 12, December 1995, pp, 172-177, 248-252.
The following examples show that the uncertainty of intellectual property law encourages ambit claims that seem to be somewhat plausible. Some targets of such claims give in for economic reasons.
Ashleigh Brilliant is a "professional epigrammatist." He creates and copyrights thousands of short sayings, such as "Fundamentally, there may be no basis for anything." When he finds someone who has "used" one of his epigrams, he contacts them demanding a payment for breach of copyright. Television journalist David Brinkley wrote a book, Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion, the title of which he attributed to a friend of his daughter. Brilliant contacted Brinkley about copyright violation. Random House, Brinkley's publisher, paid Brilliant $1000 without contesting the issue, perhaps because it would have cost more than this to contest it.9
David D. Kirkpatrick,"Brilliant minds may think alike, but Brilliant lines can cost you," Wall Street Journal, 27 January 1997, p. B1.
Lawyer Robert Kunstadt has proposed that athletes could patent their sporting innovations, such as the "Fosbury flop" invented by high jumper Dick Fosbury. This might make a lot of money for a few stars. It would also cause enormous disputes. Athletes already have a tremendous incentive to innovate if it helps their performance. Patenting of basketball moves or choreography steps would serve mainly to limit the uptake of innovations and would mainly penalise those with fewer resources to pay royalties.
The US National Basketball Association has sued in court for the exclusive right to transmit the scores of games as they are in progress. It had one success but lost on appeal.10
Lance Rose, "Technical foul: the NBA double dribbles on intellectual property," Wired, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1997, p. 96.
A Scottish newspaper, The Shetland Times, went to court to stop an online news service from making a hypertext link to its web site. If hypertext links made without permission were made illegal, this would undermine the World Wide Web.11
Rob Edwards, "Scottish court case could unravel the Web," New Scientist, 16 November 1996, p. 5.
These examples show that intellectual property has become a means for exerting power in ways quite divorced from its original aim—promoting the creation and use of new ideas.
Critique of standard justifications
Intellectual property is built around a fundamental tension: ideas are public but creators want private returns. To overcome this tension, a distinction developed between ideas and their expression. Ideas could not be copyrighted but their expression could. This peculiar distinction was tied to the romantic notion of the autonomous creator who somehow contributes to the common pool of ideas without drawing from it. This package of concepts apparently justified authors in claiming residual rights—namely copyright—in their ideas after leaving their hands, while not giving manual workers any rationale for claiming residual rights in their creations.
Edwin C. Hettinger has provided an insightful critique of the main arguments used to justify intellectual property, so it is worthwhile summarising his analysis.12 He begins by noting the obvious argument against intellectual property, namely that sharing intellectual objects still allows the original possessor to use them. Therefore, the burden of proof should lie on those who argue for intellectual property.
Edwin C. Hettinger, "Justifying intellectual property," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter 1989, pp. 31-52, quotes at pp. 39 and 42. See also David Vaver, "Intellectual property today: of myths and paradoxes," Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 69, No. 1, March 1990, pp. 98-128.
The first argument for intellectual property is that people are entitled to the results of their labour. Hettinger's response is that not all the value of intellectual products is due to labour. Nor is the value of intellectual products due to the work of a single labourer, or any small group. Intellectual products are social products.
Suppose you have written an essay or made an invention. Your intellectual work does not exist in a social vacuum. It would not have been possible without lots of earlier work both intellectual and nonintellectual—by many other people. This includes your teachers and parents. It includes the earlier authors and inventors who provided the foundation for your contribution. It also includes the many people who discussed and used ideas and techniques, at both theoretical and practical levels, and provided a cultural foundation for your contribution. It includes the people who built printing presses, laid telephone cables, built roads and buildings and in many other ways contributed to the "construction" of society. Many other people could be mentioned. The point is that any piece of intellectual work is always built on and is inconceivable without the prior work of numerous people.
Hettinger points out that the earlier contributors to the development of ideas are not present. Today's contributor therefore cannot validly claim full credit.
Is the market value of a piece of an intellectual product a reasonable indicator of a person's contribution? Certainly not. As noted by Hettinger and as will be discussed in the next section, markets only work once property rights have been established, so it is circular to argue that the market can be used to measure intellectual contributions. Hettinger summarises this point in this fashion: "The notion that a laborer is naturally entitled as a matter of right to receive the market value of her product is a myth. To what extent individual laborers should be allowed to receive the market value of their products is a question of social policy."
A related argument is that people have a right to possess and personally use what they develop. Hettinger's response is that this doesn't show that they deserve market values, nor that they should have a right to prevent others from using the invention.
A second major argument for intellectual property is that people deserve property rights because of their labour. This brings up the general issue of what people deserve, a topic that has been analysed by philosophers. Their usual conclusions go against what many people think is "common sense." Hettinger says that a fitting reward for labour should be proportionate to the person's effort, the risk taken and moral considerations. This sounds all right—but it is not proportionate to the value of the results of the labour, whether assessed through markets or by other criteria. This is because the value of intellectual work is affected by things not controlled by the worker, including luck and natural talent. Hettinger says "A person who is born with extraordinary natural talents, or who is extremely lucky, deserves nothing on the basis of these characteristics."
A musical genius like Mozart may make enormous contributions to society. But being born with enormous musical talents does not provide a justification for owning rights to musical compositions or performances. Likewise, the labour of developing a toy like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that becomes incredibly popular does not provide a justification for owning rights to all possible uses of turtle symbols.
What about a situation where one person works hard at a task and a second person with equal talent works less had? Doesn't the first worker deserve more reward? Perhaps so, but property rights do not provide a suitable mechanism for allocating rewards. The market can give great rewards to the person who successfully claims property rights for a discovery, with little or nothing for the person who just missed out.
A third argument for intellectual property is that private property is a means for promoting privacy and a means for personal autonomy. Hettinger responds that privacy is protected by not revealing information, not by owning it. Trade secrets cannot be defended on the grounds of privacy, because corporations are not individuals. As for personal autonomy, copyrights and patents aren't required for this.
A fourth argument is that rights in intellectual property are needed to promote the creation of more ideas. The idea is that intellectual property gives financial incentives to produce ideas. Hettinger thinks that this is the only decent argument for intellectual property. He is still somewhat sceptical, though. He notes that the whole argument is built on a contradiction, namely that in order to promote the development of ideas, it is necessary to reduce people's freedom to use them. Copyrights and patents may encourage new ideas and innovations, but they also restrict others from using them freely.
This argument for intellectual property cannot be resolved without further investigation. Hettinger says that there needs to be an investigation of how long patents and copyrights should be granted, to determine an optimum period for promoting intellectual work.
For the purposes of technological innovation, information becomes more valuable when augmented by new information: innovation is a collective process. If firms in an industry share information by tacit cooperation or open collaboration, this speeds innovation and reduces costs. Patents, which put information into the market and raise information costs, actually slow the innovative process.13
Thomas Mandeville, Understanding Novelty: Information, Technological Change, and the Patent System (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996).
It should be noted that although the scale and pace of intellectual work has increased over the past few centuries, the duration of protection of intellectual property has not been reduced, as might be expected, but greatly increased. The US government did not recognise foreign copyrights for much of the 1800s. Where once copyrights were only for a period of a few decades, they now may be for the life of the author plus 70 years. In many countries, chemicals and pharmaceuticals were not patentable until recently. This suggests that even if intellectual property can be justified on the basis of fostering new ideas, this is not the driving force behind the present system of copyrights and patents. After all, few writers feel a greater incentive to write and publish just because their works are copyrighted for 70 years after they die, rather than just until they die.
Of various types of intellectual property, copyright is especially open for exploitation. Unlike patents, copyright is granted without an application and lasts far longer. Originally designed to encourage literary and artistic work, it now applies to every memo and doodle and is more relevant to business than art. There is no need to encourage production of business correspondence, so why is copyright applied to it?14
David Vaver, "Rejuvenating copyright," Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 75, March 1996, pp. 69-80.
Intellectual property is built around a fundamental tension: ideas are public but creators want private returns. To overcome this tension, a distinction developed between ideas and their expression. Ideas could not be copyrighted but their expression could. This peculiar distinction was tied to the romantic notion of the autonomous creator who somehow contributes to the common pool of ideas without drawing from it. This package of concepts apparently justified authors in claiming residual rights—namely copyright—in their ideas after leaving their hands, while not giving manual workers any rationale for claiming residual rights in their creations.15 In practice, though, the idea-expression distinction is dubious and few of the major owners of intellectual property have the faintest resemblance to romantic creators.
Junes Boyle, Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Social Construction of the Information Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
The marketplace of ideas
"If you talk about the whole subject with the word "property" you're prejudging the most basic question in the whole area which is, "how do we treat this thing or that thing or the other thing?" The most basic question would include alternatives such as making it somebody's property, and maybe various other alternatives. But if you call the whole subject "property" you've prejudged that." Richard Stallman on the concept of "Intellectual Property"
The idea of intellectual property has a number of connections with the concept of the marketplace of ideas, a metaphor that is widely used in discussions of free speech. To delve a bit more deeply into the claim that intellectual property promotes development of new ideas, it is therefore helpful to scrutinise the concept of the marketplace of ideas.
The image conveyed by the marketplace of ideas is that ideas compete for acceptance in a market. As long as the competition is fair—which means that all ideas and contributors are permitted access to the marketplace—then good ideas will win out over bad ones. Why? Because people will recognise the truth and value of good ideas. On the other hand, if the market is constrained, for example by some groups being excluded, then certain ideas cannot be tested and examined and successful ideas may not be the best ideas.
Logically, there is no reason why a marketplace of ideas has to be a marketplace of owned ideas: intellectual property cannot be strictly justified by the marketplace of ideas. But because the marketplace metaphor is an economic one, there is a strong tendency to link intellectual property with the marketplace of ideas. As discussed later, there is a link between these two concepts, but not in the way their defenders usually imagine.
There are plenty of practical examples of the failure of the marketplace of ideas. Groups that are stigmatised or that lack power seldom have their viewpoints presented. This includes ethnic minorities, prisoners, the unemployed, manual workers and radical critics of the status quo, among many others. Even when such groups organise themselves to promote their ideas, their views are often ignored while the media focus on their protests, as in the case of peace movement rallies and marches.
Demonstrably, good ideas do not always win out in the marketplace of ideas. To take one example, the point of view of workers is frequently just as worthy as that of employers. Yet there is an enormous imbalance in the presentation of their respective viewpoints in the media. One result is that quite a few ideas that happen to serve the interests of employers at the expense of workers—such as that the reason people don't have jobs is because they aren't trying hard enough to find them—are widely accepted although they are rejected by virtually all informed analysts.
There is a simple and fundamental reason for the failure of the marketplace of ideas: inequality, especially economic inequality.16 Perhaps in a group of people sitting in a room discussing an issue, there is some prospect of a measured assessment of different ideas. But if these same people are isolated in front of their television sets, and one of them owns the television station, it is obvious that there is little basis for testing of ideas. The reality is that powerful and rich groups can promote their ideas with little chance of rebuttal from those with different perspectives. As described in chapter 2, the mass media are powerful enterprises that promote their own interests as well as those of governments and corporations.
C. Edwin Baker, Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
In circumstances where participants are approximate equals, such as intellectual discussion among peers in an academic discipline, then the metaphor of competition of ideas has some value. But ownership of media or ideas is hardly a prerequisite for such discussion. It is the equality of power that is essential. To take one of many possible examples, when employees in corporations lack the freedom to speak openly without penalty they cannot be equal participants in discussions (see chapter 5).
Some ideas are good—in the sense of being valuable to society—but are unwelcome. Some are unwelcome to powerful groups, such as that governments and corporations commit horrific crimes or that there is a massive trade in technologies of torture and repression that needs to be stopped. Others are challenging to much of the population, such as that imprisonment does not reduce the crime rate or that financial rewards for good work on the job or grades for good schoolwork are counterproductive.17 (Needless to say, individuals might disagree with the examples used here. The case does not rest on the examples themselves, but on the existence of some socially valuable ideas that are unwelcome and marginalised.)
On these points, see respectively Jeffrey Ian Ross (ed.), Controlling State Crime: An Introduction (New York: Garland, 1995); Steve Wright, "The new technologies of political repression: a case for arms control?" Philosophy and Social Action, Vol. 17, Nos. 3-4, July-December 1991, pp. 31-62; Nils Christie, Crime Control as Industry: towards Gulags, Western Style (London: Routledge, 1994, 2nd edition); Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and other Bribes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993).
The marketplace of ideas simply does not work to treat such unwelcome ideas with the seriousness they deserve. The mass media try to gain audiences by pleasing them, not by confronting them with challenging ideas.18
Robert M. Entman, Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
The marketplace of ideas is often used to justify free speech. The argument is that free speech is necessary in order for the marketplace of ideas to operate: if some types of speech are curtailed, certain ideas will not be available on the marketplace and thus the best ideas will not succeed. This sounds plausible. But it is possible to reject the marketplace of ideas while still defending free speech on the grounds that it is essential to human liberty.
If the marketplace of ideas doesn't work, what is the solution? The usual view is that governments should intervene to ensure that all groups have fair access to the media. But this approach, based on promoting equality of opportunity, ignores the fundamental problem of economic inequality. Even if minority groups have some limited chance to present their views in the mass media, this can hardly compensate for the massive power of governments and corporations to promote their views. In addition, it retains the role of the mass media as the central mechanism for disseminating ideas. So-called reform proposals either retain the status quo or introduce government censorship.
Underlying the market model is the idea of self-regulation: the "free market" is supposed to operate without outside intervention and, indeed, to operate best when outside intervention is minimised. In practice, even markets in goods do not operate autonomously: the state is intimately involved in even the freest of markets. In the case of the marketplace of ideas, the state is involved both in shaping the market and in making it possible, for example by promoting and regulating the mass media. The world's most powerful state, the US, has been the driving force behind the establishment of a highly protectionist system of intellectual property, using power politics at GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Courts may use the rhetoric of the marketplace of ideas but actually interpret the law to support the status quo. For example, speech is treated as free until it might actually have some consequences. Then it is curtailed when it allegedly presents a "clear and present danger," such as when peace activists expose information supposedly threatening to "national security". But speech without action is pointless. True liberty requires freedom to promote one's views in practice.19 Powerful groups have the ability to do this. Courts only intervene when others try to do the same.
Baker (see note 16).
As in the case of trade generally, a property-based "free market" serves the interests of powerful producers. In the case of ideas, this includes governments and corporations plus intellectuals and professionals linked with universities, entertainment, journalism and the arts. Against such an array of intellectual opinion, it is very difficult for other groups, such as manual workers, to compete.20 The marketplace of ideas is a biased and artificial market that mostly serves to fine-tune relations between elites and provide them with legitimacy.21
Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How Mass Media Promotes State Power (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
Stanley Ingber, "The marketplace of ideas: a legitimizing myth," Duke Law Journal, Vol. 1984, No. 1, February 1984, pp. 1-91.
The implication of this analysis is that intellectual property cannot be justified on the basis of the marketplace of ideas. The utilitarian argument for intellectual property is that ownership is necessary to stimulate production of new ideas, because of the financial incentive. This financial incentive is supposed to come from the market, whose justification is the marketplace of ideas. If, as critics argue, the marketplace of ideas is flawed by the presence of economic inequality and, more fundamentally, is an artificial creation that serves powerful producers of ideas and legitimates the role of elites, then the case for intellectual property is unfounded. Intellectual property can only serve to aggravate the inequality on which it is built.
The alternative
The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to.
The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to.
One example of how this might operate is language, including the words, sounds and meaning systems with which we communicate every day. Spoken language is free for everyone to use. (Actually, corporations do control bits of language through trademarks and slogans.)
Another example is scientific knowledge. Scientists do research and then publish their results. A large proportion of scientific knowledge is public knowledge. There are some areas of science that are not public, such as classified military research. It is usually argued that the most dynamic parts of science are those with the least secrecy. Open ideas can be examined, challenged, modified and improved. To turn scientific knowledge into a commodity on the market, as is happening with genetic engineering, arguably inhibits science.
Few scientists complain that they do not own the knowledge they produce. Indeed, they are much more likely to complain when corporations or governments try to control dissemination of ideas. Most scientists receive a salary from a government, corporation or university. Their livelihoods do not depend on royalties from published work.
University scientists have the greatest freedom. The main reasons they do research are for the intrinsic satisfaction of investigation and discovery—a key motivation for many of the world's great scientists—and for recognition by their peers. To turn scientific knowledge into intellectual property would dampen the enthusiasm of many scientists for their work. However, as governments reduce their funding of universities, scientists and university administrations increasingly turn to patents as a source of income.
Language and scientific knowledge are not ideal; indeed, they are often used for harmful purposes. It is difficult to imagine, though, how turning them into property could make them better.
The case of science shows that vigorous intellectual activity is quite possible without intellectual property, and in fact that it may be vigorous precisely because information is not owned. But there are lots of areas that, unlike science, have long operated with intellectual property as a fact of life. What would happen without ownership of information? Many objections spring to mind.
Plagiarism
Many intellectual workers fear being plagiarised and many of them think that intellectual property provides protection against this. After all, without copyright, why couldn't someone put their name on your essay and publish it? Actually, copyright provides very little protection against plagiarism.22 So-called "moral rights" of authors to be credited are backed by law in many countries but are an extremely cumbersome way of dealing with plagiarism.
Laurie Stearns, "Copy wrong: plagiarism, process, property, and the law," California Law Review, Vol. 80, No. 2, March 1992, pp. 513-553.
Plagiarism means using the ideas of others without adequate acknowledgment. There are several types of plagiarism. One is plagiarism of ideas: someone takes your original idea and, using different expression, presents it as their own. Copyright provides no protection at all against this form of plagiarism. Another type of plagiarism is word-for-word plagiarism, where someone takes the words you've written—a book, an essay, a few paragraphs or even just a sentence—and, with or without minor modifications, presents them as their own. This sort of plagiarism is covered by copyright—assuming that you hold the copyright. In many cases, copyright is held by the publisher, not the author.
In practice, plagiarism goes on all the time, in various ways and degrees,23 and copyright law is hardly ever used against it. The most effective challenge to plagiarism is not legal action but publicity. At least among authors, plagiarism is widely condemned. For this reason, and because they seek to give credit where it's due, most writers do take care to avoid plagiarising.
Thomas Mallon, Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989); Ari Posner, "The culture of plagiarism," The New Republic, 18 April 1988, pp, 19-24.
There is an even more fundamental reason why copyright provides no protection against plagiarism: the most common sort of plagiarism is built into social hierarchies. Government and corporate reports are released under the names of top bureaucrats who did not write them; politicians and corporate executives give speeches written by underlings. These are examples of a pervasive misrepresentation of authorship in which powerful figures gain credit for the work of subordinates.24 Copyright, if it has any effect at all, reinforces rather than challenges this sort of institutionalised plagiarism.
Bran Marim, "Plagiarism: a misplaced emphasis," Journal of Information Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1994, pp. 36-47.
Royalties
What about all the writers, inventors and others who depend for their livelihood on royalties? First, it should be mentioned that only a very few individuals make enough money from royalties to live on. For example, there are probably only a few hundred self-employed writers in the US.25 Most of the rewards from intellectual property go to a few big companies. But the question is still a serious one for those intellectual workers who depend on royalties and other payments related to intellectual property.
Vaver, 1990 (see note 12).
The alternative in this case is some reorganisation of the economic system. Those few currently dependent on royalties could instead receive a salary, grant or bursary, just as most scientists do.
Getting rid of intellectual property would reduce the incomes of a few highly successful creative individuals, such as author Agatha Christie, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Publishers could reprint Christie's novels without permission, theatre companies could put on Webber's operas whenever they wished and Spielberg's films could be copied and screened anywhere. Jurassic Park and Lost World T-shirts, toys and trinkets could be produced at will. This would reduce the income of and, to some extent, the opportunities for artistic expression by these individuals. But there would be economic resources released: there would be more money available for other creators. Christie, Webber and Spielberg might be just as popular without intellectual property to channel money to them and their family enterprises.
The typical creative intellectual is actually worse off due to intellectual property. Consider an author who brings in a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars of royalty income per year. This is a tangible income, which creators value for its monetary and symbolic value. But this should be weighed against payments of royalties and monopoly profits when buying books, magazines, CDs and computer software.
Many of these costs are invisible. How many consumers, for example, realise how much they are paying for intellectual property when buying prescription medicines, paying for schools (through fees or taxes), buying groceries or listening to a piece of music on the radio? Yet in these and many other situations, costs are substantially increased due to intellectual property. Most of the extra costs go not to creators but to corporations and to bureaucratic overheads—such as patent offices and law firms—that are necessary to keep the system of intellectual property going.
Stimulating creativity
What about the incentive to create? Without the possibility of wealth and fame, what would stimulate creative individuals to produce works of genius? Actually, most creators and innovators are motivated by their own intrinsic interest, not by rewards. There is a large body of evidence showing, contrary to popular opinion, that rewards actually reduce the quality of work.26 If the goal is better and more creative work, paying creators on a piecework basis, such as through royalties, is counterproductive.
Kohn (see note 17).
In a society without intellectual property, creativity is likely to thrive. Most of the problems that are imagined to occur if there is no intellectual property—such as the exploitation of a small publisher that renounces copyright—are due to economic arrangements that maintain inequality. The soundest foundation for a society without intellectual property is greater economic and political equality. This means not just equality of opportunity, but equality of outcomes. This does not mean uniformity and does not mean levelling imposed from the top: it means freedom and diversity and a situation where people can get what they need but are not able to gain great power or wealth by exploiting the work of others. This is a big issue. Suffice it to say here that there are strong social and psychological arguments in favour of equality.27
John Baker, Arguing for Equality (London: Verso, 1987); Morton Deutsch, Distributive Justice: A Social-psychological Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985): William Rvan, Equality, (New York: Pantheon, 1981).
Strategies for change
Intellectual property is supported by many powerful groups: the most powerful governments and the largest corporations. The mass media seem fully behind intellectual property, partly because media monopolies would be undercut if information were more freely copied and partly because the most influential journalists depend on syndication rights for their stories.
Perhaps just as important is the support for intellectual property from many small intellectual producers, including academics and freelance writers. Although the monetary returns to these intellectuals are seldom significant, they have been persuaded that they both need and deserve their small royalties. This is similar to the way that small owners of goods and land, such as homeowners, strongly defend the system of private property, whose main beneficiaries are the very wealthy who own vast enterprises based on many other people's labour. Intellectuals are enormous consumers as well as producers of intellectual work. A majority would probably be better off financially without intellectual property, since they wouldn't have to pay as much for other people's work.
Another problem in developing strategies is that it makes little sense to challenge intellectual property in isolation. If we simply imagine intellectual property being abolished but the rest of the economic system unchanged, then many objections can be made. Challenging intellectual property must involve the development of methods to support creative individuals.
Change thinking
Talking about "intellectual property" implies an association with physical property. Instead, it is better to talk about monopolies granted by governments, for example "monopoly privilege." This gives a better idea of what's going on and so helps undermine the legitimacy of the process. Associated with this could be an appeal to free market principles, challenging the barriers to trade in ideas imposed by monopolies granted to copyright and patent holders.
As well, a connection should be forged with ideals of free speech. Rather than talk of intellectual property in terms of property and trade, it should be talked about in terms of speech and its impediments. Controls over genetic information should be talked about in terms of public health and social welfare rather than property.
The way that an issue is framed makes an enormous difference to the legitimacy of different positions. Once intellectual property is undermined in the minds of many citizens, it will become far easier to topple its institutional supports.
Expose the costs
It can cost a lot to set up and operate a system of intellectual property. This includes patent offices, legislation, court cases, agencies to collect fees and much else. There is a need for research to calculate and expose these costs as well as the transfer of money between different groups and countries. A middle-ranking country from the First World, such as Australia, pays far more for intellectual property—mostly to the US—than it receives. Once the figures are available and understood, this will aid in reducing the legitimacy of the world intellectual property System.28
These two strategies are proposed by Peter Drahos, "Thinking strategically about intellectual property rights," paper prepared for the Forum of Parliamentarians on Intellectual Property and the National Working Group on Patent Laws, 1996.
Reproduce protected works
From the point of view of intellectual property. this is called "piracy." (This is a revealing term, considering that such language is seldom used when, for example, a boss takes credit for a subordinate's work or when a Third World intellectual is recruited to a First World position. In each case, investments in intellectual work made by an individual or society are exploited by a different individual or society with more power.) This happens every day when people photocopy copyrighted articles, tape copyrighted music, or duplicate copyrighted software. It is precisely because illegal copying is so easy and so common that big governments and corporations have mounted offensives to promote intellectual property rights.
Unfortunately, illegal copying is not a very good strategy against intellectual property, any more than stealing goods is a way to challenge ownership of physical property. Theft of any sort implicitly accepts the existing system of ownership. By trying to hide the copying and avoiding penalties, the copiers appear to accept the legitimacy of the system.
Openly refuse to cooperate with intellectual property
This is far more powerful than illicit copying. The methods of nonviolent action can be used here, including noncooperation, boycotts and setting up alternative institutions. By being open about the challenge, there is a much greater chance of focussing attention on the issues at stake and creating a dialogue. By being principled in opposition, and being willing to accept penalties for civil disobedience to laws on intellectual property, there is a much greater chance of winning over third parties. If harsh penalties are applied to those who challenge intellectual property, this could produce a backlash of sympathy. Once mass civil disobedience to intellectual property laws occurs, it will be impossible to stop.
Something like that is already occurring. Because photocopying of copyrighted works is so common, there is seldom any attempt to enforce the law against small violators—to do so would alienate too many people. Copyright authorities therefore seek other means of collecting revenues from intellectual property, such as payments by institutions based on library copies.
Already there is mass discontent in India over the impact of the world intellectual property regime and patenting of genetic materials, with rallies of hundreds of thousands of farmers.29 If this scale of protest could be combined with other actions that undermine the legitimacy of intellectual property, the entire system could be challenged.
The magazine Third World Resurgence has regular reports on this issue. See for example Martin Khor, "A worldwide fight against biopiracy and patents on life," Third World Resurgence, No. 63, November 1995, pp. 9-11, and the special issues on patenting of life: No. 57, May 1995 and No. 84, August 1997.
Promote non-owned information
A good example is public domain software, which is computer software that is made available free to anyone who wants it. The developers of "freeware" gain satisfaction out of their intellectual work and out of providing a service to others. The Free Software Foundation has spearheaded the development and promotion of freeware. It "is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on people's right to use, copy, modify and redistribute computer programs" by encouraging people to develop and use free software.
A suitable alternative to copyright is shareright. A piece of freeware might be accompanied by the notice, "You may reproduce this material if your recipients may also reproduce it." This encourages copiers but refuses any of them copyright.
The Free Software Foundation has come up with another approach, called "copyleft". The Foundation states, "The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted. But this permits proprietary modified versions, which deny others the freedom to redistribute and modify; such versions undermine the goal of giving freedom to all users. To prevent this, 'copyleft' uses copyright in a novel manner. Typically copyrights take away freedoms; copyleft preserves them. It is a legal instrument that requires those who pass on a program to include the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code; the code and the freedoms become legally inseperable.30 Until Copyright is eliminated or obsolete, innovations such as copyleft are necessary to avoid exploitation of those who want to make their work available to others.
GNU's Bulletin, January 1995 (Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston MA 02111-1307, USA; gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu). See http://www.gnu.org/ for the latest description.
Develop principles to deal with credit for intellectual work
This is important even if credit is not rewarded financially. This would include guidelines for not misrepresenting another person's work. Intellectual property gives the appearance of stopping unfair appropriation of ideas although the reality is quite different. If intellectual property is to be challenged, people need to be reassured that misappropriation of ideas will not become a big problem.
More fundamentally, it needs to be recognised that intellectual work is inevitably a collective process. No one has totally original ideas: ideas are always built on the earlier contributions of others. (That's especially true of this chapter!) Furthermore, culture—which makes ideas possible—is built not just on intellectual contributions but also on practical and material contributions, including the rearing of families and construction of buildings. Intellectual property is theft, sometimes in part from an individual creator but always from society as a whole.
In a more cooperative society, credit for ideas would not be such a contentious matter. Today, there are vicious disputes between scientists over who should gain credit for a discovery. This is because scientists' careers and, more importantly, their reputations, depend on credit for ideas. In a society with less hierarchy and greater equality, intrinsic motivation and satisfaction would be the main returns from contributing to intellectual developments. This is quite compatible with everything that is known about human nature. The system of ownership encourages groups to put special interests above general interests. Sharing information is undoubtedly the most efficient way to allocate productive resources. The less there is to gain from credit for ideas, the more likely people are to share ideas rather than worry about who deserves credit for them.
Alfie Kohn, The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 1990).
For most book publishers, publishing an argument against intellectual property raises a dilemma. If the work is copyrighted as usual, this clashes with the argument against copyright. On the other hand, if the work is not copyrighted, then unrestrained copying might undermine sales. It's worth reflecting on this dilemma as it applies to this book.
It is important to keep in mind the wider goal of challenging the corruptions of information power. Governments and large corporations are particularly susceptible to these corruptions. They should be the first targets in developing a strategy against intellectual property.
Freedom Press is not a typical publisher. It has been publishing anarchist writings since 1886, including books, magazines. pamphlets and leaflets, Remarkably, neither authors nor editors have ever been paid for their work. Freedom Press is concerned with social issues and social change, not with material returns to anyone involved in the enterprise.
Because it is a small publisher, Freedom Press would be hard pressed to enforce its claims to copyright even if it wanted to. Those who sympathise with the aims of Freedom Press and who would like to reproduce some of its publications therefore should consider practical rather than legal issues. Would the copying be on such a scale as to undermine Freedom Press's limited sales? Does the copying give sufficient credit to Freedom Press so as to encourage further sales? Is the copying for commercial or noncommercial purposes?
In answering such questions, it makes sense to ask Freedom Press. This applies whether the work is copyright or not. If asking is not feasible, or the copying is of limited scale, then good judgement should be used. In my opinion, using one chapter—especially this chapter!—for nonprofit purposes should normally be okay.
So in the case of Freedom Press, the approach should be to negotiate in good faith and to use good judgement in minor or urgent cases. Negotiation and good judgement of this sort will be necessary in any society that moves beyond intellectual property.
Chapter 3 of Information Liberation, Challenging the corruptions of information power by Brian Martin, London: Freedom Press, 1998. The entire book is available online.
top ^ thoughtcrime > deoxy.org
deoxy.org > forum > chatter news · off · window
Tiger attack on Elephant, first time ever footage! : Watched
New : Video : Psychonauts documentary w/ English subtitles (2006)News : Perl CPAN Forum » [Net-Appliance-Session] Timeout during command execution
and all is quiet...
helppastcastlogincloudonline
Disorders resulting from MAO Dysfunction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase
Disorders resulting from MAO dysfunction
Because of the vital role that MAOs play in the inactivation of neurotransmitters, MAO dysfunction (too much or too little MAO activity) is thought to be responsible for a number of neurological disorders. For example, unusually high or low levels of MAOs in the body have been associated with depression, substance abuse, attention deficit disorder, migraines, and irregular sexual maturation. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors are one of the major classes of drug prescribed for the treatment of depression, although they are last line treatment due to risk of the drug's interaction with diet or other drugs. Excessive levels of catecholamines (epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine) may lead to a hypertensive crisis, and excessive levels of serotonin may lead to serotonin syndrome.
PET research has shown that MAO is also heavily depleted by use of tobacco cigarettes.[2]
Disorders resulting from MAO dysfunction
Because of the vital role that MAOs play in the inactivation of neurotransmitters, MAO dysfunction (too much or too little MAO activity) is thought to be responsible for a number of neurological disorders. For example, unusually high or low levels of MAOs in the body have been associated with depression, substance abuse, attention deficit disorder, migraines, and irregular sexual maturation. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors are one of the major classes of drug prescribed for the treatment of depression, although they are last line treatment due to risk of the drug's interaction with diet or other drugs. Excessive levels of catecholamines (epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine) may lead to a hypertensive crisis, and excessive levels of serotonin may lead to serotonin syndrome.
PET research has shown that MAO is also heavily depleted by use of tobacco cigarettes.[2]
Monday, February 16, 2009
Peace Vigils Around the US
http://www.utahpeace.org/vigil.htm
Without Justice, there can be no Peace.
Stop the Killing - No More Atrocities - Protect Civil Liberties
Join PPJ every Thursday for our weekly peace vigil
5:30-6:30pm Sidewalk in front of the Federal Building in Salt Lake City
125 South State Street
~ Some signs provided ~
(Inclement weather: Please be sure to bring your own sign should you decide to vigil in rain or snow.)
Peace Vigils Around the U.S.
What will you say when your children ask, "Why didn't you do something? You knew what was happening."
~ James Landis
CALIFORNIA
FELTON: The Felton Peace Vigil, 5:30--6:30pm, Corner Highay 9 and Graham Hill Road
FRESNO "WOMEN IN BLACK": Silent peace vigil, first Wednesday of the month, noon to 1:00pm in the breezeway at the front of the Court House, Tulare and Van Ness. All women invited.
FRESNO: Peace Fresno monthly peace vigil. 1st Friday each month, corner Blackstone and Shaw. 4:30pm.
LOS ANGELES: Every Friday, Anti War Vigil, 7 PM at San Vicente and Santa Monica Blvds, West Hollywood.
MARIPOSA: Every Wednesday, 5:30---6:00pm corner of Hwy 140 and 5th Street. Rain or shine. Now in its' 79th consecutive week. Signs available or bring your own.
MERCED: Every Friday, 4:30---5:30pm, Merced Court House 21st and M Streets. Rain or shine.
MODESTO: Modesto Peace Life Center peace vigil, first Friday of the month, 5:30--6:30pm at McHenry and J Streets (five points).
MONTEREY: 12-2pm, Every Sunday. PEACE GATHERING, ongoing vigil opposing war. Corner of Fremont and Aguajito. No sponsor.
PLEASANTON: PLEASANTONIANS 4 PEACE is sponsoring a candlelight vigil in front of the Museum on Main Street, downtown Pleasanton, 7pm on the second Wednesday of each month. We will reflect on the human and monetary costs of the war, honor our veterans who have sacrificed, and visualize ways of moving beyond this conflict to a more peaceful world. Please bring a votive candle in a paper cup.
SALINAS: 11 - noon every Saturday. Blanco & South Main Street at Star Market. Monterey Peninsula Friends Meeting (Quakers) and Salinas Action League.
SALINAS: noon to 1 pm, third Fridays, corner of East Alisal and North Sanborn (in front of Mi Pueblo Shopping Center) Salinas Action League salistas11@hotmail.com or www.salinasaction.org
SAN FRANCISCO: Every Thursday, noon to 1:00 pm, San Francisco Federal Building, Larkin Street and Golden Gate Avenue. Sponsored by American Friends Service Committee, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Episcopal Peace Fellowship and San Francisco Friends Meeting. Info SANTA CRUZ: Every Friday, 5 - 6 pm, various locations. Women in Black of Santa Cruz and Middle East Working Group. Laura Zucker 459-6637.
SANTA CRUZ: Women in Black of Santa Cruz: Peace Vigil and Witness. Every Friday, 5 - 6 pm, Corner of Pacific Avenue and Cooper Street in downtown Santa Cruz, in front of O'Neil's Surfshop.
SANTA ROSA: Every Friday 5pm - 6:30pm, Court House Square
SONORA: Peace Vigil every Thursday, rain or shine. 6-7pm at Courthouse Park on Washington Street. Sponsored by the Tuolumne County Citizens For Peace continuously since the war began.
SOQUE: Every Friday, 5--6pm on the main square of Soquel Village, outside the Ugly Mug. Hosted by Women's International League For Peace and Freedom of Santa Cruz
VANDENBERG AFB: First Tuesday of the month, 1 pm. Protest at Vandenberg Air force Base in Santa Barbara County.
VISALIA: The South Valley Peace Center holds it's peace vigil on the first Sunday of each month, 1pm at Mooney and Walnut.
WATSONVILLE: Every Friday 5 - 6 pm, at the Watsonville Plaza on Main Street. Watsonville Peace Coalition. Info, CHECK FOR CORRECT TIME which changes with the changing daylight!
FLORIDA
MELBOURNE: Patriots For Peace---1st. Wednesday of the month, 6--7:30 pm at the "Peace Corner" , 1700 West New Haven just west of the Melbourne Square Mall.
TAMPA: Every friday, 4:40--6:15pm Gandy Blvd and South Dale Mabry Blvd.
HAWAII
HILO: Friday Peace Vigil 3:30-5PM at the downtown Federal Bldg. Now in its 272 consecutive week with a new peace leaflet prepared for distribution each week. Contact for copies.
KENTUCKY
BOWLING GREEN: Every Tuesday night from 6:00 - 7:00 pm on the corner of McDonald's / Midas Muffler on the 31W Bypass. Bring candles and anti-war signs, and be prepared for a non-violent silent protest of the Iraq war. Our signs speak for us and we stress non-responding to all rude remarks aimed to intimidate / discourage our peaceful protest on a public walkway.
LOUISVILLE: Louisville Peace Action Community (LPAC): monthly Peace & Justice Vigil, 1st Sunday, 7-8 pm
at Douglass Loop & Bardstown Rd. Bring your candle and eclectic peace/justice issue signs, banners & flags.
MARYLAND
WALTER REED MEDICAL CENTER, SILVER SPRING: EVERY FRIDAY EVENING, "LOVE THE TROOPS--HATE THE WAR"
MASSACHUSSETTS
NORTHAMPTON: Standing in vigil for eight years this month. Started vigils against sanctions. Every Saturday, 11am -Noon in front of the Courthouse.
NEBRASKA
THE NEBRASKA COALITION FOR PEACE: peace vigil every Wednesday evening from 5pm--6pm on the south side of the Federal Building. Rain or Shine.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
KEENE: New Hampshire peace lovers have a weekly vigil in Central Square every Saturday, 11am - Noon by the bell of the community church. They have been doing this for years.
NEW MEXICO
PEACE ISLAND: The Sierra County Peace Coalition has been holding a Peace Vigil every Thursday from 11am to noon for over 16 months at Peace Island in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
NEW YORK
HUNTINGTON, LONG ISLAND: 4th Saturday each month. 304 Main Street
NEW YORK CITY: Rockefeller Center: Every Wednesday, 4:30--5:30pm. 5th Avenue between 49th and 50th streeets.
NORTH CAROLINA
BILTMORE VILLAGE: North Carolina Women In Black: Sunday 4:30--5:00pm All Souls Episcopal Church.
ASHEVILLE: North Carolina Vets For Peace Vigil. Tuesday,4:30--5:30 pm Vance Monument, Patton & Biltmore Avenues.
WAYNESVILLE: Neighbors For Peace, Wednesday, 4:30pm at downtown Post Office.
ASHEVILLE: Votive Mass For Peace. Wednesdays, 5:30PM at St.Mary Episcopal Church.
HENDERSONVILLE: North Carolina Women In Black Vigil. Friday, 12:00--12:30 pm. Main Street at Old County Court House.
ASHEVILLE: North Carolina Women In Black Vigil. Friday, 5:00--6:00pm. Vance Monument, Patton & Biltmore Avenues.
BREVARD: North Carolina,Transylvania County Vigil For Peace. Saturday, 12:00--1:00 pm, County Courthouse
OREGON
CORVALIS: Every day, 5-6pm. Alternatives to War sponsors a vigil for peace at the Benton County Courthouse, 120 NW 4th St.
ALBANY: Peace vigil every Friday, 4:00 to 5:00 pm. Sponsored by the Albany Peace Seekers. At the Courthouse, 4th and Broadalbin.
SOUTH DAKOTA
SIOUX FALLS: Peace Vigil every Sunday, 3-4pm in front of the Federal Courthouse on the corner of 12th Street and Phillips Avenue. Rain or shine.
RAPID CITY: Peace Vigil every Friday at noon in front of the Jimmy Carter Statue (corner of 6th & St. Joseph) downtown Rapid City. Rain or shine.
TEXAS
SAN MARCOS: Peace Vigils Wed. 6-7pm on the Hays County Courthouse corner since August 2005. Extra signs available.
UTAH
LOGAN: Every Friday Peace Vigil, 5-6pm in front of the Tabernacle in downtown Logan Info: 435-797-5237 or Logan Vigil
SALT LAKE CITY:Join People for Peace and Justice every Thursday for our weekly peace vigil, 5:30-6:30pm Sidewalk in front of the Federal Building in Salt Lake City, 125 South State Street. Some signs provided
WASHINGTON
BELLINGHAM: Peace Vigil every Friday 4 pm
in front of the old Fed Bldg, Magnolia & Cornwall (since Vietnam War)
Followed by an open discuussion Peace Zone group right after
If there are no peace vigils in your community, why not create one. It's simple: Select a location, decide on a date and time, tell some other people about it, and then be there!
Home | Weekly Meeting| Peace Vigil | Cool Peace Stuff! | Contact |
People for Peace and Justice of Utah is a program of Blue Sky Insitute
Copyright©2007 People for Peace and Justice of Utah™
Terms of Use
Without Justice, there can be no Peace.
Stop the Killing - No More Atrocities - Protect Civil Liberties
Join PPJ every Thursday for our weekly peace vigil
5:30-6:30pm Sidewalk in front of the Federal Building in Salt Lake City
125 South State Street
~ Some signs provided ~
(Inclement weather: Please be sure to bring your own sign should you decide to vigil in rain or snow.)
Peace Vigils Around the U.S.
What will you say when your children ask, "Why didn't you do something? You knew what was happening."
~ James Landis
CALIFORNIA
FELTON: The Felton Peace Vigil, 5:30--6:30pm, Corner Highay 9 and Graham Hill Road
FRESNO "WOMEN IN BLACK": Silent peace vigil, first Wednesday of the month, noon to 1:00pm in the breezeway at the front of the Court House, Tulare and Van Ness. All women invited.
FRESNO: Peace Fresno monthly peace vigil. 1st Friday each month, corner Blackstone and Shaw. 4:30pm.
LOS ANGELES: Every Friday, Anti War Vigil, 7 PM at San Vicente and Santa Monica Blvds, West Hollywood.
MARIPOSA: Every Wednesday, 5:30---6:00pm corner of Hwy 140 and 5th Street. Rain or shine. Now in its' 79th consecutive week. Signs available or bring your own.
MERCED: Every Friday, 4:30---5:30pm, Merced Court House 21st and M Streets. Rain or shine.
MODESTO: Modesto Peace Life Center peace vigil, first Friday of the month, 5:30--6:30pm at McHenry and J Streets (five points).
MONTEREY: 12-2pm, Every Sunday. PEACE GATHERING, ongoing vigil opposing war. Corner of Fremont and Aguajito. No sponsor.
PLEASANTON: PLEASANTONIANS 4 PEACE is sponsoring a candlelight vigil in front of the Museum on Main Street, downtown Pleasanton, 7pm on the second Wednesday of each month. We will reflect on the human and monetary costs of the war, honor our veterans who have sacrificed, and visualize ways of moving beyond this conflict to a more peaceful world. Please bring a votive candle in a paper cup.
SALINAS: 11 - noon every Saturday. Blanco & South Main Street at Star Market. Monterey Peninsula Friends Meeting (Quakers) and Salinas Action League.
SALINAS: noon to 1 pm, third Fridays, corner of East Alisal and North Sanborn (in front of Mi Pueblo Shopping Center) Salinas Action League salistas11@hotmail.com or www.salinasaction.org
SAN FRANCISCO: Every Thursday, noon to 1:00 pm, San Francisco Federal Building, Larkin Street and Golden Gate Avenue. Sponsored by American Friends Service Committee, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Episcopal Peace Fellowship and San Francisco Friends Meeting. Info SANTA CRUZ: Every Friday, 5 - 6 pm, various locations. Women in Black of Santa Cruz and Middle East Working Group. Laura Zucker 459-6637.
SANTA CRUZ: Women in Black of Santa Cruz: Peace Vigil and Witness. Every Friday, 5 - 6 pm, Corner of Pacific Avenue and Cooper Street in downtown Santa Cruz, in front of O'Neil's Surfshop.
SANTA ROSA: Every Friday 5pm - 6:30pm, Court House Square
SONORA: Peace Vigil every Thursday, rain or shine. 6-7pm at Courthouse Park on Washington Street. Sponsored by the Tuolumne County Citizens For Peace continuously since the war began.
SOQUE: Every Friday, 5--6pm on the main square of Soquel Village, outside the Ugly Mug. Hosted by Women's International League For Peace and Freedom of Santa Cruz
VANDENBERG AFB: First Tuesday of the month, 1 pm. Protest at Vandenberg Air force Base in Santa Barbara County.
VISALIA: The South Valley Peace Center holds it's peace vigil on the first Sunday of each month, 1pm at Mooney and Walnut.
WATSONVILLE: Every Friday 5 - 6 pm, at the Watsonville Plaza on Main Street. Watsonville Peace Coalition. Info, CHECK FOR CORRECT TIME which changes with the changing daylight!
FLORIDA
MELBOURNE: Patriots For Peace---1st. Wednesday of the month, 6--7:30 pm at the "Peace Corner" , 1700 West New Haven just west of the Melbourne Square Mall.
TAMPA: Every friday, 4:40--6:15pm Gandy Blvd and South Dale Mabry Blvd.
HAWAII
HILO: Friday Peace Vigil 3:30-5PM at the downtown Federal Bldg. Now in its 272 consecutive week with a new peace leaflet prepared for distribution each week. Contact for copies.
KENTUCKY
BOWLING GREEN: Every Tuesday night from 6:00 - 7:00 pm on the corner of McDonald's / Midas Muffler on the 31W Bypass. Bring candles and anti-war signs, and be prepared for a non-violent silent protest of the Iraq war. Our signs speak for us and we stress non-responding to all rude remarks aimed to intimidate / discourage our peaceful protest on a public walkway.
LOUISVILLE: Louisville Peace Action Community (LPAC): monthly Peace & Justice Vigil, 1st Sunday, 7-8 pm
at Douglass Loop & Bardstown Rd. Bring your candle and eclectic peace/justice issue signs, banners & flags.
MARYLAND
WALTER REED MEDICAL CENTER, SILVER SPRING: EVERY FRIDAY EVENING, "LOVE THE TROOPS--HATE THE WAR"
MASSACHUSSETTS
NORTHAMPTON: Standing in vigil for eight years this month. Started vigils against sanctions. Every Saturday, 11am -Noon in front of the Courthouse.
NEBRASKA
THE NEBRASKA COALITION FOR PEACE: peace vigil every Wednesday evening from 5pm--6pm on the south side of the Federal Building. Rain or Shine.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
KEENE: New Hampshire peace lovers have a weekly vigil in Central Square every Saturday, 11am - Noon by the bell of the community church. They have been doing this for years.
NEW MEXICO
PEACE ISLAND: The Sierra County Peace Coalition has been holding a Peace Vigil every Thursday from 11am to noon for over 16 months at Peace Island in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
NEW YORK
HUNTINGTON, LONG ISLAND: 4th Saturday each month. 304 Main Street
NEW YORK CITY: Rockefeller Center: Every Wednesday, 4:30--5:30pm. 5th Avenue between 49th and 50th streeets.
NORTH CAROLINA
BILTMORE VILLAGE: North Carolina Women In Black: Sunday 4:30--5:00pm All Souls Episcopal Church.
ASHEVILLE: North Carolina Vets For Peace Vigil. Tuesday,4:30--5:30 pm Vance Monument, Patton & Biltmore Avenues.
WAYNESVILLE: Neighbors For Peace, Wednesday, 4:30pm at downtown Post Office.
ASHEVILLE: Votive Mass For Peace. Wednesdays, 5:30PM at St.Mary Episcopal Church.
HENDERSONVILLE: North Carolina Women In Black Vigil. Friday, 12:00--12:30 pm. Main Street at Old County Court House.
ASHEVILLE: North Carolina Women In Black Vigil. Friday, 5:00--6:00pm. Vance Monument, Patton & Biltmore Avenues.
BREVARD: North Carolina,Transylvania County Vigil For Peace. Saturday, 12:00--1:00 pm, County Courthouse
OREGON
CORVALIS: Every day, 5-6pm. Alternatives to War sponsors a vigil for peace at the Benton County Courthouse, 120 NW 4th St.
ALBANY: Peace vigil every Friday, 4:00 to 5:00 pm. Sponsored by the Albany Peace Seekers. At the Courthouse, 4th and Broadalbin.
SOUTH DAKOTA
SIOUX FALLS: Peace Vigil every Sunday, 3-4pm in front of the Federal Courthouse on the corner of 12th Street and Phillips Avenue. Rain or shine.
RAPID CITY: Peace Vigil every Friday at noon in front of the Jimmy Carter Statue (corner of 6th & St. Joseph) downtown Rapid City. Rain or shine.
TEXAS
SAN MARCOS: Peace Vigils Wed. 6-7pm on the Hays County Courthouse corner since August 2005. Extra signs available.
UTAH
LOGAN: Every Friday Peace Vigil, 5-6pm in front of the Tabernacle in downtown Logan Info: 435-797-5237 or Logan Vigil
SALT LAKE CITY:Join People for Peace and Justice every Thursday for our weekly peace vigil, 5:30-6:30pm Sidewalk in front of the Federal Building in Salt Lake City, 125 South State Street. Some signs provided
WASHINGTON
BELLINGHAM: Peace Vigil every Friday 4 pm
in front of the old Fed Bldg, Magnolia & Cornwall (since Vietnam War)
Followed by an open discuussion Peace Zone group right after
If there are no peace vigils in your community, why not create one. It's simple: Select a location, decide on a date and time, tell some other people about it, and then be there!
Home | Weekly Meeting| Peace Vigil | Cool Peace Stuff! | Contact |
People for Peace and Justice of Utah is a program of Blue Sky Insitute
Copyright©2007 People for Peace and Justice of Utah™
Terms of Use
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Period of Grace Until The Divine Intervention
PERIOD OF GRACE UNTIL THE DIVINE INTERVENTION. ...
It will still take a little while before God will visibly manifest Himself, before the cycle is completed, before the hour has come when the extent of human atrocities has gone too far. Yet it will not be a long period of time, you humans are given only a very brief period of grace in order to distance
yourselves from those behaving disgracefully before God because they violate their fellow human being in a most ruthless way….
However, God allows it to come to the worst so that people will still learn to recognise which way they are heading.... For only this realisation will motivate them to change. Every day is important as for many people it is the last one, it can be decisive for the whole of eternity, but many others will only have a few days left until their temporal end has come, and this is why
God still hesitates although the event is inevitable and His plan has been determined from the beginning. However, people’s low level gave rise to it much sooner, their heartlessness made the day overdue before its time, so that every day is a gift of grace by God bestowed upon humanity by His forbearance and mercy. And thus every day can still be utilised and offers many people the opportunity to change, if only they are of good will.
Therefore they are constantly informed of the divine intervention, both through His Word as well as through people’s exchange of ideas who are mentally advised from above about the forthcoming event. Everyone can form an opinion about that which is imparted to him, everyone can think about the events in the world as well as the end of it, and the thought of a supernatural intervention in world events will not just occur to a few, and then a person will
still be able to hold himself to account regarding his attitude towards good and evil.
Every human being will be warned, directly and indirectly, and if he heeds the warning he will be able to derive benefit for his soul. For then he will also recognise the divine intervention as such, he will learn to believe and be saved, even if he loses his earthly life. And because God still wants to open people’s ears for His call He will not sound His voice prematurely…. Yet
the designated period of time cannot be exceeded according to divine order…. And people should assume that every day is the announced one when He reveals Himself and His Power. For what He has proclaimed will happen without fail, God merely keeps the time concealed. Yet the day will come like a thief in the night…. unexpectedly and causing a large amount of material damage…. And only someone whose heart no longer clings to earthly goods, who has united himself with God and knows himself always and forever protected by Him will not be fearful. These, however, are
instructed by Him to constantly refer people to the fact that He will manifest Himself, and to admonish them to choose the right path which leads to Him, so that they, too, will take refuge in Him in the hour of affliction and find protection and help in Him…. Amen
B.D. 3396
It will still take a little while before God will visibly manifest Himself, before the cycle is completed, before the hour has come when the extent of human atrocities has gone too far. Yet it will not be a long period of time, you humans are given only a very brief period of grace in order to distance
yourselves from those behaving disgracefully before God because they violate their fellow human being in a most ruthless way….
However, God allows it to come to the worst so that people will still learn to recognise which way they are heading.... For only this realisation will motivate them to change. Every day is important as for many people it is the last one, it can be decisive for the whole of eternity, but many others will only have a few days left until their temporal end has come, and this is why
God still hesitates although the event is inevitable and His plan has been determined from the beginning. However, people’s low level gave rise to it much sooner, their heartlessness made the day overdue before its time, so that every day is a gift of grace by God bestowed upon humanity by His forbearance and mercy. And thus every day can still be utilised and offers many people the opportunity to change, if only they are of good will.
Therefore they are constantly informed of the divine intervention, both through His Word as well as through people’s exchange of ideas who are mentally advised from above about the forthcoming event. Everyone can form an opinion about that which is imparted to him, everyone can think about the events in the world as well as the end of it, and the thought of a supernatural intervention in world events will not just occur to a few, and then a person will
still be able to hold himself to account regarding his attitude towards good and evil.
Every human being will be warned, directly and indirectly, and if he heeds the warning he will be able to derive benefit for his soul. For then he will also recognise the divine intervention as such, he will learn to believe and be saved, even if he loses his earthly life. And because God still wants to open people’s ears for His call He will not sound His voice prematurely…. Yet
the designated period of time cannot be exceeded according to divine order…. And people should assume that every day is the announced one when He reveals Himself and His Power. For what He has proclaimed will happen without fail, God merely keeps the time concealed. Yet the day will come like a thief in the night…. unexpectedly and causing a large amount of material damage…. And only someone whose heart no longer clings to earthly goods, who has united himself with God and knows himself always and forever protected by Him will not be fearful. These, however, are
instructed by Him to constantly refer people to the fact that He will manifest Himself, and to admonish them to choose the right path which leads to Him, so that they, too, will take refuge in Him in the hour of affliction and find protection and help in Him…. Amen
B.D. 3396
Monday, February 9, 2009
Call Com Inc.
FROM: Mr. Zachary Williamson
(Executive Director & Chief Operating Officer)
Mr Thomas Green
(Chief Executive Officer)
Call Com Inc.
800-921-9814
All New Conference Call And Web Broadcast:
Please note the link for the conference call page is new every week. Make sure to refer to this email for the new link for this call. We will take your questions on the web during the call. You can just type in your question before and during the call on the log in page for the call below.
EVENT: Call Com Inc BPO
DATE & TIME: Wednesday, February 11th at 12:00pm Eastern
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW...
http://instantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=6095091
Conference Phone Number: 321-354-6946
Guest PIN: 106592#
This is incredible information will be released at our conference calls every Monday 10pm est. and every Wednesday at 12noon est. or you can get a sneak peek at our web site its free to join, click now! All calls recorded and stored in our members area.
Join now at:
https://www.callcominc.com/holdingcompany
Phone: 1-866-921-9814
All new and old members alike can join this program now and profit big. This is a rare chance to take part in a private placement normally not available to members.
All Current members of Call Com Inc who own any equity in Call Com Inc only, may log into your back office, at the link above to see your account. If there are any issues just call customer service to get it corrected right away at 1-866-921-9814. You may also refer others and use your replicated site and that can be found at edit information in your back office.
You will find this referral plan very generous to close this private placement quickly. It is free to join and only takes seconds. Join right away and begin enjoying huge profits and big referral bonuses. Join now to get the complete details free.
DO NOT LET THIS ONCE IN A LIFETIME CHANCE PASS YOU BY!
Join now at: https://www.callcominc.com/holdingcompany
Phone: 1-866-921-9814
To unsubscribe click: http://www.callcominc.com/unsubscribe.aspx
We will gladly take you off our list. You have either joined our program
or family of programs if you have received this update.
(Executive Director & Chief Operating Officer)
Mr Thomas Green
(Chief Executive Officer)
Call Com Inc.
800-921-9814
All New Conference Call And Web Broadcast:
Please note the link for the conference call page is new every week. Make sure to refer to this email for the new link for this call. We will take your questions on the web during the call. You can just type in your question before and during the call on the log in page for the call below.
EVENT: Call Com Inc BPO
DATE & TIME: Wednesday, February 11th at 12:00pm Eastern
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW...
http://instantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=6095091
Conference Phone Number: 321-354-6946
Guest PIN: 106592#
This is incredible information will be released at our conference calls every Monday 10pm est. and every Wednesday at 12noon est. or you can get a sneak peek at our web site its free to join, click now! All calls recorded and stored in our members area.
Join now at:
https://www.callcominc.com/holdingcompany
Phone: 1-866-921-9814
All new and old members alike can join this program now and profit big. This is a rare chance to take part in a private placement normally not available to members.
All Current members of Call Com Inc who own any equity in Call Com Inc only, may log into your back office, at the link above to see your account. If there are any issues just call customer service to get it corrected right away at 1-866-921-9814. You may also refer others and use your replicated site and that can be found at edit information in your back office.
You will find this referral plan very generous to close this private placement quickly. It is free to join and only takes seconds. Join right away and begin enjoying huge profits and big referral bonuses. Join now to get the complete details free.
DO NOT LET THIS ONCE IN A LIFETIME CHANCE PASS YOU BY!
Join now at: https://www.callcominc.com/holdingcompany
Phone: 1-866-921-9814
To unsubscribe click: http://www.callcominc.com/unsubscribe.aspx
We will gladly take you off our list. You have either joined our program
or family of programs if you have received this update.
Paranormal/The James Randi Educational Foundation, Inc.
http://www.objectforce.com/php/MyTrumanShow__/Legal/JamesRandi/4_ReplyToAnswer.html
United States District Court
District of Minnesota
Christopher Roller
(Plaintiff)
vs.
The James Randi Educational Foundation, Inc. (JREF)
(Defendant)
Civil Action No. 06-04702
REPLY TO ANSWER
REPLY TO ANSWER
PREFACE
I was talking with Richard Ostlund, defense attorney, and he said, "My client has no ill feelings toward you". Good thing that wasn't under oath, because it would be perjury.
You see, James Randi hates my guts. He thinks the Game of Life, which keeps phenomenons at bay, is working for he and the mob, when in fact, it's working for me. It's my show, although he thinks it's his. James Randi has godly powers (he's a magician), but he's playing a huge con game, convincing people there's nothing paranormal going on, when in fact, James himself has my godly powers.
That's why I can't rely on James Randi to judge this challenge. I have to rely on an official judge, on an offer I have accepted, to judge this challenge because James Randi is a fraud running a paranormal con game. His Paranormal challenge is actually a freak intake, so he can find people with special abilities, and hide them, compensate them, to put them to good use in the underground mob network, designed to profit off hidden godly powers being used throughout the planet. This is all in a well-organized quest to keep money out of the pockets of Chris Roller, who he knows, is the source of those powers. If you watch Smallville TV series, it's similar to Lex Luther in his building an army of kryptonite mutants with powers, to conspire against and try to defeat Superman. Randi is Lex Luther and I'm Superman. Or X-Men mutants with varying abilities.
You see, James Randi is mob central. He is a key figurehead in Chris Roller's woes he's suffered throughout his life. This is my detriment in consideration for the contract, along with the fact I spent hundreds of dollars to find out David Copperfield has godly powers. This is beside the fact that the mob are quietly making trillions annually off godly powers at my expense. JREF is a non-profit organization. Now that's a joke! Randi probably has $1 trillion in underground bank accounts.
I got this from City Pages concerning this case - http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2007/01/_christopher_ro.asp#more. Randi states
Randi, however, says that a legal rejoinder is forthcoming. "I simply sent the summons off to our lawyer," he notes from his office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "We get this sort of thing 30 or 40 times a year at least. People are people. They're delusional."
"We get this sort of thing 30 or 40 times a year at least." I'm assuming he's talking about 30 or 40 lawsuits a year. Wow! I seriously doubt Randi can produce 10 case numbers, from last year, of people suing him like I'm doing. I guess we'll find out. Again, I believe Randi scoops up the freaks into his legion, or makes the crackpot cases disappear with his magic.
On www.mytrumanshow.com, I talk about Level I journey in which thousands of people were trying to kill me. I have no doubt (though no proof) that Randi was one. Little did I know that I once lived next door to mob central when I was working in Ft. Lauderdale, FL (JREF location).
As for proof that James Randi doesn't like me, we need to take a look at an email he sent me. See Exh. ToFromJamesRandiRedLakeShootingEmail. Pay attention to the date it was sent Monday, March 21, 2005 12:31:55, and the interesting comment, "Being brave is the only solution. Try it!" What he was saying was, "be brave and step out of your apartment so we can finish you off". My psychic senses would then inform me a full-out assault by the mob that would take place for hours. I didn't step out of my apartment, not because I was afraid of Randi, but because I simply had nowhere to go, but that didn't stop them from trying to end me. James still doesn't get it. It's my show, it's my Game of Life, not his. No one can kill me - I'm basically immortal. That's paranormal! Now these attempted hits usually leave nothing real to go on (no proof). But look at the date James' email was sent - Monday, March 21, 2005 12:31:55. This is the day that the Red Lake Indian Reservation school shooting took place. Here's the story. http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_080164955.html. You see, at 3pm., the shooting took place. This is during the time of the attempted hit on me. You see what happens....there was such an intense attack/frustration built up from the inability to kill me (by probably dozens/hundreds of mob assailants), that like a rubber band being stretched to it's brink, a magic back-lash (magic negative feedback) occurred (reality leak-through), causing the Red Lake shooting. This is not the first time this has occurred.
Columbine - I had just found out someone slipped drugs into my drink a week earlier, and was punishing them with my magic - 20Apr1999.
Red Lake shooting - 21 Apr 2006 - http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_080164955.html.
Montreal - Sept. 13, 2006 http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/09/13/shots-dawson.html
Bailey, Colo shooting - 27 Sep 2006. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/28/school.shooting/index.html.
Cazenovia, Wis. - Sept. 29, 2006 - A 15-year-old student shot and killed Weston School principal John Klang.
Amish school incident - 2 Oct 2006 - http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html Had hair transplants that day. My first hair transplants was the morning of 9/11. I've got to stop getting hair transplants. Perhaps the mob may have been trying to end me while I was in Chicago that day.
These events seem to have a few things in common.
School children involved,
the gunman turns the gun on himself - Motive is lacking - little explanation for the event.
Quantity of drugs I'm currently on.
My magic is being used - usually in self-defense.
The only ones I can put my finger on is Columbine, and thanks to James Randi email, the Red Lake shooting. 3 shootings in one week does make me wonder (the last 3) what's going on. Others (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html is a more extensive list) have no direct correlation to my show it would appear, although when I'm in auto-mode, my defenses are very quiet while very effective, and back-lash could be occurring as a result of attempted hits.
I take these school shootings seriously when I hear about them. But as you can imagine, it's hard to talk about and be taken seriously - but I'm telepathic (Aff God&Plan&Heaven) and it's happening. I'm not trying to say that Red Lake shooting is criminal "proof" against James Randi. I understand what proof is, but when something in the negative magical event has a real-life side-effect, we may need to address it in the future, so that when I talk to police about what's going on in Chris Roller's magical world, they don't lock me into a mental institution. Godly powers are a reality, and paranormal side-effects of magic need to be addressed by the legal system, and consider it a possible defense for the shooter - almost a person's losing his mind, lost control, almost like "the devil made me do it". Unfortunately, few of the shooters are alive to hear about this magical back-lash defense.
I just found about this incident 28Apr1999 - http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9904/29/canada.shooting/index.html. It occurred the day after my morph (27Apr1999). I was so busy fighting off my demons that I didn't hear about it when it happened. There was a lot of magic activity 28Apr1999. I wasn't on drugs, but it may have back-lashed into the school shooting. Yet the shooter is alive, so maybe he has a possible defense.
Drug related
I tried out a heavy dose of a new (different) drug called Risperdal on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 and was exercising my demons (magically beating the mob). That night, I stopped in at Bumpers in Burnsville to find mourning - that a patron, Howard Groves, had died at home earlier that day of a heart attack. I got the feeling they think I killed him. Month or two later, they even kicked me out of the bar for life cause they hate me. I rarely exercise my demons any more. I'm unclear if Howard was actually a demon (mob).
9/11 occurred while on huge meds. My first hair transplant scar (9/11 scars) formed that morning thanks to the work of a wonderful plastic surgeon. People think I did 9/11 too. People think I'm the devil, when in fact, I've got demons like James Randi, the mob, and mafia (George Bush comes to mind) setting me up as a false prophet.
Back-lash doesn't always happen. David Copperfield called me on 26Apr2005 to talk me out of my suit. When I declined, he proceeded to have his thugs (intense) try and end me for the next hour of so. I'm unsure if/what drugs I was on during that time (I believe none). Nothing back-lashed.
This was the result of the David Copperfield case...
(b) there is no known or recognized cause of action for usurpation of [Chris'] godly powers.
Unfortunately this is the case. Granting of godly powers by the Game of Life is quite random - the cause is unknown, the powers given vary in ability, and unfortunately, the judge felt that I didn't deserve any compensation for my wonderful powers. I hope this philosophy changes, or it will be tough to rule the world without any money. :) James Randi and his mob (my demons) are currently making trillions of dollars annually off my godly powers via magicians and electronic and medical technology - all conveniently hidden and/or excused. I deserve some compensation. The mob enjoy the good life, while beating Chris Roller down in his reject hole via conspiring psychiatrists, all while attempting to kill him occasionally, and desperately praying that the Game of Life doesn't let him surface to claim James Randi $million paranormal challenge, and exposing the biggest con the planet has ever witnessed, and officially/eventually inform the world of godly powers.
I emailed Randi in Aug of 2005, informing him of my evidence of the Copperfield case. That gave Randi every opportunity to change the contract to prevent me from winning the challenge. I believe the Game of Life is tying Randi's hands a bit, because over a year later, contact unchanged, I still see nothing in the challenge keeping my proof from earning me the $1 million.
This case should prove to be very interesting. Randi wants to fight this case. Ok. I will depose James Randi and I'm going to ask him about the email of March 21, 2005 and hits of 1999. Maybe Randi is how I find out about the hits of '99. I know it originated in part from South Florida. James thinks he's in control of what he says and does. Wouldn't that be something if the Game of Life makes Randi admit the March 21, 2005 hit or the hits of 1999 - it's called leak-through. Magic leak-through is another phenomenon! The court scene is already sick of Chris Roller plugging up the system with bizarre cases, but imagine the hundreds of lawsuits if I were to find out the companies involved in the hits of '99. Whew! Here's the irony. James knows he's busted. He knows I've won the challenge, but doesn't want to pay...drags this thing out, just to accidentally admit under oath he's committed a crime, and thus goes to jail. Now that would be funny! I'm finding the legal system very "real" when it comes to magic. Copperfield fessed up to godly powers via the court forum. What else will I find? I'm going to really test the leak-through by doing a paternity test of Celine Dion's 6 year old boy soon. We'll see. Imagine if that leaks-through! How's Randi going to defend immaculate conception? Paranormal will be a norm soon. Common sense would say to Randi, just pay the $1 mil and avoid any further legal ramifications of dealing with Chris Roller. I have found the Game of Life, in the name of entertainment, makes people do and say some very strange things.
Ostlund insists he knows the judge, and this case is going to be dropped. I've got to admit - I lost some sleep after hearing that remark. This is an example of saying something uncharacteristic, like the Game made him say it. Now I realize the mob is instilled throughout every major profession (mob told me this), especially the legal system (perhaps Ostlund - lawyers are said to be the devils advocate). But here's the deal...I don't care if Randi pays off the judge (no disrespect) for $10 million to try to contain this conspiracy against me. The Game of Life is in control, and I know it's working for me, and if needed, it will "recast" (www.mytrumanshow.com) actors to a different type to meet the needs of the Game. Actor recasting is another phenomenon.
LEGAL ANALYSIS
This challenge is about proving the existence of the paranormal. The Game of Life is paranormal. Hundred monkey phenomenon is paranormal, and godly powers are paranormal. I'm god/God, that's paranormal. I must have expressed a dozen paranormal events in this document that are all true, albeit difficult to prove. But I have hard proof... From David Copperfield case, he states...
(b) there is no known or recognized cause of action for usurpation of [Chris'] godly powers.
Copperfield has godly powers - that's paranormal. David Copperfield doesn't enter the challenge and collect the $1 million because he's part of the con and mob conspiracy against me. I am the source of those godly powers - I'm god - that's paranormal. Heck, I seem to be the acting liaison of the Game of Life, and thus I may be the almighty God. See Aff God&Plan&Heaven. Wait 'til the Christians hear about this! Oh, the anticipated love! I don't wish to prove that currently though - god and godly powers is good enough for this challenge.
Subject matter jurisdiction via diversity (different states), and this case is about winning $1 million, which is over $75,000.
Personal jurisdiction via minimum contacts. Randy gathers freaks from all over the world, who apply to his challenge. He has agents throughout each state, including MN, and throughout the world, to monitor, inspect, and employ challengers where appropriate. All this meets the minimum contacts requirement for personal jurisdiction.
All non-UCC contracts have an obligation of "good faith and fair dealing". I do not trust the moderator of the contract at JREF. That's why I need an official judge for this challenge.
(b) there is no known or recognized cause of action for usurpation of [Chris'] godly powers.
Not only does this statement mean that David Copperfield has godly powers, but he has my godly powers. That is as paranormal as it gets. The challenge asks for the "satisfactory observing conditions". Anyone can observe David's show to witness the paranormal and my wonderful powers. The answer states I have not met the conditions, but states no details for me to argue. As far as I can tell, I have met the conditions in an obligated "good faith and fair dealing" contract to satisfy the $1 million paranormal challenge.
CONCLUSION
I'm suing James Randi Educational Foundation for $1 million for proving that paranormal events are occurring on planet Earth by David Copperfield and thus satisfying the JREF Paranormal challenge.
Respectfully submitted,
Date: __25 Jan 2007____ _____s/_Christopher A. Roller__________
Christopher Roller (pro se)
13150 Harriet Ave. S #273
Burnsville, MN 55337
952.239.6410
United States District Court
District of Minnesota
Christopher Roller
(Plaintiff)
vs.
The James Randi Educational Foundation, Inc. (JREF)
(Defendant)
Civil Action No. 06-04702
REPLY TO ANSWER
REPLY TO ANSWER
PREFACE
I was talking with Richard Ostlund, defense attorney, and he said, "My client has no ill feelings toward you". Good thing that wasn't under oath, because it would be perjury.
You see, James Randi hates my guts. He thinks the Game of Life, which keeps phenomenons at bay, is working for he and the mob, when in fact, it's working for me. It's my show, although he thinks it's his. James Randi has godly powers (he's a magician), but he's playing a huge con game, convincing people there's nothing paranormal going on, when in fact, James himself has my godly powers.
That's why I can't rely on James Randi to judge this challenge. I have to rely on an official judge, on an offer I have accepted, to judge this challenge because James Randi is a fraud running a paranormal con game. His Paranormal challenge is actually a freak intake, so he can find people with special abilities, and hide them, compensate them, to put them to good use in the underground mob network, designed to profit off hidden godly powers being used throughout the planet. This is all in a well-organized quest to keep money out of the pockets of Chris Roller, who he knows, is the source of those powers. If you watch Smallville TV series, it's similar to Lex Luther in his building an army of kryptonite mutants with powers, to conspire against and try to defeat Superman. Randi is Lex Luther and I'm Superman. Or X-Men mutants with varying abilities.
You see, James Randi is mob central. He is a key figurehead in Chris Roller's woes he's suffered throughout his life. This is my detriment in consideration for the contract, along with the fact I spent hundreds of dollars to find out David Copperfield has godly powers. This is beside the fact that the mob are quietly making trillions annually off godly powers at my expense. JREF is a non-profit organization. Now that's a joke! Randi probably has $1 trillion in underground bank accounts.
I got this from City Pages concerning this case - http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2007/01/_christopher_ro.asp#more. Randi states
Randi, however, says that a legal rejoinder is forthcoming. "I simply sent the summons off to our lawyer," he notes from his office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "We get this sort of thing 30 or 40 times a year at least. People are people. They're delusional."
"We get this sort of thing 30 or 40 times a year at least." I'm assuming he's talking about 30 or 40 lawsuits a year. Wow! I seriously doubt Randi can produce 10 case numbers, from last year, of people suing him like I'm doing. I guess we'll find out. Again, I believe Randi scoops up the freaks into his legion, or makes the crackpot cases disappear with his magic.
On www.mytrumanshow.com, I talk about Level I journey in which thousands of people were trying to kill me. I have no doubt (though no proof) that Randi was one. Little did I know that I once lived next door to mob central when I was working in Ft. Lauderdale, FL (JREF location).
As for proof that James Randi doesn't like me, we need to take a look at an email he sent me. See Exh. ToFromJamesRandiRedLakeShootingEmail. Pay attention to the date it was sent Monday, March 21, 2005 12:31:55, and the interesting comment, "Being brave is the only solution. Try it!" What he was saying was, "be brave and step out of your apartment so we can finish you off". My psychic senses would then inform me a full-out assault by the mob that would take place for hours. I didn't step out of my apartment, not because I was afraid of Randi, but because I simply had nowhere to go, but that didn't stop them from trying to end me. James still doesn't get it. It's my show, it's my Game of Life, not his. No one can kill me - I'm basically immortal. That's paranormal! Now these attempted hits usually leave nothing real to go on (no proof). But look at the date James' email was sent - Monday, March 21, 2005 12:31:55. This is the day that the Red Lake Indian Reservation school shooting took place. Here's the story. http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_080164955.html. You see, at 3pm., the shooting took place. This is during the time of the attempted hit on me. You see what happens....there was such an intense attack/frustration built up from the inability to kill me (by probably dozens/hundreds of mob assailants), that like a rubber band being stretched to it's brink, a magic back-lash (magic negative feedback) occurred (reality leak-through), causing the Red Lake shooting. This is not the first time this has occurred.
Columbine - I had just found out someone slipped drugs into my drink a week earlier, and was punishing them with my magic - 20Apr1999.
Red Lake shooting - 21 Apr 2006 - http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_080164955.html.
Montreal - Sept. 13, 2006 http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/09/13/shots-dawson.html
Bailey, Colo shooting - 27 Sep 2006. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/28/school.shooting/index.html.
Cazenovia, Wis. - Sept. 29, 2006 - A 15-year-old student shot and killed Weston School principal John Klang.
Amish school incident - 2 Oct 2006 - http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html Had hair transplants that day. My first hair transplants was the morning of 9/11. I've got to stop getting hair transplants. Perhaps the mob may have been trying to end me while I was in Chicago that day.
These events seem to have a few things in common.
School children involved,
the gunman turns the gun on himself - Motive is lacking - little explanation for the event.
Quantity of drugs I'm currently on.
My magic is being used - usually in self-defense.
The only ones I can put my finger on is Columbine, and thanks to James Randi email, the Red Lake shooting. 3 shootings in one week does make me wonder (the last 3) what's going on. Others (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html is a more extensive list) have no direct correlation to my show it would appear, although when I'm in auto-mode, my defenses are very quiet while very effective, and back-lash could be occurring as a result of attempted hits.
I take these school shootings seriously when I hear about them. But as you can imagine, it's hard to talk about and be taken seriously - but I'm telepathic (Aff God&Plan&Heaven) and it's happening. I'm not trying to say that Red Lake shooting is criminal "proof" against James Randi. I understand what proof is, but when something in the negative magical event has a real-life side-effect, we may need to address it in the future, so that when I talk to police about what's going on in Chris Roller's magical world, they don't lock me into a mental institution. Godly powers are a reality, and paranormal side-effects of magic need to be addressed by the legal system, and consider it a possible defense for the shooter - almost a person's losing his mind, lost control, almost like "the devil made me do it". Unfortunately, few of the shooters are alive to hear about this magical back-lash defense.
I just found about this incident 28Apr1999 - http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9904/29/canada.shooting/index.html. It occurred the day after my morph (27Apr1999). I was so busy fighting off my demons that I didn't hear about it when it happened. There was a lot of magic activity 28Apr1999. I wasn't on drugs, but it may have back-lashed into the school shooting. Yet the shooter is alive, so maybe he has a possible defense.
Drug related
I tried out a heavy dose of a new (different) drug called Risperdal on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 and was exercising my demons (magically beating the mob). That night, I stopped in at Bumpers in Burnsville to find mourning - that a patron, Howard Groves, had died at home earlier that day of a heart attack. I got the feeling they think I killed him. Month or two later, they even kicked me out of the bar for life cause they hate me. I rarely exercise my demons any more. I'm unclear if Howard was actually a demon (mob).
9/11 occurred while on huge meds. My first hair transplant scar (9/11 scars) formed that morning thanks to the work of a wonderful plastic surgeon. People think I did 9/11 too. People think I'm the devil, when in fact, I've got demons like James Randi, the mob, and mafia (George Bush comes to mind) setting me up as a false prophet.
Back-lash doesn't always happen. David Copperfield called me on 26Apr2005 to talk me out of my suit. When I declined, he proceeded to have his thugs (intense) try and end me for the next hour of so. I'm unsure if/what drugs I was on during that time (I believe none). Nothing back-lashed.
This was the result of the David Copperfield case...
(b) there is no known or recognized cause of action for usurpation of [Chris'] godly powers.
Unfortunately this is the case. Granting of godly powers by the Game of Life is quite random - the cause is unknown, the powers given vary in ability, and unfortunately, the judge felt that I didn't deserve any compensation for my wonderful powers. I hope this philosophy changes, or it will be tough to rule the world without any money. :) James Randi and his mob (my demons) are currently making trillions of dollars annually off my godly powers via magicians and electronic and medical technology - all conveniently hidden and/or excused. I deserve some compensation. The mob enjoy the good life, while beating Chris Roller down in his reject hole via conspiring psychiatrists, all while attempting to kill him occasionally, and desperately praying that the Game of Life doesn't let him surface to claim James Randi $million paranormal challenge, and exposing the biggest con the planet has ever witnessed, and officially/eventually inform the world of godly powers.
I emailed Randi in Aug of 2005, informing him of my evidence of the Copperfield case. That gave Randi every opportunity to change the contract to prevent me from winning the challenge. I believe the Game of Life is tying Randi's hands a bit, because over a year later, contact unchanged, I still see nothing in the challenge keeping my proof from earning me the $1 million.
This case should prove to be very interesting. Randi wants to fight this case. Ok. I will depose James Randi and I'm going to ask him about the email of March 21, 2005 and hits of 1999. Maybe Randi is how I find out about the hits of '99. I know it originated in part from South Florida. James thinks he's in control of what he says and does. Wouldn't that be something if the Game of Life makes Randi admit the March 21, 2005 hit or the hits of 1999 - it's called leak-through. Magic leak-through is another phenomenon! The court scene is already sick of Chris Roller plugging up the system with bizarre cases, but imagine the hundreds of lawsuits if I were to find out the companies involved in the hits of '99. Whew! Here's the irony. James knows he's busted. He knows I've won the challenge, but doesn't want to pay...drags this thing out, just to accidentally admit under oath he's committed a crime, and thus goes to jail. Now that would be funny! I'm finding the legal system very "real" when it comes to magic. Copperfield fessed up to godly powers via the court forum. What else will I find? I'm going to really test the leak-through by doing a paternity test of Celine Dion's 6 year old boy soon. We'll see. Imagine if that leaks-through! How's Randi going to defend immaculate conception? Paranormal will be a norm soon. Common sense would say to Randi, just pay the $1 mil and avoid any further legal ramifications of dealing with Chris Roller. I have found the Game of Life, in the name of entertainment, makes people do and say some very strange things.
Ostlund insists he knows the judge, and this case is going to be dropped. I've got to admit - I lost some sleep after hearing that remark. This is an example of saying something uncharacteristic, like the Game made him say it. Now I realize the mob is instilled throughout every major profession (mob told me this), especially the legal system (perhaps Ostlund - lawyers are said to be the devils advocate). But here's the deal...I don't care if Randi pays off the judge (no disrespect) for $10 million to try to contain this conspiracy against me. The Game of Life is in control, and I know it's working for me, and if needed, it will "recast" (www.mytrumanshow.com) actors to a different type to meet the needs of the Game. Actor recasting is another phenomenon.
LEGAL ANALYSIS
This challenge is about proving the existence of the paranormal. The Game of Life is paranormal. Hundred monkey phenomenon is paranormal, and godly powers are paranormal. I'm god/God, that's paranormal. I must have expressed a dozen paranormal events in this document that are all true, albeit difficult to prove. But I have hard proof... From David Copperfield case, he states...
(b) there is no known or recognized cause of action for usurpation of [Chris'] godly powers.
Copperfield has godly powers - that's paranormal. David Copperfield doesn't enter the challenge and collect the $1 million because he's part of the con and mob conspiracy against me. I am the source of those godly powers - I'm god - that's paranormal. Heck, I seem to be the acting liaison of the Game of Life, and thus I may be the almighty God. See Aff God&Plan&Heaven. Wait 'til the Christians hear about this! Oh, the anticipated love! I don't wish to prove that currently though - god and godly powers is good enough for this challenge.
Subject matter jurisdiction via diversity (different states), and this case is about winning $1 million, which is over $75,000.
Personal jurisdiction via minimum contacts. Randy gathers freaks from all over the world, who apply to his challenge. He has agents throughout each state, including MN, and throughout the world, to monitor, inspect, and employ challengers where appropriate. All this meets the minimum contacts requirement for personal jurisdiction.
All non-UCC contracts have an obligation of "good faith and fair dealing". I do not trust the moderator of the contract at JREF. That's why I need an official judge for this challenge.
(b) there is no known or recognized cause of action for usurpation of [Chris'] godly powers.
Not only does this statement mean that David Copperfield has godly powers, but he has my godly powers. That is as paranormal as it gets. The challenge asks for the "satisfactory observing conditions". Anyone can observe David's show to witness the paranormal and my wonderful powers. The answer states I have not met the conditions, but states no details for me to argue. As far as I can tell, I have met the conditions in an obligated "good faith and fair dealing" contract to satisfy the $1 million paranormal challenge.
CONCLUSION
I'm suing James Randi Educational Foundation for $1 million for proving that paranormal events are occurring on planet Earth by David Copperfield and thus satisfying the JREF Paranormal challenge.
Respectfully submitted,
Date: __25 Jan 2007____ _____s/_Christopher A. Roller__________
Christopher Roller (pro se)
13150 Harriet Ave. S #273
Burnsville, MN 55337
952.239.6410
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
