enclosure

The koan for our times might be: How can there be a devastating financial crash that produces no serious financial reform? Like all koans, this one is instructive because it forces us to contemplate the deeper reality that lies beneath superficial appearances.

In this case, we must confront our assumptions that our elected officials actually represent the people’s interests; that constitutional authority can trump corporate power in practice; and that the public sector and private sector are completely separate. Oh yes, there is one other naive belief being unmasked — that Barack Obama is an FDR or Lincoln for our time.

These truths are depicted in miniature by financial reporter Gretchen Morgenson’s account of the toothless financial reform bills now pending in the House and Senate. Her devastating critique in New York Times — exposes the utter inadequacy of the "reforms."

We’ve known all along that Facebook was more of a commercial machine committed to corporate advertisers than a benign platform that respects individual users. The problem was, most of our friends and acquaintances are already on Facebook. The site has lots of cool features, and there was no serious alternative to migrate to.

But we knew there would eventually be a reckoning as Facebook’s appetite for maximum profits kicked in. The uprising began when Facebook instituted a new set of changes that make it harder and more confusing to protect your personal information on the site. Users had to opt-out of the default policy — which granted Facebook generous access to your data —- rather than a more reasonable opt-in policy.

Last week’s enactment of historic health care legislation eclipsed another momentous victory for the commons: the reclamation of the federal student loan program which had been captured and milked for decades by voracious private lenders.

As I’ve discussed over the past year, our free market-loving banks (sic) have no objection to socialism when it reduces their risks and guarantees their profits. That’s exactly what the student loan program did. The banks were only too happy to act as a middleman in making loans to students. It let them make risk-free profits, exploit a captive clientele, collude with colleges and universities to keep the game going, and jack up the interest rates and fees charged to students.

Four years ago, the international press sent up red flares when the President of Boliva, Evo Morales, announced that he would reclaim his country’s natural resources for the benefit of Bolivians. As I wrote at the time, most press coverage took the “skeptical and fearful perspective of foreign investors, who consider themselves the rightful beneficiaries of Bolivia’s natural wealth. ‘Dammit!’ goes the subtext. ‘Now we won’t be able to earn the same sorts of massive profits that we did before’.” The other fear was that Morales would simply rip off foreign investors when he reasserted public control over Bolivian oil and minerals.

Didn’t happen. We now learn that Morales’ move has indeed benefited Bolivians, who are among the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere. Writing in Yes! magazine, Sara Kozameh of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, describes how the Morales administration has achieved record growth despite the recession by reclaiming public ownership of natural resources.

The noxious gusher of oil flowing from one mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico is an unprecedented environmental disaster, no doubt about it. But will we learn the right lessons from it?

There are any number of narratives that are starting to take root, and all of them are true as far as they go: the incompetent and corrupt regulators at the Interior Department, the incompetence and arrogance of British Petroleum; the lackadaisical response by President Obama weeks after the spill began. The implication is that a different regulator, CEO or President would have done things differently.

Perhaps. But the real problem here is structural: There is no adequate governance structure for the commoners to protect their shared resource, the Gulf of Mexico, and all that depends upon it. These sorts of "accidents" are almost becoming routine: the Massey Energy coal mine disaster, the Toyota "stuck accelerator" safety hazard, the Wall Street abuses of derivative financial instruments.

Here’s a surprise: the enclosure of the village common — as it occurred in medieval times — is still occurring, in a literal sense. As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, a mining company working in tandem with the Australian government has taken possession of the village common of Camberwell, Australia. (Thanks to Leo Burke for alerting me to this story!)

Since the 1890s, the village had used the common — part of an open flood plain around Glennies Creek — as a place to keep their horses and dairy cows, and to let their children fish, swim and ride horses. On April 5, however, as the Morning Herald reports, "A pair of officers from the Department of Lands arrived, called together members of the [Camberwell] Common Trust, and told them the Crown land would be immediately resumed and turned over to the Ashton mine that looms over the Upper Hunter village in the form of a hollowed-out hill on the other side of the creek."

Can abstract ideas be patented? Sometime soon, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to make a major decision regarding the constitutional scope of patents. The decision could have major implications for the legality of free software.

At the heart of the case known as Bilsky v. Kappos is a "business method patent" application that sought to obtain a patent for a method of managing the risk of bad weather through commodities trading. Bilsky did not build any invention or device, as traditional patents have required; he came up with a method of doing business that orchestrates human knowledge and interactions, for which he believes he deserves a patent.

But should the government be in the business of granting legally protecting monopolies on abstract ideas such as “business methods” and mathematical algorithms? The outcome of the case is being watched closely by the free software community because it could negatively affect the future of collaboratively developed code.

A federal court ruling this week opens up the door to a chilling possibility — that cable and telephone companies might be able to interfere with transmissions of Internet traffic to suit their own business purposes. Paying partners could get "fast lane" service while the rest of us are shunted into "slow lanes." Objectionable transmissions could be interfered with or blocked.

A few years ago, the FCC had cited Comcast for slowing down Internet traffic to BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing website. Comcast proceeded to sue the FCC in order to establish that the FCC does not have the authority to regulate Comcast’s "network management practices." In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed.

So now what?

The weekend news showed exultant customers hoisting their newly purchased iPads over the heads in stunning images of triumph, transcendence and rapture. You gotta hand it to Steve Jobs. He knows how to stage a PR coup.

Too bad that the iPad is hardly a paragon of "freedom." It is actually a "tethered appliance," as tech guru Jonathan Zittrain puts it — a closed, proprietary system that enables Apple to control what we may do with the iPad and which new applications may run on it.

Even though software developers will likely generate thousands of new apps for the iPad, the little-discussed reality is that Apple will retain absolute control over which apps will be legally sold and used on the tablet. Like the iPhone and iTunes store, the iPad is encrypted with DRM (digital rights management). Apple will control how the system evolves and what freedoms users will have. (This, from a company that professes to dislike DRM and that once used the advertising tagline, “Rip. Mix. Burn.”)

If corporations are legally "persons," as the U.S. Supreme Court recently declared in its infamous Citizens United case — a ruling that opens the floodgates for corporate contributions to candidates — then why not run an actual corporation for Congress?

This is the brilliant idea of a small, politically progressive public relations firm, Murray Hill, in Silver Spring, Maryland. A Washington Post reporter called it a "cynical" move. I say it’s simply taking the Supreme Court at its word and showing the absurdity and repugnance of the Court’s ruling.

Murray Hill, Inc. recently announced its campaign by launching a website, YouTube ad, Facebook page, and paraphernalia sales. The website explains: