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Can Local Governments Free Intellectual Property For The Good Of The Community?

Legal Issues

from the questions-questions-questions dept

Fri, Jun 24th 2005 1:07am — Mike Masnick
There's certainly no shortage of opinions going on around the country concerning the Supreme Court's ruling that local governments can decide when it's okay to seize property from people for the purpose of economic development. While interesting, there didn't really seem to be much of a tech angle on the story, but Nathan Cochrane took this story and asked a fascinating question on Dave Farber's "Interesting People" list: "If the public benefit of piracy outweighed the private rights of intellectual property ownership then, according to this judgment, states should legalize open slather IP infringement." Now, we just need to find a local government willing to test that theory out. Any takers?
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6 Comments

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  • identicon
    Eric, 24 Jun 2005 @ 6:34am

    No Subject Given

    Except it's not an exact correlation. The ruling indicated that the local government can seize private property to sell off to private entities. By correlation, the local government can seize private IP and sell it off to other private entities. Of course, one could make the case that the new private owner of the IP would be less restrictive of the uses of that IP.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Michael Brutsch, 24 Jun 2005 @ 7:58am

    Obey your Masters

    Sorry, but individuals rarely hold IP desired by the masses. SCOTUS ruled in favor of our new Corporate Overlords (via their minions, Local Government). Since most IP is owned by Big Business, there is no chance that such a taking of IP would be acceptable.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mel, 24 Jun 2005 @ 9:03am

    Good!

    Oh this is a good! Take their own rules, use them ... and make them hate you for it.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    jon787, 24 Jun 2005 @ 3:08pm

    interesting...

    I think the mandatory licensing rules are already based upon eminent domain. If so the basic theory has already been tested and proved. All we need is for some municipality to sieze the work itself not just force licensing.

    Could be fairly interesting.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Mousky, 25 Jun 2005 @ 5:06am

      Re: interesting...

      It is a stretch of the imagination to extend the ruling of the Supreme Court to intellectual property. The term "property" here means "real property" which means land and any attachments to the land. It does not mean ANY private property.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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