Geneva J. Anderson on Sun, 21 Nov 1999 15:45:12 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> 6th century hactivist


tom vincent wrote--
>
>In 20th century Netland the possession of a website was understood to be
>absolute ownership. Once, 0100101110101101.0RG, after borrowing a source
>code spent the night copying it. He returned the original but not the
>copy. When the owner also demanded the copy it was refused. The matter was
>brought to trial and ended with Rhizome's famous verdict: "To every cow
>it's clone, to every page it's Artbase."

all joking aside...I am not a copyright lawyer, hadn't heard 
of this historical ruling before though obviously it's been
batted around the rhizome list.  It's fascinating to consider 
that these early decisions, so biblical, are the seeds of our 
modern law. The biblical connection makes sense in a society 
dominated by the Church; not only is it a source of reference 
for values, those values have the ultimate authority. 
Nowadays, in a society architected by powerful corporations 
and justified by economists as "wealth-maximizing," we award 
the calf to whoever promises to generate the most utility, paternity 
notwithstanding. I'm interested in the american v. euro
take on that particularly as it pertains to the larger issue of
"wealth maximizing."  I'm looking at this closely lately especially 
as it pertains to assumptions regarding re-investment of the
new wealth generated from the computer/tech sectors.
I would welcome feedback from anyone with similar interests
with a knowledge of european tax law.   

Geneva Anderson



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