If that isn't the proposal, it SHOULD be the proposal. So let's say it is.

Right. The proposal illustrates how things look different after Eldred. Two years ago I would have poo-pooed it as idle on two counts: not only legislatively impossible (which it remains) but an obvious, flagrant violation of the takings clause (presuming the government isn’t actually going to pay to set the stuff free after 14 years.) But, as Eldred shows, what the “Economist” proposes would not be a taking.

How not?

The thing most of us didn’t realize before – thank you, Lessig and Eldred, for the lesson - is that copyright is, Constitutionally, a time-share affair. The creator gets it for a time; then the public gets it – ergo, has a right to it; ergo owns it; ergo owns intellectual property. (I take it this is not seriously in dispute by either side.) And property that you don’t come into for a period of time is not any less your property now than property you’ve got your hot hands on; it’s only less valuable now, on account of the wait. (If I order a book from Amazon, expecting it in a week or two, and Jeff Bezos decides it would be more economic to keep the book and my money, it is no legal defense of this tactic that the book never really was mine; so I am deprived of nothing I ever owned.)

Now if the government can take my (everyone’s) intellectual property without compensation – all that stuff I was going to own, in a year or two, but now will not – it can for sure take Disney’s intellectual property away any old time it feels the communistical urge. Eldred surely implies this.

Here’s a thought, then. Could congress set copyright terms at 14 months; or – I’m half-serious about this – 14 minutes? (This could be justified on the grounds that one should only have exclusive rights for the duration of 15 minutes of fame, minus a minute to give the copy-cat pack a head-start.)

I take it the answer is ‘yes’. Congress could repeal Bono tomorrow. If congress could repeal Bono tomorrow, returning us to 14 years, then it could repeal the 14 year term in favor of a yet shorter term. (Why not?)

Which would no doubt have come as a complete surprise to the non-communistically minded framers, who naively supposed they had hammered out the template for all future intellectual property ownership by private parties, like so: it shall be a time-share arrangement. Nope. Or rather, yes. But it isn’t time-share ownership; nobody owns the shared items except the government, otherwise it couldn’t modify the terms of the sharing with reference to no consideration but the ‘the progress of science and the useful arts’. (1.4 seconds of copyright protection, anyone?)

The government couldn’t put your business out of business tomorrow – taking away your store, your stock, so on and so forth – without compensation; but it could if your business makes its profits on ‘intellectual property’. Because none of that is, or can be, privately owned, so it can be disposed of at the government’s will.

Let’s make it more vivid: you spend a million today to buy the rights on some bit of intellectual property. You are calculating future profits on the basis of Bono. Poof. Tomorrow all gone. Congress changed the rules. You. Have. No. Case.

Turning the point around: if it really were the case that there were privately owned intellectual property, then it would be impossible for the government to expropriate it without compensation – let alone directly transfer it from private party to private party (which really ought to be clean out of the question); ergo, there must be no privately owned intellectual property . . . not anymore, that is. It was quietly nationalized with the first copyright extension. And the communist takeover of this sphere was legally confirmed by the Supremes, in 2002.

To sum up: one of the things that makes the United States different than, say, the Soviet Union, is that, in the United States, who owns what, and to what degree, is a function of the possibility of strenuously protected and legally hemmed-about private ownership, the inviolability of settled contracts, so forth; whereas in the Soviet Union, all valuable resources were allocated solely with reference to the government’s conception of what was best for ‘the progress of science and the useful arts’ (Marxism is a science, at least officially, so this covers everything.) And now, thanks to Eldred, that communist system has come to America and, in principle, now governs all intellectual ‘property’.

Of course, this isn’t actually an argument against Eldred. (Not without some additional premise like ‘private property is good and communism is bad’, which is vague and not legalistic enough to serve.) But it certainly seems fair for Lessig and his allies to rebut the charge of ‘communism’ by pointing out that the shoe is on the other foot. And if the shoe fits: wear it

Or maybe I'm just confused. Maybe I'll write Lessig a letter.

.Posted Monday February 24

Words, Words, Words
Staying with the theme of things Zoë can say, I thought I would amuse myself and assorted grandparents by listing all the words she knows: a window into the Weltanshauung of a 19-month-old. (That's pronounced "vindow", BTW.) Words Zoë can say:
shoe (most popular), mamma (no, actually this is most popular), dadda, baby (now replacing her earlier formulation "dedu"), "Ti" for Tena, though she has sort of a block on it for some reason, "Koko" for our friend Tomoko, Jay (her Korean friend), shirt, shorts, skirt (these last three sound suspiciously alike to the untrained ear), hat, "ga" for glasses, bra, ring, go, out, away, up, wet, dry, house, bath, bubbles, pool, towel, key, moon, sky, cloud, more, no, yeah (this makes me a little embarassed and I wish I said "yes" more often than I obviously do), book, doll, wipe (the baby wipes), hello, hi, ride, light, rice (these last four, again, sound quite similar and all start with "w"), soup, car, "ca" for carrot, apple, pear, grape (a little mangled), "nana" for banana, "mato" for tomato, cheese, bread, fruit, peas, strawberry ("stawbree"), papaya, juice, "wawa" for water, milk, "blibl" (just stick your tongue out while saying something and then bring it back in) for bottle, slide, "moomoo" (movie, such as the digital video of herself she likes to watch all day), bear, dog, cat, hippo (!), cup, "caw" for coffee, hot, cold, cool, warm, wow, ear, eye, mouth, teeth, toe, "bubbuh" (that's boobs to you), mole, tattoo, bus, car, "tata" for taxi, bye-bye, turtle (sort of), tall, big, and, finally, she can count to two (hey, you gotta start somewhere). Actually if you say "one" she'll say "two", but then when you say "three", she cheerfully offers "two!". I'm sure there are lots more words I'm not remembering. Isn't that cool? Tonight we enjoyed some tasty Indian food, and Zoë ate strawberries, mangosteen, rice, fried fish, and navrattan korma (mixed vegetables in creamy sauce.) Normal toddler food, you know...

Kites Are Fun
I'll round off all this cuteness before returning you to your regularly scheduled blog by saying that she loves to dance to Free Design, and you should too. They are an amazing, totally wusscore band that make the 5th Dimension sound scary and funky. Because it's a family band they have that weird vocal harmonics thing going on. I learned that their dad was a trumpet player and chief arranger for big band star Vaugn Monroe. I love Vaugn Monroe, and it totally fits, because he was the most white-bread and non-threatening crooner of all. ("When the lights go on again....all over the world....") The guy who made this nice website for Free Design is a little unclear on a few concepts, though, such as the meaning of the word "hit"

The golden sound of the Free Design was shown in a non-stop run of potential hits (Friendly Man, I Found Love, You Could Be Born Again etc) and a collection of gems dedicated to "very important people" (ie: children).

Despite the almost unbelievable lack of chart success they had keen followers.

That's really kind of sad, and the truth is that they fully deserved to be chart-toppers. I mean, Stoned Soul Picnic was a hit, and how bizarre and wussy is that song (I love it, of course)? "Surrey down, to the stoned soul picnic..."

The Free Design website also contains this gem of album liner notes-esque prose:

Their source was, of course, the beat and feel of rock´n´roll. "I like it," says Chris, "because it´s got a young thing to it. It´s a different thing today, a thing that´s being done by young people who are saying what they want to say."

I think there was one guy writing the liner notes for all bands in the sixties, some totally unhip guy in Buddy Holly glasses who only listened to jazz, and just made stuff up. "Ah, shit. Donovan. ummm, how about, 'it's the hip now sound of the now people of today.'" "Great! Do one more and then we'll take a break." "All right, what is this crap. Iron Butterfly? 'Paul, another nomad of the group, loves turtlenecks, bananas, and the fair sex.'"*
*Actual liner notes.

Right now I'm listening to Dylan's Ballad of Hollis Brown. Jesus, the hip now sound that the kids today are listening to is a total bummer.

Posted Saturday February 22
Today Zoë said her first three-word sentence, which was almost instantly eclipsed by her first four-word sentence. You might think we would be excited about this, and we are, in a way. The sentences were "baby go up?" and "baby book go bye-bye". Awww. What's not to like? I think you'll understand better if I tell you that both "baby" and "baby book" refer in this case to her US passport (with Singapore green card inside), that Daddy's "book" is wherever baby's is, and that they have both, quite unmistakeably, gone bye-bye. (The "up" thing was suggested to her by John's fruitless search at the top of the closet.)

In retrospect we are complete idiots for keeping our passports someplace she could reach (the top drawer of a small file cabinet) because I knew she was fascinated with them and even let her look at them sometimes (why oh why?). But she is never alone for all that long, especially not in the computer room, let's say a minute. So what did she do in that time? Apparently, she extracted both daddy's and baby's books from the drawer, taking care that the green cards didn't fall out, and then put them right in the kitchen trash. Gone in sixty seconds, yo. If she had put them in the office trash Tena would have seen them when she emptied it (there's never much in it, so its contents would have been well-displayed.). If she had put them anywhere else, well, we would have found them, wouldn't we? And what if I had seen her playing with them and moved them somewhere out of her reach, without remembering where, and it was sort of a stupid place, like, the freezer...well, then we would have found them. They were still there on Sunday. Arrrgh.

At first it seemed so unlikely that she could have done this that I thought maybe an Al-Qaida agent had been lurking around and took the opportunity to pounce and get some of that sweet sweet valid passport love. But today, seeing my interest in what had happened to "baby book" she happily volunteered that it had gone bye-bye. When I suggested it might have gone in the trash she got animated, mimed throwing something in the trash, and informed me that "baby book" had, in fact, been "gaga"--that's yucky to you and me. But I can't tell if she remembers anything like that or is just trying to be helpful--toddlers are very susceptible to suggestion. We're going to feel stupid at the US embassy.

At least I still have my passport, so they'll let us in the door, and we have various forms of identification, etc.etc. Hey, we can combine it with a trip to the Botanical Gardens! Maybe we'll eat Roti John at the Botanic Gardens hawker center, which has the best! This is going to rock! No, it's not. It's a complete waste of time and money and Roti John is only OK anyway and it gives you a hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach to be in a foreign country without a passport. We have to look on the bright side, though. We had been planning to go to Thailand this week (leaving today), but we cancelled the trip because it was too expensive and we thought we might need to spend the money on getting my nose re-set after Zoë broke it two weeks ago. So, you see, if Zoë hadn't broken my nose we could have been just about to leave for Thailand when we noticed the passports were missing! And if she hadn't broken my nose and then lost John's and her passport we could be on the beach at Koh Hong right now! Aw, crap.

Posted Friday February 21

Signs was very enjoyable, from the 'who let Jack Kirby design these crop circles?' crop circles to the Frank Miller inspired half-light, half-shadow 'your eyes are tiny bits of glinting mica'-eyes.

M. Night Shyamalan is really doing all right for himself in Hollywood; doesn't need any help from me; but his uncanny ability to transmute the straw of genre cliché into the gold of beauty and emotion is truly remarkable. And the thing with the endings. Again, again, again. (And anyone who doesn't love Unbreakable just doesn't love comic books, which probably isn't news to them.)

K-19: Widowmaker won, hands-down, the 'most likely NOT to make you enlist in the 1960's era soviet navy' pick of the week. Why did this movie somehow impress itself on me, at the time, as a Tom Clancy-type genre piece. Wrong. It was almost as good as Das Boot. And based on a true story. Poor bastards.

The thing I thought was Chinese turned out to be Korean: Musa, the Warrior.

Full disclosure: the first Korean movie I ever saw was back in 1992, Im Kwon Taek's The General's Son.

Best. Line. Ever. "I am an illiterate, and I have only my own two balls! Will you follow me?"

The answer was: Yes! And the rest is obscure history. (I suppose the line might just be a self-deprecating figure of speech, as in: 'Oh, it's just me and my two balls, having a beer.' 'Just dinner for three: my two balls and I.' What do I know of the Korean language? (Answer: I know how to say 'hello', 'thank you', 'I will pay cash'; also, I can count to eight.)

Second best line from The General's Son: "Your behavior drove me to Schopenhauerian pessimism." The context is really necessary for full appreciation, but perhaps it will clarify things in some small way if I remark that 95% of the movie is devoted to people kicking people in the head. This interlude - which was not even a reproach for an undeserved head-kick - was quite unexpected.

Right. Back to Musa, the Warrior. Set in a time when women were Chinese princesses, and Korean men were ten men, this movie features that incredibly hot chick from Crouching Tiger; also, a pair of flared nostrils wielding a wicked spear; also, a really compelling actor - one of those: 'I could watch your neither-handsome-nor-ugly faces all day' faces - as a tough archer seargent who could surely turn Legolas into a pin-cushion.

When you are watching Korean cinema, you expect the fight scenes to go on too long. Then you are actually surprised when they go on even more too long than you expected. I suppose it is one of those classic cinematography-recapitulates-geography type situations. The Koreans are a long-suffering people, sandwiched between the Chinese and the Japanese; but - honestly - these people are masochists and just keep taking punishment and taking punishment. And for some reason you don't even get to hug the girl (kissing is clean out) until you have sustained a fatal, sucking chestwound.

Belle and I really enjoyed the movie very much. It is, apparently, the most expensive Korean movie ever made. It really does measure up with the best on the grand scenery and cool armor and weapons scale. No massive battles, but distinctive fight choreography and filmography. Seven thumbs up.