[Air-L] public private

[Conor Schaefer]

My response.

Ed Lamoureux wrote:
>
> excuse me. "Publishing" something does NOT remove intellectual  
> property rights. In fact, those rights first become attached to the  
> ideas when they are "published" (put into form). When I play a song  
> I've written on the street corner, or in a bar, or at a concert, I'm  
> "publishing" it "in public." Doing so does not give ANYONE permission  
> to use it without my permission. "Fair use" allows the use of very  
> small portions of it for teaching or research, but only under certain  
> conditions. And the Teach Act modifies those allowed uses even  
> further in the case of online educational purposes.
>   
Hm, interesting. It's more of a philosophical issue to me than a legal 
one, the answer to whether street performance of a piece grants another 
the right to play it. This is especially pertinent in your analogy to 
the net, because of the compartmentalization of spaces. For instance, 
while you as a street performer might take issue with my playing your 
song on the corner opposite you, what if I'm doing it on the other side 
of town? What if on another continent? While word might eventually reach 
your ears of this, don't assume that you could use a search engine to 
find work you made--especially if it's multimedia, an area in which the 
search industry is trying desperately to improve performance.

I think that in any discussion of digital media, we must expect at least 
a few people on this list to espouse nontraditional beliefs on the 
nature of IP and the rights affiliated with them.
>
> I think that the notion that the internet is a public space is  
> contestable. I would argue that the network of computers, routers,  
> wires and other technological stuff are almost ALL privately owned  
> entities . . . sort of like a great land filled with connected  
> malls . . . a mall is not a public space at all... it's private land  
> often FILLED with people doing stuff in the presence of others. But  
> the internet is not at all like public lands (city, county, state,  
> federally owned public space).
>
>   
A good deal of the internet is indeed public. I feel this matter was 
adequately discussed in the recent thread about consent for a 
dissertation, but I'll recap and say that if information requires no 
registration with the website hosting it, then it can be considered 
public. I agree wholeheartedly with this. If you are chatting in a cafe, 
you need to understand that what you say can be heard by those around 
you. Obfuscating verbal transmissions by sitting in a car with the music 
on might help, but I won't say it's an airtight recourse.

More to the point, the concourse of a mall is by my definition 
completely public. It seems to me that you're focusing more on the legal 
issue of who provides the funding for the construction and maintenance 
of the space; because a mall is composed primarily of private entities, 
it is therefore commercial/private rather than "public." I disagree, and 
I won't even get into the argument that the tax breaks given in order to 
facilitate the erection of commercial institutions could possibly 
constitute public involvement and thereby throw a wrench in the works of 
your classification. Rather, I believe that because it's "FILLED with 
people doing stuff in the presence of others" AND because it requires no 
"log in" such as an admission price. It only requires the commercial 
capital necessary to navigate the system, such as a car and roadway (and 
gasoline). Go to your "public" library and all the analogous materials 
are provided to you.
> Further, even if there is a "public feel" to internet published  
> stuff, and putting aside for a moment the implications of the DMCA,  
> the Teach Act, and copyright law (not to mention a ton state laws  
> concerning "rights of publicity and privacy"), I reject the notion  
> that even bloggers who publish stuff are giving informed consent to  
> become research subjects.
>
>   
This is perhaps an incendiary statement, but I think that to some 
degree, human beings living their lives need to understand that they 
will inevitably become statistics. That's participating in research, is 
it not? Use a credit card, vote, watch TV, pay your electric bill, gas 
up your car... all this is logged and assessed somewhere, to some degree.
> Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D.
> Associate Professor, Multimedia Program
> and Department of Communication
> Co-Director, New Media Center
> 1501 W. Bradley
> Bradley University
> Peoria IL  61625
> 309-677-2378
> <http://slane.bradley.edu/com/faculty/lamoureux/website2/index.html>
> <http://gcc.bradley.edu/mm/>
> AIM/IM & skype: dredleelam
> Second Life: Professor Beliveau
>
>
>
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