[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

Wed Feb 14 00:58:36 UTC 2007

luke brandt wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  
>
>>The first clause in the quotation is remarkable for its ambiguity.  My 
>>first inclination was to read this as indicating that property is 
>>essential to the definition of culture, or that a society that does not 
>>believe in capital does not have a culture.  A more acceptable 
>>interpretation is that a culture does not exclude the existence of 
>>property.  In other words
>>    
>>
>>>A free culture is not a culture - without property
>>>
>>>A free culture is not - a culture without property
>>>      
>>>
>>Having artists be paid is acceptable in both circumstances.  In 
>>accounting terms, property is an asset on the balance sheet; getting 
>>paid belongs in the revenue portion of the financial statements.
>>    
>>
>Hi, and thanks for your thoughts. In clarifying the quote how do you
>think you should take into account the second sentence - seemingly the
>counterpoint and twin of the first in the quotation, which is in
>essence: "A culture without property ... is anarchy, not freedom."  - luke
>
One really needs to look at that second sentence in its entirety: "A 
culture
without property, or in which creators can't get paid is anarchy, not 
freedom. ..."

Does payment imply property?  Is that second premise an explanation or 
an alternative.  If I really wanted to emphasize grammatically fine 
points I would suggest that in order to be an explanation a comma would 
be required after "paid".  I hesitate to cast this into the areana of 
capitalist (property) versus Marxist (payment) dialectic.  There is a 
certain idealist thread in Marxism that forsees an anarchic workers' 
paradise; some doctrinnaire views of libertarianism might get us there 
too.  That aside, I can see neither the capitalists nor the Marxists 
promoting anarchy.  Wikinomics is in its infancy, and in that context it 
is perfectly understandable that Lessig would use the jargon of the 
society around him. 

There are a lot of grammatically negative words in the Lessig quote, and 
I wonder if he would have done better to express things in more positive 
terms.  Even "free" has a basis in an absence.

One of the consequences of living in a paradigm shift is the destruction 
of presumptions.  That curse of interesting times escapes its box, and 
makes itself felt where it was not expected. 

The fact is that there are a lot of people providing a lot of 
intellectual effort for nothing other than the personal satisfaction of 
doing a good job.  They need to put food on the table as much as anybody 
else. There is a profound disconnect between work and compensation for 
that work.  The marketting and manufacturing structures that supported 
the enterprises that have heretofore been highly profitable are no 
longer needed, casting aside an army of Willy Lomans.

Most of us who have an interest in Wikipedia and this mailing list also 
have an interest in free access to knowledge.  We are highly critical of 
the notion of intellectual property, particularly copyright.  Property, 
as we traditionally define, it generates revenue solely on the basis of 
its own existence.  Is that the kind of property that Lessig considers 
to be the antidote to anarchy.  In summary I agree with him in relation 
to creators being paid, but have serious reservations in relation to 
property.

Ec