"common sense revolts at the idea"
Phil Greenspun has a funny (as in sad) story about the market rising because the public domain is being transferred to corporations. The hook is (of course) the Sonny Bono Act (Free Culture!), but then Phil tells this bizarre story about how Disney World has apparently succeeded in getting the airspace above Disney World assigned to it. As Phil writes,
>Ever since the dawn of aviation it has been held that airspace belongs to the
>public and is to be regulated for the benefit of all by the FAA. This is what, for
>example, prevents the owner of a farm in Missouri from demanding that Delta
>Airlines pay him a tax every time they fly over his farm.
But there is a relevant pre-history here that is useful to remember. Before "the dawn of aviation," in fact, the law was that the owner of a bit of land owned not just the land, but all the land to center of the earth, and, as Blackstone put it, "to an indefinite extent, upwards." (See pg 18 here).
This, of course, created a problem once the history of aviation was born. For obviously, if I own all the space above my land, then companies like United are just napsterizing my property as they fly above my land.
The Supreme Court finally resolved this matter in 1946. The Causby's, North Carolina farmers, complained because military aircraft were causing their chickens to fly in panic to their death as they smashed into the walls. The Causby's claimed "trespass" and demanded the military stop flying over their land.
The Supreme Court rejected the argument that airplanes trespass. As Justice Douglas wrote for the Court,
>[The] doctrine has no place in the modern world. The air is a public highway,
>as Congress has declared. Were that not true, every transcontinental flight
>would subject the operator to countless trespass suits. Common sense revolts
>at the idea. To recognize such private claims to the airspace would clog these
>highways, seriously interfere with their control and development in the public
>interest, and transfer into private ownership that to which only the public has
> a just claim.
"Common sense revolts at the idea."
Where's a good "common sense revolt[]" when you need it?
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Comments (8)
Why is it okay for the military and large US airlines to use a Commons but ordinary Joe Bloggs isn't allowed the benefit of a decent Commons in terms of creative and scientific work? Because that's the US government for you.
Sorry, just an angry Future of Ideas (top marks!) reader babbling...
Unfortunately, "common sense" runs in the other direction. Most non-professionals I know have a "common sense" intuition that if one creates a work, one should have indefinite complete control over those works. They also tend to believe profitable corporations should have the same rights.
There are two battles here: the legal one and the social one. If you lose the social one, the legal one won't matter because people will think it is not equitable for Disney to lose Mickey Mouse.
John (or anyone else who would know, for that matter).
I've had such a debate with such a friend recently, who thoroughly believed that the "creator" of a work should have total and indefinite rights to their intellectual creation. I was trying to find a good argument against that position. However, "common good" and "social contract" appeared to be "socialist" positions to their point of view.
How would you convince them that the present situation, and it's direction, is actually pretty anti-american and anti-capitalist? I believe arguments that would show this irrevocably, would be the ones to convince most "non-professionals".
Actually, the sky is a great example of a commons where the average Joe has a leg up on the Commercial big boys. By law, unpowered aircraft always have the right-of-way in the sky, and must be navigated around by other craft. Remember this the next time you're sky diving (sky divers are classified as unpowered aircraft) and hit a jet. You've got a great lawsuit on your hands.
-kd
That is considering you don't get sucked in to the engine and turned in to hamburger meat with a side serving of shredded parachute (even suitable for vegetarians).
Anonymous (please put your name in the form when you comment) wrote:
> [a friend] thoroughly believed that the “creator” of a work
> should have total and indefinite rights to their intellectual
> creation. I was trying to find a good argument against that
> position. However, “common good” and “social contract”
> appeared to be “socialist” positions to their point of view.
Try reductio ad absurdum.
Ask them for some examples of creative works, ones that they believe the "creator" should own forever. Then demonstrate that those works are actually based, to a great degree, on *existing ideas* that the "creator" had access to. A few ideas the "creator" might have had to license from other copyright holders; but the vast body of ideas that underpin the work are based on public domain works.
Without the public domain, *nobody can create any new work* without paying *every single copyright holder* in the chain, to the beginning of time.
Hope that helps.
Airspace is a good example of why arguing about "commons" versus "property rights" is a bad idea. Turns out that there is a well-developed market in airspace rights for buildings. At the same time, planes fly freely within national airspaces, the FAA provides views on airport construction, and judges struggle to find a rational basis for answering the question of what is the sky and where it begins. Generally, the established rule for free (domestic) flight today is 500 feet of altitude, established based on flight characteristics of bi-planes in the late 1920s. For discussion and references, see pp. 26-28 of "A Desperate Case under the Commerce Clause: Federal Jurisdiction over All Radio Use", available at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=352361
Arguing about whether persons should have the right to own air just increases the atmospheric temperature and contributes to global warming.
Forget the db for serving pages, serialize the entries out into static html using Velocity and be done. Let Apache handle the volume and Roller do the editing. You can even add in an FTP server option like Blogger, and get some of static pages off the site as well. We're talking a Quartz task to serialize and maybe an evening's effort or your part for integration.
I think I suggested its truly
, :)Great content to find another.