From: cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok)
Subject: Re: radio waves as public property
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 14:55:07 GMT

In article <C19oEL.1x0@rice.edu> ervan@rice.edu (Ervan Darnell) writes:
>
>cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok) writes:
>> i agree with your consequences, but not your reasoning. as far as i
>> am concerned, his leaving his machine on your property removes his
>> rights to its use, or to preventing you from using it, or disposing
>> of it; that does *not* mean you own it. you have the right to
>> remove it to the landfill simply by virtue of the fact that it
>> is "trespassing"... that does not require nor mean that you "own" it.
>
>We agree on the conclusion with respect to the book and the radio 
>waves for the same reason, you cannot be obligated to treat what
>is 'given' to you unrequested in any particular way.  Yes?

i believe so. it would not be reasonable to assume such an obligation
in a legal sense, though i would impose it in some circumstances in
a moral sense (in fact in most circumstances).

>Having said that, I find your notion acceptable but slightly odd.
>If I understand it, you mean to say that I can use whatever is 
>dumped on my property, but I am obligated to return it to the
>rightful owner under certain circumstances.  What are those
>circumstances?  Do I have to go to the dump to get it?  Do I have
>to go to the trouble of unhooking a washing machine that could
>require hours of my time to move everything in the garage?
>What schedule do I have to do these things on?  Do I have to
>go to any effort whatsoever on behalf of the owner?

well, i will admit it is a rather tricky theory, because non-ownership
by the dumpee could be construed as an obligation on him.
i don't think that obligation exists. the dumper must take all
the trouble to recover the property. 

btw, i don't think the concept of use vs. ownership is really all that
foreign to our current law. even though this situation is different,
you could probably find the answers to at least some of your concerns
in these matters by looking at such things as landlord-tenant law.
in our case you have doctrines set up to govern reasonable transfer
of property from the one who owns it to the one who buys the right to
use it and back again. the lack of consent is a complicating matter
in this case, but still the general concept is not novel, though i
thought of this *after* i made my odd position in my previous post...

>If
>the answer is 'no', then I cannot see how your position is
>indistinguishable from mine.  I can do anything I want with the
>object in question and could object to any request to return it.
>If the answser is 'yes', that seems to contradict what I
>thought we agreed on as stated in the previous paragraph.

i would say you have a right to use it, or to destroy it if you
feel it is necessary. but if you don't destroy it, and the dumper
is willing to take the expense to retrieve the item, he should be
allowed to.

>The only way out that I see is to propose a 'reasonableness'
>standard about how much effort I would have to go to return
>such property.  Would you care to propose such a standard?

yes, though i realize this is kind of a tricky proposition at best.
you don't have to take any effort to return the property; you just
have to not specifically take efforts to prevent return of the
property, unless you feel it is reasonably necessary.

i can see myself being shot down on this one -- fire away.

>> i realize that i am entering the fray somewhat late so forgive
>> me if what i say has already been covered, but i fail to see
>> how radio waves are "property" at all, other than intellectual
>> property. they cannot be compared to even the air -- they represent
>> only coded vibrations of physical matter, and as such they are
>> really not "ownable".
>
>It's true that one does not own the particular photons that compose
>the signal.  I think what is being owned in this case
>is the content carried in those signals.  However one wants to
>construe that physically, there is definitely a time when the
>content is physically on (in) one's property.

i reject the physical aspect of radio wave ownership. i am not a
physicist, but it seems to me that the photons carrying a white
noise signal are different only in vibration or specific energy
from a meaningful signal. the only property is the information.

if you can own radio waves then you can own sunlight,
or the earth's magnetic fields. i don't see how. i think radio
waves are pure intellectual property and should be treated as such,
which means if you broadcast, you lose your rights to privacy unless
you protect them by encrypting.

--
charles
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian