otium cum dignitate

Weighing in on Grokster

After spending a few years enjoying the illicit fruits of Napster in high school, since my college days I've become somewhat of a self-righteous naysayer of illegal music promoters such as Kazaa or Grokster.  I'm quite leery of burning CD's and still regard the remaining burned CD's in my music collection as unfortunate reminders of my earlier decisions to steal music (the fact that I still have them should indicate, though, that I'm not quite turned off enough to throw them out).

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision in the Grokster case isn't really surprising anyone.  Although advocates for P2P (peer-to-peer) software providers were looking hopefully to a precedent in 1984 when the Supreme Court deemed VCR's lawful to manufacture despite their capability to illegally record video, it is not surprising that the Court was unwilling to completely apply that precedent to a piece of hardware so obviously intended for copyright-eluding activities. 

While most sensible people understand the evils of unshackled creation and use of such peer-to-peer technologies, others still can't bring themselves to completely accept the Court's ruling.

Detractors fear Grokster might hinder innovation and creativity for future advances in software and technology.  The NYT editorial today answered such concerns bluntly:

"In their zeal to protect technology innovators, Grokster's supporters have shown too little regard for other kinds of creative people. Musician, moviemakers and writers rely on sales revenue to support their art and to pay their bills. File sharing's most aggressive advocates like to say that on the Internet, information "wants to be free." But in the real world, creators of intellectual property want, and need, to be paid."

The Supreme Court actually came out with a very thoughtful and even-handed ruling here.  Software creators are only to be held liable if there is a very clear intent to advertise programs as efficient ways for users to break the law.  P2P technology on its own is not illegal and it is used for legitimate purposes all the time.  As long as software can serve a significant lawful purpose (such as VCR's), there can be no successful legal challenge to its development and distribution.

Strange Alliances over Eminent Domain

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a local government's decision to invoke eminent domain and condemn the property of 15 homeowners who have resisted the move.  Because the city of New London, Connecticut is attempting to improve the greater public good though, the court ruled that the local government has the power to take the property as long as just compensation was provided to the owners. 

The argument here is over the interpretation of public use and whether government should be able to invoke the power of eminent domain even if some sort of public benefit is foreseen.  Beyond the basic moral question on the legitimacy of eminent domain, the players on each side of this argument make this case particularly interesting.  Although the local government of New London plans to build office space, as well as a residential area and pedestrian river walk along the Thames,  in the newly acquired land for the Phizer company (Viagra), The Wall Street Journal (notoriously pro-business) has come out against the ruling in today's paper.  Some of the language in the lead editorial makes it seem like the NYT and Journal accidentally swapped opinions for the day.  The Journal editorial specifically made use of a number of surprising quotes from dissenting opinions:

"The Court [now holds]...that a costly urban renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Phizer Corporation, is for 'public use.' (Thomas)"

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party...the beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms (O'Connor)"

While the Journal shares it's aversion to the ruling with strange bedfellows including the NAACP and AARP, the NYT continues the irony and argues in favor of the ruling.  The Times is dismissive of the few property owners who stand to lose from this decision, and instead focuses on the prospect for more jobs and a higher tax base. 

This debate brings up two philosophical issues and it is obviously confounding writers (such as those at the Times and Journal) who typically craft daily polemics on issues more susceptible to arguments made  in black and white terms.  In this case, both papers have decided to turn this into a property rights lesson.  The Times writes, "[The ruling] is also a setback to the 'property rights' movement, which is trying to block government from imposing reasonable zoning and environmental regulations."  The Journal, on the other hand, decries governmental meddling with private property. 

The other philosophical issue in this case, and to me the far more important one, deals with how we should determine the legitimacy of  development plans by local governments for city and community improvement.  Eminent Domain is only one tool (and seldom used at that) out of a whole toolbox that government uses in efforts for city planning.  It worries me that both newspapers suggested that government should always have the power of eminent domain when it comes to building roads.  This case only barely touched on what the real debate here should be about.  City governments have been trying for years to figure out the best plan of action for the health of their city's and overall future public good.  Ultimately, the Court decided yesterday that New London's plan had good enough prospects for the public that small-scale property rights could be infringed upon. 

In the 1960's, swaths of inner-city neighborhoods were leveled during an Urban Renewal movement that sought to improve and revitalize cities across America.  The movement is largely considered a failure as giant highways sliced through old neighborhoods and turned surrounding areas into crime and poverty-ridden ghettos.  Today, mixed-use (such as in New London) and transit-oriented developments have become a popular alternative for cities struggling with suburban flight and business decentralization. 

As both papers highlighted, property rights are commonly seen as expendable when certain plans involving public use are put forth (roads and highways).  But why do giant roads (in my view often more damaging to city health than anything) reserve this priority?  The Court's ruling yesterday will allow cities to be more imaginative with developments and improvements for their cities.  True, as the Journal warns, this could have the same devastating effect as Urban Renewal, but city's need to do something to improve their plight in America.  As city's such as Atlanta, Houston, and L.A. are coming to realize, more and more roads and highways tend to make cars happy...not people.

Sports Fanatacism: Otium Cum Dignitate

For most of my life, I have been a major sports fan.  Until a few years ago, though, I often wondered what exactly that meant.  I couldn't decide whether a consistent observation, celebration, and overall obsession with sports, whether that be in the form of actual attendance of games, playing of video games, or managing of fantasy teams, was an unhealthy waste of leisure time or an innately valuable and legitimate diversion of attention.  Somewhere in the middle of college, I finally accepted the fact that regardless of the merits, sports had been and would continue to be an inevitable part of my life.  Shortly thereafter, I think I began formulating moral justifications for the sports addiction that I had accepted as a necessity of life (similar developments occurred simultaneously with an equally familiar and widespread narcotic:  coffee). 

Michael Mandelbaum, one of the nation's prominent foreign policy thinkers and writers, recently took a recess from his political writings and wrote a brilliantly serious and entertaining treatise entitled The Meaning of Sports.

One of my ongoing frustrations with the sports world is its lack of good writing.  Sure, those guys on ESPN are good at giving you a concise summary of last night's game, but when it comes to more general and thoughtful writing, the sports reader will be hard-pressed to find anything of worth beyond the brief  NYT sports section and occasionally well-written SI piece. 

Mandelbaum provides a refreshingly educated explanation of what drives us sports aficionados to such extreme levels of obsession.  He describes baseball as an "agrarian game" that ushers in nostalgic childhood memories as well as a patriotic connection to America's past.  In his section on football (my favorite), Mandelbaum beautifully renders this most popular sport as a curious mingling of warfare and ballet.  Sample a passage from his comparison between football and war:

"The artillery attacks the foe through the air, hurling deadly objects over the adversary's first line of defense.  Similarly, football teams attempt to advance the ball toward the opponent's goal by having the quarterback throw it downfield, over the heads of the defensive lineman, to a waiting receiver."

Comparisons between sports make for entertaining reading as well.  Why, for example, do football teams employ the names of predatory and violent birds such as Falcons and Eagles while baseball teams prefer harmless seed and worm scavengers such as Orioles and Blue jays?  Mandelbaum attempts to provide a serious answer to such seemingly pointless questions.   

For sports fans who are often called to the task of defending their obsessive ways to certain high-brow individuals who justify their false elitism with an apathy towards sports in general, Mandelbaum's book provides a useful collage of arguments for how a love for sports deserves as much respect as any other predisposition  for spending leisure time. 

In the late 1800's, the president of Cornell, in disfavor of devoting any school money towards football, was quoted, "I will not permit thirty men to travel four hundred miles merely to agitate a bag of wind." 

Despite such remarks heard often from those who find themselves above sports, these games that us fans have come to love possess a certain inalienable trait that other arts lack.  Unlike theater, cinema, music, or even physical art, the sports medium benefits from its context of unrehearsed spontaneity, an uncertain outcome from which its artists must perform.  Indeed, to put it in more dramatic terms (if that is even possible at this point), live sporting events are the immediate expression of creativity and improvisation. 

Following from this point, Mandelbaum couldn't have said it more appropriately for me.  Jazz and sports share something integral to both mediums:  "individual improvisation within a fixed structure, spontaneous variation on a preset motif." 

Now you see why I like this book so much. 

Blog Revival

I owe my readers an apology after two weeks without a single post.  Fortunately, as is usually the case when I stop blogging for a while, I have kept myself busy over that time.

This past weekend, I went to Music Midtown, Atlanta's annual 3-day outdoor music festival, for the first time since high school.  My high school friends were either out of town or being lame but my cousin and Liz (ferd) were in town and joined my brother and I for two rainy days at Midtown.  The music was  surprisingly good.  Although Dave might try to argue that Bonnaroo's lineup was superior (and yes, it was good), I've seen Dave Matthews a million times and I think I'm over that hippie jam-band obsession that lasted for about a month during freshman year in college.  Bands I saw included Counting Crows, Trace Atkins (this guy is a joke but he is hilarious), Bloc Party, Keane, The Killers, and Alan Jackson.  I'm pissed that I missed The White Stripes, Kanye West and The Game but Bloc Party (picture here from their performance) and Keane made the weekend worthwhile overall. 

In other news, I went to D.C. last weekend and found a sweet place to live with Dave (Crow).  It's a two-story place with two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, balcony and even a patio.  Location is great, just a few blocks north of Dupont Circle.  I'm psyched and can't wait till I move in August. 

I also went to a Nationals game at RFK Stadium.  The stadium is complete crap but the Nationals won and they are somehow good.  I even bought a Nationals hat.  Could this be the beginning of a new team allegiance?  Just as I was beginning to get emotional over the Braves...At least my fantasy baseball team remains in position for a late-season surge into first place.

Starbucks is ok.  Somehow, just about every single person who works in the store is leaving in the next week or so.  The manager is somewhat oblivious (although he is capable which is nice compared to my horrible manager last summer) and doesn't seem to understand the import of 3/4 of his labor clearing out in a week's time.  New Baristas have yet to be hired.  I'm afraid the last month of work is going to be rough since I'll suddenly be one of the few who knows how to do anything.  Three recent post-law school grads come to the store everyday and pore over Bar Exam Review books for hours in anxious anticipation of the August test.  Sometimes I wonder, would I rather be doing that or making a Latte?  How long will it be before my current excitement over law school gives way to the reality of three years of classroom toil and 80 hour work weeks  thereafter?

In the meantime, I finished Thomas Friedman's new book but relegated it to the sidebar rather than give it a full post.  The Michael Mandelbaum book I'm reading now, though, probably deserves a full post in a few days.