Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth

Book Description

Until a 1998 federal court decision, a Minnesota publisher claimed a monopoly on access to all federal court decisions. A Texas company recently filed a patent on a kind of rice grown in India for centuries. Other businesses now claim ownership of mathematical algorithms embedded in software, valuable public lands acquired for five dollars an acre, and icebergs that they plan to transport and sell as fresh water.
In Silent Theft, David Bollier argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we collectively own-publicly funded medical breakthroughs, software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often, however, our government turns a blind eye-or sometimes helps give away our assets.
Amazingly, the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed because we have lost our ability to see the commons. Spooling out one outrageous story after another, Bollier skillfully weaves together debates about the Internet, the environment, biotechnology, and the communications revolution. His fresh and compelling critique illuminates a rarely explored landscape in our political and cultural life.
Crisp and revelatory, Silent Theft is a bold attempt to develop a new language of the commons and, in the face of a market order that knows no bounds, to outline an ambitious new project for reclaiming our common wealth.

Customer Reviews:

Nothing new here.......2003-02-16

Bollier does a credible hob outlining the issues surrounding the theft of the public commons. Many of the issues he highlights are unbelievable. Just thinking about how much of the public commons are being given away is truly astounding (the mining act of 1872 is one example that has always bugged me. A pretty good deal to lock up mineral rights for a few dollars an acre.)

However, Bollier comes up short in his recommendations. He outlines a few suggestions as to how to stop the "silent theft", however, many of his ideas will require a quantum change in how business operates. There is no way Congress will agree to any of them. I would loved to have seen him address how to jump that obstacle.

Highly Useful.......2002-12-08

Bollier has written a very useful little book, of particular interest to liberals, Greens, and Libertarians, as well as the broader public. The book's thesis holds that the 'commons' -- understood as our collectively owned assets, (natural resources being one example) -- are under steady threat of enclosure (privatization) by an increasingly aggressive commercial sphere in search of expanding profits. His use of the more archaic terms 'commons' and 'enclosure' to describe the process is a shrewd one, connecting current encroachments to those more infamous enclosure laws of time past. Despite appearances, this is not an abstract bookish issue. Daily, the public faces such benchmark symptoms as depleted public resources, brand-name idolatry, open spaces overwhelmed by advertising, and threats to an unfettered internet. Ironically, what is disappearing, as Bollier points out, are those very public and personal places that provide a market economy with the societal wherewithall it needs to reproduce itself. Inasmuch as the market has its own parochial definition of rationality -- one that has increasingly become the public standard -- such commons are too often unable to justify themselves and thus are contracted and sold, disappearing at an alarming rate. Government's role in aiding and abetting these enclosures is also detailed, and while the book is severely critical of market myopia, it does not call for their elimination, but for an intelligent circumscription.

Traditionally, liberals have defended the public sphere. This work should help provide some backbone for rediscovering the importance of that commitment. It is a call to arms for those who understand the long-term significance of what the author calls the "Gift Economy", i.e. a free exchange among parties, as exemplified in the conditions leading to the explosive growth of the internet. Greens should like the emphasis on community-based solutions, while Libertarians should feel challenged to justify their paradigm, given the sociological priority of gift economies. Bollier's style makes for easy reading, along with a helpful bibliography. The book is neither weighty nor deep, but it does maintain a steady focus and serves as a useful compendium for understanding the rapidly shrinking public domain, and what we are losing in the process.

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classy piece

A case for the immanent rationality of private law

A Uniquely Important Work

A good stuff for a poor theory

The Idea of Private Law
Ernest J. Weinrib
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Philosophical Foundations of Tort Law

ASIN: 0674442121

Book Description

Private law is a familiar and pervasive phenomenon. It applies our deepest intuitions about personal responsibility and justice to the property we own and use, to the injuries we inflict or avoid, and to the contracts which we make or break. The Idea of Private Law offers a new way of understanding this phenomenon. Rejecting the functionalism popular among legal scholars, Ernest Weinrib advances the provocative idea that private law is an autonomous and noninstrumental moral practice, with its own structure and rationality. Weinrib draws on Kant and Aristotle to set out a formalist approach to private law that repudiates the identification of law with politics or economics. Weinrib argues that private law is to be understood not as a mechanism for promoting efficiency but as a juridical enterprise in which coherent public reason elaborates the norms implicit in the parties' interaction. The book combines philosophical exposition and legal analysis, and pays special attention to issues of tort law.

Private law, Weinrib tells us, embodies a special morality that links the doer and the sufferer of harm. Weinrib elucidates the standpoint internal to this morality, in opposition to functionalists, who view private law as an instrument in the service of external and independently justifiable goals. After establishing the inadequacy of functionalist approaches, Weinrib traces the implications of the formalism he proposes for our ideas of the structure, coherence, and normative grounding of private law. Furthermore, the author shows how this formalism manifests itself in the leading doctrines of private law liability. Finally, he describes the public but nonpolitical role of the courts in articulating the special morality of private law.

Customer Reviews:

classy piece.......2006-10-03

Weinrib gives an elegant model for corrective justice in tort--a tight, orthodox answer to the pesky posnerists. I suggest you read it with Kant's "philosophy of right" and a nice cup of hot chocolate.

A case for the immanent rationality of private law.......2001-02-28

This brilliant volume is one of the single most important works on legal philosophy written in recent years.

A grand synthesis of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel with undertones of Oakeshott, it's not easy to summarize. But here's a short (and inadequate) statement of Weinrib's thesis: private law is an immanently rational process of implementing corrective justice according to internal standards that cannot be reduced to something outside of the law itself; its aim is to set right, insofar as possible, the relationship between the doer and the sufferer of a harm.

The astute reader will already have noticed that Weinrib is at odds with "law and economics" -- and, sure enough, his short critiques of that field are devastatingly on target. The reviewer below who thinks Weinrib has ignored everything since Coase must not have been reading very carefully: in one sense, at least, Weinrib is concerned precisely to _rescue_ private law from the law-and-econ crowd, as well as from any other law-and-anything crowd who insists that law must be understood in terms of, and indeed reduced to, something else. His major claim is that it can't be.

My own view, at least, is that Weinrib is entirely right on his main point: i.e., that private law has internal standards that can't be reduced to something external. In particular, private law seeks corrective justice and not "economic efficiency," at least insofar as the latter is understood as the maximization of total "wealth" at the possible expense of what would ordinarily be called justice. (And it certainly has no truck with the sort of mathematically-ratified injustice known to the world as "Kaldor-Hicks efficiency.")

Weinrib's discussion of the famous Hand formula and his comparisons of U.S. with British common law on this topic are just wonderful. Between his theoretical work and Gary Schwartz's empirical analysis -- not to mention the criticisms of other writers like Richard Wright and Ronald Dworkin -- the Posner gang really should lie down and not get up again.

However, as much as my philosophical sympathies are with Weinrib, I must disagree with a point or two. I'll take his treatment of negligence in tort law as my source of examples, since I just finished rereading that chapter last night.

I am not, for example, overwhelmed by his discussion of the famous Palsgraf case. Weinrib takes J. Cardozo's side in this case and castigates J. Andrews's dissent for somehow missing the point of tort law. But even if this were true (and I don't think it is), what, exactly, would it show? That Andrews was just wrong? Or that tort law's immanent standards (on Weinrib's account thereof) are insufficient to deal with some cases with which tort law really ought to deal?

If we can even sensibly ask this question -- and surely we can -- then it is not enough to insist on tort law's internal standards; those standards themselves may in turn require justification in terms of whatever it is that tort law _is_ founded on. (Not "reduction to," but "justification in terms of." I am not sure Weinrib always distinguishes these as carefully as he might.) True, Weinrib does maintain that private law is founded on the principles of corrective justice (and, by implication, that these principles are rationally apprehended). But he sometimes writes as though it just floats in a vacuum somewhere, blessedly free of commerce with any other human activities at which we might otherwise have to look in order to determine exactly what _is_ just under specific circumstances. (This is one of those Oakeshott-like undertones I mentioned. In my view Oakeshott, too, tended to overstate the degree to which any "mode of experience" can be isolated from the rest.)

Moreover, some of Weinrib's arguments on specific points seem hard to tie in to his main thesis. For example, he opposes the use of "probabilistic causation" in tort law on the grounds that tort law deals only with normative harms, not with the "mere" increased risk of normative harms. But the argument is not forthcoming that placing someone at significantly increased risk is not _also_ a normative harm in its own right.

And some such argument is badly needed, since knowledge that e.g. one has been subjected to an increased risk of cancer does seem to involve positive harm already even if one hasn't developed cancer yet. It is at least arguable that one has been harmed by one's present worry and distress (not to mention the relevant medical expenses involved in checking to make sure one _doesn't_ have cancer).

If so, then Weinrib's own regime can take account of "probabilistic causation" very easily, and indeed should do so rather than reject it outright. I agree with Weinrib (contra some other recent writers) that tort law ought not to throw out the concept of "causation" entirely; I'm just not persuaded that this point takes him as far as he seems to want to go. It appears to me that his theoretical foundations could be invoked as easily to justify as to eliminate some of the innovations he might prefer to dispose of.

What is most helpful in this volume, then, is Weinrib's careful insistence that private law _is_ immanently rational and possesses coherent internal standards that are not reducible to something in some other field. But what seems to be missing is an account of why private law has just exactly those internal standards Weinrib says it has, and why it shouldn't recognize any others even if it can be shown that it can do so coherently.

At any rate, Weinrib's work is brilliant from beginning to end. My comparatively minor disagreements with particular points and sub-points should not obscure my major agreements with much of his overall approach.

A Uniquely Important Work.......1999-07-06

I am no fan of legal formalism as such. Nevertheless, I think this book is the most sophisticated account of legal formalism in the twentieth century. Weinrib's synthesis of Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant and Hegel is brilliant. A very exciting and provocative work of original scholarship.

A good stuff for a poor theory.......1998-09-03

This book gathers a good amount of scholarship to purport the idea that the governing principles underlying private law doctrines are still the old principles of Aristotelian commutative and corrective justice. In so doing the author does not take into proper account the teachings of the last 40 years studies in Law and Economics showing how the issue of distributing a private cost cannot be handled in terms of the old corrective justice. Thus the book provides a foundation for private law which to-day is peculiarly outdated.

Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life

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Review of Braid of Feathers

Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life
Frank Pommersheim
Manufacturer: Univ of California Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0520088573

Book Description

In this ambitious and moving book, Frank Pommersheim, who lived and worked on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation for ten years, challenges the dominant legal history of American Indians and their tribesa history that concedes far too much power to the laws and courts of the "conqueror." Writing from the perspective of the reservation and contemporary Indian life, Pommersheim makes an urgent call for the advancement of tribal sovereignty and of tribal court systems that are based on Indian culture and values. Taking as its starting point the cultural, spiritual, and physical nature of the reservation, Braid of Feathers goes on to trace the development of Indian law from the 1770s to the present. Pommersheim considers the meaning of justice from the indigenous point of view. He offers a trenchant analysis of the tribal courts, stressing the importance of language, narrative, and story. He concludes by offering a "geography of hope,"one that lies in the West, where Native Americans control a significant amount of natural resources, and where a new ethic of development and preservation is emerging within the dominant society. Pommersheim challenges both Indians and non-Indians to forge an alliance at the local level based on respect and reciprocityto create solidarity, not undo difference.

Customer Reviews:

Review of Braid of Feathers.......2000-08-02

I like thin books with thick subject matter. I also like book titles that herald the contents. This book does both. In an essay of 200 pages, Frank Pommersheim, a Lakota tribal judge, artfully braids together the variegated feathers of tribal sovereignty. Experience, Culture, History, Language, Politics, and Law, not just Acts of Congress (treaties, statutes), decisions of the United States Supreme Court, and executive action (orders and regulations) shape, limit, and ultimately enhance or diminish tribal sovereignty. The author, sometimes poetically, sometimes polemically, but always pointedly argues that tribal courts are the fundamental institution of legitimate, authentic tribal self-determination.

The Idea of Private Law.(Brief Article): An article from: The Review of Metaphysics

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The Idea of Private Law.(Brief Article): An article from: The Review of Metaphysics
C.B. Gray
Manufacturer: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on September 1, 1996. The length of the article is 438 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Idea of Private Law.(Brief Article)
Author: C.B. Gray
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 1996
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: v50 Issue: n1 Page: p194(2)

Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article

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Private investment for Social Security a bad idea. (Perspective).(Brief Article)(Column): An article from: Mississippi Business Journal

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Private investment for Social Security a bad idea. (Perspective).(Brief Article)(Column): An article from: Mississippi Business Journal
Joe D. Jones
Manufacturer: Venture Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Mississippi Business Journal, published by Venture Publications on July 22, 2002. The length of the article is 838 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Private investment for Social Security a bad idea. (Perspective).(Brief Article)(Column)
Author: Joe D. Jones
Publication: Mississippi Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 22, 2002
Publisher: Venture Publications
Volume: 24 Issue: 29 Page: 4(2)

Article Type: Brief Article, Column

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Private ordering in the marketplace of ideas: contract-related claims and the free flow of information.: An article from: Communications and the Law

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Private ordering in the marketplace of ideas: contract-related claims and the free flow of information.: An article from: Communications and the Law
Matthew D. Bunker
Manufacturer: William S. Hein & Co., Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Communications and the Law, published by William S. Hein & Co., Inc. on March 1, 2000. The length of the article is 7011 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Private ordering in the marketplace of ideas: contract-related claims and the free flow of information.
Author: Matthew D. Bunker
Publication: Communications and the Law (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2000
Publisher: William S. Hein & Co., Inc.
Volume: 22 Issue: 1 Page: 23

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Schwarzenegger embraces idea of private retirement accounts.(Arnold Schwarzenegger): An article from: Los Angeles Business Journal

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Schwarzenegger embraces idea of private retirement accounts.(Arnold Schwarzenegger): An article from: Los Angeles Business Journal
Kate Berry
Manufacturer: CBJ, L.P.
ProductGroup: Book
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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Los Angeles Business Journal, published by CBJ, L.P. on February 21, 2005. The length of the article is 591 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Schwarzenegger embraces idea of private retirement accounts.(Arnold Schwarzenegger)
Author: Kate Berry
Publication: Los Angeles Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 21, 2005
Publisher: CBJ, L.P.
Volume: 27 Issue: 8 Page: 38(1)

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Serving private school students under the new IDEA

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Serving private school students under the new IDEA
Vicki M Pitasky
Manufacturer: LRP Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0006R26PE

Book Description

The digital divide is a disturbing reality, and teens in our society increasingly fall into distinct categories of technology "haves" and "have-nots," whether or not computers are available to them in the schools. This trend undermines the futures of our youth and jeopardizes the vitality of our society. Today's librarians are in a unique position to help bridge the gap. This guide helps librarians to identify the "tech-nots"--technologically disadvantaged teens--in a community or school and to reach out and build information literacy in underserved teen populations. Farmer goes beyond recommending computers for every teen, and demonstrates how to overcome teen misperceptions and disinterest in computers. After examining the problem and the populations most affected, the author discusses how to build awareness and motivation, train staff, create space and time, build the collection, develop partnerships with other agencies and organizations, offer services, and overcome barriers with specific populations. Citing benchmark programs and services from around the country, Farmer offers a wealth of exciting new ways for libraries to connect with at-risk teens today. Grades 6-12.

BizTalk Server 2000 Developer's Guide for .NET

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BizTalk Server 2000 Developer's Guide for .NET
Scott Roberts , Milton Todd , Chris Farmer , and Robert Shimonski
Manufacturer: Syngress
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1928994407

Amazon.com

The centerpiece of Microsoft's .NET initiative, BizTalk Server 2000 aims to solve one of the perennial bugbears of the corporate programmer. By the judicious application of XML messaging (under the Simple Object Access Protocol--SOAP), BizTalk Server allows companies to exchange business documents (price quotes, purchase orders, defect notices, and that kind of thing) with minimal human interaction. BizTalk Server 2000: Developer's Guide for .NET shows how to use BizTalk Server, bringing plenty of step-by-step procedures to bear on a product that's unfamiliar to many. Though there's not a lot of discussion of the sort of code you'd write for BizTalk Server interaction in Visual Studio .NET, this book includes coverage of writing functoids and codifying business processes in Visio.

Developers will find this book useful in getting up to speed on BizTalk Server terminology and conventions, and in rigging up laboratory systems for experimentation and trials. Consultants will appreciate the authors' advice on mapping real-world business processes to the BizTalk environment. It's administrators, however, who, despite the book's title, will benefit from it most. They'll find explicit advice on setting up BizTalk Server, connecting it with SQL Server, and adjusting its configuration. Stepped procedures make it very clear what needs to be done in various situations. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to install Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 and make it serve as an XML message broker for an organization. Installation is covered (in situations in which the underlying SQL Server already exists, as well as in situations in which the database server is installed simultaneously), setting up channels and ports, setting up and maintaining XLANG schedules, and troubleshooting problems.

Book Description

BizTalk Server 2000 is part of the .NET family of Enterprise Servers designed to work together to provide e-business solutions. The .NET Enterprise Servers are based on open Web standards, such as XML, to allow an organization to integrate and orchestrate their applications and service needs into a single comprehensive solution. This book shows how to use BizTalk Server 2000 to create, integrate, manage, and automate business processes for the exchange of business documents.

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The Farmer's Guide to the Internet

Manufacturer: TVA Rural Studies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0964974606

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Great starter guide!

The farmer's guide to the Internet
Henry James
Manufacturer: TVA Rural Studies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

Great starter guide!.......1999-02-23

Plowing New Turf on the Net by Gary Schneider Associate Dean, College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources University of Tennessee, Knoxville

From its title, you would correctly assume that this publication is directed primarily toward farmers and rural residents. The Farmer's Guide to the Internet is intended both for farmers who don't own a computer yet and want to learn about the Internet and for those who are seeking Internet access or new Internet sites.

However, almost anyone could profit from this easy-to-read book. Although many of the Internet sites listed are agriculturally based, many would also interest a larger audience. The sites Include topics as varied as arts and science, business and finance, computer resources, health, history, home and garden, law, sports and recreation, and tax information, to name but a few.

The first section of the book lays the foundation for using the Internet. In a non-intimidating way, it guides the reader through an explanation of the Internet and the way it works. It then explains the five basic Internet services that most people use: e-mail, mailing lists, news groups, chat rooms, and the World Wide Web.

For Beginners, this guide covers everything from purchasing the computer and modem to securing telephone connections and obtaining the appropriate Internet software. It offers helpful tips along the way, such as which electrical surge protectors to choose, how to deal with noisy telephone lines, and how to keep long-distance charges to a minimum.

The second part of the book lists more than 2,000 Internet addresses. These are indexed by subject, such as crop resources--covering everything from fruits to nuts to vegetables--and livestock resources, encompassing beef, dairy, goats, poultry, sheep and swine.

The guide also lists agricultural companies, magazines, organizations, and news groups, as well as land grant universities in every state. Readers can find information on agricultural markets and prices, pesticides, precision farming, and soil and water. The book also lists sites for accessing current weather conditions. Having all of these topics in one handy text saves a great deal of time and allows the reader to bookmark favorite sites.

The final section of the text contains material on Internet service providers, rural Internet access, PCs and Macs, and Internet software for Windows 3.1, 95, and 98.

If you are looking for one book that will help you get started on the Internet with the least possible pain, choose The Farmer's Guide to the Internet. If you are already an Internet user but would like to get a quick update on new Internet addresses, look no further than this manual. It will serve you well.

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The Farmer's Guide to the Internet
Henry; with Estes, Kyna James
Manufacturer: TVA Rural Studies. The University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000QP9FM8

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