I've been considering forwarding this all day and finally gave in:) Begin forwarded message:
From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> Date: Mon Apr 29, 2002 02:45:11 PM US/Eastern To: cyber-rights@cpsr.org, farber@cis.upenn.edu Subject: Silent Theft: Commercial Exploitation of the Commons
(Forwarded from Commercialism Alert list, commercial-alert@lists.essential.org)
-------- Original Message -------- Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 11:28:12 -0700 From: Gary Ruskin <gary@commercialalert.org>
Commercial Alert April 29, 2002
David Bollier has just written an excellent book on the enclosure and commercial exploitation of the commons, titled Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of our Common Wealth <http://www.silenttheft.com>.
The book describes the broad scope of the commons -- such as the environment, natural resources, our culture, genetic material, public spaces, government research -- and the corporate looting of it.
"We are living in the midst of a massive business-led enclosure movement that hides itself in plain sight," Bollier writes. Silent Theft's great contribution is to collect and distill material from dozens of fields of inquiry to make this enclosure movement visible and easily understood.
The book is especially strong on corporate plunder of intellectual property, the Internet commons, and the privatization of public knowledge and federal drug and information resources. But it also has useful chapters on the commercialization of culture and public spaces (including schools), and the academic commons, among many other topics.
Silent Theft is important history. It will help environmental, anti-commercialism and consumer activists to understand how their work fits into the broader pattern of the assault on the commons. It is rich with analogies we can use in efforts to protect different kinds of commons.
But Silent Theft is no mere anti-corporate rant. It argues persuasively how the shrinkage of the commons hurts business, especially through the concentration of market power and the stifling of innovation in computer software, on the Internet, and in science, generally.
If we are to stop the commercialization of nearly everything, we first need to know what the commons is, what we have lost, and how we lost it. Silent Theft is a great place to start.
<---->
Following is an old English folk poem, circa 1764, reprinted from Silent Theft:
They hang the man and flog the woman That steal the goose from off the common, But let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone When we take things we do not own But leaves the lords and ladies fine Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don't escape If they conspire the law to break; This must be so but they endure Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common' And geese will still a common lack Till they go and steal it back.
<----->
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