Akratic Diversions

2003-04-28T20:53:00.000-07:00

Now that Prof. Levy has linked to me, I may actually have to start posting. So here's a little something about fair use, webcomics, the commercialization of culture, and BDSM that, to my knowledge, hasn't gotten much play yet in the Blogosphere.

So there's this webcomic called Penny-Arcade. The creators, Gabe and Tycho, are video gamers, and the comic is for gamers and about games. Some time ago, there was a game called "American McGee's Alice" that was billed as a "darker" Alice in Wonderland--instead of having tea parties, Alice runs around and hacks things up with knives. Now, American McGee is apparently redoing Oz, that happy land of singing munchkins and transgendered protagonists. Gabe and Tycho sought to parody McGee's one-track mind by creating their vision of how he might reinterpret that beloved icon, Strawberry Shortcake.

What's that, you say? That link takes you only to a black screen saying "The American Greetings Corportation has asked us to remove this comic strip from our archive?" Apparently a portrayal of Strawberry Shortcake and one of her friends (no, I don't remember which one) engaging in light bondage (no, I don't remember what exactly they were doing--I seem to recall one was being ridden as a pony) was a bit much for the American Greetings Corporation, which, understandably concerned with protecting Ms. Shortcake's honor, promptly dispatched their Corporate Counsel with legal threats.

Apparently there's a long discussion about this on Slashdot, if you want to join in. The long and short of it seems to be that Tycho and Gabe don't have the resources to fight this, and are going to back down (although not without a parting shot). So why should we care?

Most people think of intellectual property law as boring and unimportant. But when so much of what makes up popular culture is copyrighted or trademarked, there are implications that should disturb anyone concerned with a flourishing sphere of public discourse. Tycho puts it like this:

I can hardly have thoughts without utilizing brands. So, American McGee's creative propensities amuse us. What would happen if he turned his dark gaze on one of those sweet girls' toys from the eighties, like Rainbow Brite or Sweet Secrets or My Little Pony? No, I've got it: Strawberry Shortcake. Counting American McGee, a single train of thought requires no less than five products. Look at Penny Arcade, for Christ's sake. I can't even express concepts without leveraging some organization's coveted intellectual property. In the case of the now infamous strip, it wouldn't have made sense to use anything but a commonly known product. So now that these Goddamn characters and concepts and products are completely intrinsic to our language and thought processes, they are, in fact, inextricable, they can effectively police speech. I'm not even trying to make a value judgement about that. I'm simply amazed by it.

But surely, this sort of thing is protected by fair use, right? Maybe, maybe not; I'm not a lawyer. Apparently the outcome is uncertain enough that it's simply not worth it for people like Tycho and Gabe to try and fight it; if they win they feel vindicated, and have lost God knows how many hours of their lives, if they lose they'd probably be financially ruined.

This is troubling. I'm not some rabid intellectual-property-is-tyranny activist; I think IP protection is important. But it has to be done in a nuanced way, a balanced way, a way that understands that fair use isn't just some crumb to be tossed to the canaille but is a vital part of why we have IP protection in the first place: so people can use it.

2003-04-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

Do theorists need more ambition?

Today I sat in on the fourth session ("Political Theory, Political Science, and Social Science") of a workshop on "The State of Political Theory." The participants, with a few exceptions, consisted of political theory grad students; Jacob Levy moderated. (If you have not yet read his post on political theory vs. political philosophy, perhaps you should.)

As I saw it, the question at the heart of the session I attended was justificatory: why should we expect social science divisions, and political science departments, to support political theory?

For my part, it seems like a large part of how you think about this question depends on whether, when you decides to be a political theorist, you do it because you want to spend your life thinking about [insert favorite political theorist here] ... or whether instead you want to be that theorist.

I think those in the latter category are, rightly, much more troubled by the possibility of being out-of-touch with the rest of political science, and much more concerned with the question of relevance.

2003-04-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

Marriage: From Status to Contract?

Various U of C blogs have been tossing around the whole marriage thing--work backwards from here to get details. Let me chip in just a bit.

I would suggest that Sara's hostility towards the privatization of marriage may be the wrong strategy. She links to a bill about making no-fault divorce harder in Louisiana; I seem to recall hearing about another Louisiana initiative, "covenant marriage," an option that couples can choose that restricts their later ease of divorce. (Not just Louisiana, apparently: check here for details.)

A system that was willing to enforce a fairly wide variety of marriage contracts would see, I believe, a strong "covenant marriage" movement. This would provide an attractive option for traditionalists, and go a ways towards solving a serious problem with no-fault divorce--the inability to effectively commit to a genuine division of household labor (one spouse sacrificing a career for the sake of children, etc).

Sara wants to keep the issue in the all-or-nothing arena of political contestation, and fight like hell to see that her side wins. She has good reasons for this--she worries not simply about the individual women screwed over by no-fault divorce, but also about what the very existence of less-than-covenant marriage options does to the fabric of society. Valid concerns.

But so long as the issue is seen as one of legitimation of a certain status--and a privileged status to which everyone has a right--traditionalists like Sara will have to fight a constant battle to keep those like gays who feel unjustly excluded from taking the issue to a national, Constitutional level. In The Semi-sovereign People E.E. Schattschneider makes the key point that people seek to expand the arena of conflict when doing so will bring about a more advantageous balance of forces. By fighting the marriage battle on universalist, "what message does it send to society?" grounds, traditionalists play into the hands of radicals who believe--rightly, I think--that bedrock American ideals of equal respect before the law will eventually overwhelm conservative qualms and throw the gates of marriage wide open.

If they instead throw their support behind the move from marriage as status to contract, traditionalists will be forced to accept things like no-fault gay marriage contracts, true. But I would theorize that the acceptance of such contracts will have much less impact on how people view "real" marriage than it would if it came about through an official, state-backed pronouncement that the idea of marriage must include such radical couplings.

In short, I predict that within 30 years, either the Supreme Court will rule that gays have a Constitutional right to marriage, or that gays have a Constitutional right to have their marriage contracts enforced by the state on par with others'. Which would Sara prefer? Which outcome would result in more people choosing covenant marriages?

2003-04-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

I was pushed into this by various friends (Matt and Amy) but I'd been meaning to for awhile. Perhaps by having a place to post thoughts about things of substance I will force myself to actually think carefully about things of substance more often. This would be advantageous, as I am supposed to be starting graduate school in the fall.

That said, my first tidbit will be about war and public opinion.

The stylized facts, as they say, are as follows:

Public support for the war in Iraq seems to have increased dramatically since it began. This seems to happen often at the start of wars.

I've read various snippets of opinion structured around this. The common tack is to treat this as either herdlike rallying around the flag--that is, in times of crisis, like war, support for the government's policies will naturally increase, even if that policy is the very crisis itself--or the wages of successful leadership--as Blair and Bush have boldly and persuasively made their case, and as the troops have shown the worst-case scenarios of war to be unfounded, more people have become convinced.

For my own sake, I'm not so sure these kinds of explanations are even needed to account for a large boost in support for any given war following that war's initiation. Let's look at Iraq. There are expected costs and benefits to the war. The costs include those of blood and treasure in preparing for and waging it, those of international legitimacy and public opinion due to invading another nation-state, the possibility of more terrorism due to further angering the 'Arab Street,' the danger of establishing as binding precedent such preemptive action, the possibility that post-war Iraq will not be particularly nice, and the simple moral stain of waging war. There are others, but that's a decent list. Benefits include preventing Hussein's regime from developing WMD, freeing a suffering people from a totalitarian regime, the positive example of a post-war democratic state in the Arab Middle East, the deterrent effect of an established willingness to eliminate naughty regimes, that sort of thing.

The key point is that the question, "Do you support war in Iraq?" has very different meanings before and after war begins. Many of these costs are effectively sunk costs--that is, costs that cannot be recovered--from the moment the first bombs are dropped. Things like international legitimacy, the moral stain of waging war, inflaming the Middle East--it seems quite likely that all of these fall largely into this category. Disproportionately, the costs of war--at least the ones the anti-war side emphasized--are up-front costs, and are largely inapplicable to the now-relevant (or at least relevant a week ago) question, "Do you support war given that the war has already started?" The benefits, on the other hand, are all benefits that can only be realized if the war is waged to a successful conclusion, and must therefore still be considered when weighing options.

It is easy to imagine a large number of people who were against war when all the costs had to be considered, but are now also against pulling out since many of the most important costs have already been incurred and cannot be recovered--especially since pulling out of a war once begun may have further costs in terms of international credibility.

My point is simply that those who look at the opinion polIs and think either "Stupid sheep!" or "Huzzah for good leadership!" may be reading too much into things. Underlying preferences may not have shifted at all; the question itself has changed.

Now, perhaps polls have been phrased in such a way that this factor shouldn't really come out in the data--perhaps they are now asking, "Do you think we should have gone to war?", thus preserving the original cost-benefit calculation. I think my point may still have relevance, simply because counterfactuals are hard for the mind to easily grasp. I would guess that even if explicitly asked to consider the "should have," people will still be thinking about the here and now. That said, I haven't investigated how the questions were actually worded, largely because I'm lazy and gave up looking after 30 seconds of Google searching.