[free-sklyarov] Compromise? Balance?

[Eric C. Grimm]

In response to remarks of John O. (reprinted below):

I may be simplifying things a little more than necessary, but from an
historical perspective, I've been thinking along these lines  (which I
invite you to consider) --

In the past -- actually, for hundreds of years -- most people toiled on
land. For the most part, that land belonged to somebody else.  The owners of
land belonged to a different class and lived different lives than those who
toiled on land.

In time, with the rise of a merchant class, the emergence of democratic
institutions -- and most importantly, following (sometimes violent)
revolutions in politics, publishing and thought, the medieval system was
replaced.

Sometime later, with the advent of the industrial revolution, most people
came to toil upon and with machinery and capital -- the means of production.
The means of production belonged to somebody else.  The owners of the means
of production belonged to a different class and lived different lives than
those who toiled upon the means of production.

By the time the Twentieth Century arrived, widespread revolution by labor
was considered a real threat and a matter of concern not only in Europe, but
here in the United States as well.  And there certainly were good reasons in
all industrial countries throughout the Twentieth Century (or at least up
until the mid-1990s) to make sure that reforms remained in place that
resulted in a more democratic distribution of output than might exist in the
absence of such reforms.   At least comparing 1980 with 1880, ownership of
capital certianly was more widespread, as was wealth and general welfare in
industrial countries.

In the last two decades -- and particularly so in the last half-decade -- we
have been embarking upon what has come to be known as the "information
revolution."   Today, the majority of workers in advanced economies have
come to be what is known as "knowledge workers."  Interestingly, "knowledge
workers" are not organized in the same way as their industrial counterparts
and -- while some particularly specialized knowlege workers can earn
remarkably good livings for themselves (e.g., imagine how much Bruce Keller,
the lawyer who argued the Tasini case before the Supreme Court on behalf of
content industries, makes  (and, BTW, for several years now, Keller and his
law partners have been waging a very elegant and subtle campaign to make
copyrights and trademarks seem more "property-like" in the minds of
legislators, the public, and judges, through such devices as financing the
patriotic restoration of the Statue of Liberty through the recognition of
special licensing rights, or granting the Olympics special super-trademark
rights)) so long as those "special" knowlege workers cater and pledge
loyalty to certain political agendas -- knowledge workers on the whole live
much less secure lives than did industrial workers in the 1950s and 1960s.

Observing the trends as the "information revolution" accelerates, I cannot
help but ask:  Is history repeating itself?

At least to me, it seems clear enough that very aggressive and well-financed
moves are afoot and have been for some time to create classes of
"information haves" and "information have-nots" -- by which I do not mean
the so-called "digital divide" of information access, which separates the
middle class from the poor, but rather a class division between "information
haves" who can charge rent, and "information have-nots" who must pay rent.

Are we racing toward a world populated with a large proletariat of
"information serfs," ruled by a small over-class of "information royalty,"
who are assisted in their hegemony by an intermediate class of
knowledge-rule enforcers who pledge fealty to the ruling class -- or are we
already there?

Eric Grimm

On Saturday 28 July 2001 13:32, Jon O . wrote:

> On 28-Jul-2001, James S. Huggins (Free Sklyarov) wrote:
> > It also says:
> > "As far as I know there have been very few complaints from intellectual
> > property holders," Coble, the chief sponsor of the DMCA, said in an
> > interview Tuesday.
> >
> > No duh!!!
>
> Notice that the IP holders are now the corporations, not the people...
>
> They are attempting to obtain and control our knowledge. That is why
> "First Rights" on publishing are vanishing fast.
>