Remora

We've all seen thieves, in movies, confer, engage, succeed, and then ironically flame out. The Thomas Crown Affair. Sexy Beast.To Catch a Thief. Rikki. We've all seen the movie in which the older, experienced thief engineers the heist of a lifetime, the impossible steal. The maximum flash plan, the camera at his glamorous or weary heel, here he is, coordinating his greedy but colorful crew, their various prison nourished talents. We all know that the heist itself will form around moments of near discovery, the cop who knocks on the door, the non-descript, whistling museum guard making an unexpected round. From Hollywood bandits lets segue to Hollywood banditry, because we can see the movie leap off the screen this week in Washington D.C. The script calls for boosting the commons, as unguarded as any lamely secured art treasure. Like Egyptian grave robbers in the hungrier dynasties, these thieves of the common have already made their depredations into a growth industry, and emptied out many of our monuments. Unlike Egyptian grave robbers, though, the dynamic is just the opposite: take living treasure and steal it for the tomb. The vaults of the record industries, the film industries, the publishing industries. Target is the copy right law. Like all intellectual property laws, copy right law was originally set up to guarantee a monopoly for that length of time necessary to allow the creator of an object -- originally the creator of a book -- to benefit from it. It was not a grant of property. And nothing was to be construed, from copy right, that impeded the fair use of the book for, say, parody. The age of reasonable use is over. Right now, a tedious committee hearing, lead by the Senator from Disney, Ernest Hollings, is showcasing Hollywood's scavenger hunt for spoils from the Net. Here's the NYT story about the latest Mission Impossible: Stealing your brain:

"Senator Ernest F. Hollings, the South Carolina Democrat who is the committee's chairman, called the hearing because of concerns in Congress about the slow adoption of digital television and broadband Internet connections. One reason that has often been cited for the faltering technology is the lack of mainstream entertainment to be found on it.

But until strong anti-piracy measures are in place, Mr. Eisner and others in his business have argued, the movie industry has little incentive to release its library of films in digital form.

In ongoing discussions with the technology and consumer electronics industry, the Hollywood studios have been promoting a project that would embed a "flag," or watermark in every piece of digital video content."

Computers, digital video recorders and other devices would then be designed to play the material only if they detected the presence of the markers."

And what does the ever pliant Hollings propose?

"The senators on the committee appeared quite receptive to that idea. Senator Hollings has circulated a draft of a proposed bill that would require computer and device makers to install anti-copying technology designated by the government if the companies cannot arrive at a standard on their own. "

Is this incredible or what? Yes, in a time when the Heimat is threatened by who knows who, we have to start getting pre-emptive -- so we pre-empt the crime before it happens. Only kidding! They aren't going to be locking Enron execs and politicians in jail before they're caught doing something -- the more's the pity. No, we have to pre-empt anything that threatens Disney Uber Alles. This is the kind of legislation that is cake to Hollings sponsors. Imagine the outcry if this venal crime against the intellect were translated into another venue. Imagine the Guv proposing to put little devises in your car to keep you from speeding. Cardiac arrest would spread from Detroit outward, and we'd see that legislation whisked away in a heartbeat. Hollywood, ah, that is a different story. If Hollywood had had its say, there would be no VCR in your home entertainment center, citoyen. Its usurpation of your rights is in line with its usual greedy mindset. But this time, the environment is much worse.

Limited Inc interviewed Larry Lessig last week. The story is in the Chronicle http://www.auschron.com/. Lessig's last book, The Future of Ideas, should be read by anybody who cares about the Net. In it, Lessig talks about the innovation commons. Let me quote from the Chronicle:

"AC: There's a phrase, "tragedy of the commons," which you discuss in Freedom of Ideas. Could you explain that?

LL: The idea is that if some resource is left open to the public, individuals will maximize their use of it until it is used up. So we have to control our access to it. This isn't true, however, of all commons. Take the English language. Because you speak it doesn't mean you take those words from somebody else. The Internet is an "innovation commons." Everyone is free to modify and adapt things on the Net, and anybody can get access to those innovations, because there isn't a limit to growth. "

Lessig claims (in Future of Ideas -- read that book!), and Limited Inc gives this claim a lot of credit, that the division between the State and Private Enterprise mistakenly categorizes a whole division of network goods, like bandwidth and code. I'd probably add genes and tissues. These goods are open source goods -- they can be exploited by all, modified by all, passively received by all, because it is in the nature of such goods to be indefinitely available.

But these goods are being contractualized, citoyens! even as we sleep. Sleep is easy, given the maunderings of such as Hollings, but sleep is dangerous. Remember the fuss, last year, about embryo stem cell research? The fuss was about whether the government would fund it. The fuss should have been about who owns it -- for, amazingly, stem cell "lines" have been patented. A story in Darwin magazine last summer correctly points out how crazy our bloated patent system has gotten:

"...the University of Wisconsin, which was awarded the patent on the human embryonic stem cell this past March, now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of having more power than it can handle�or at least handle gracefully.

The human stem cell patent is a hot potato, because while the science described within offers hope, the patent itself grants the power to quash that hope. It doesn�t help matters that the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), an independent not-for-profit corporation that manages patents for the university, has already granted many stem cell rights to Geron, a California biotech company that helped to fund the research. Today, anyone hoping to use the cells for research in this country may also have to come to terms not only with the university, but also with Geron, a for-profit player with a keen incentive to discourage competition."

Limited Inc's faithful readers will remember that back in August, when we started this insane enterprise, we began by attacking the idea that the right/left divide is defined by an attitude towards the state. No, we said, it is defined by an attitude towards contract -- a much different thing. So that the right wants the state to remove itself from, say, allocating resources, but intrude itself into enforcing private monopoly power. When the sphere of everyday life is invaded by state power on behalf of the state, freedom necessarily dwindles to zero. But the same is true when the sphere of everyday life becomes completely contractualized. Private power than uses the state to abridge freedom, heading us to that same zero horizon. Time to wake up, and hang a few patent officials from the streetlamps.