#1
meet me in st louis
Post rating: +
Obviously the title of this thread isn't intended to be literal. Instead I thought that this might be an interesting question for helping us to formalize and then explore some of our ideas about the nature of property and ownership in a digital age. The advantage of using rhizzone as the focus of a discussion is that all of us are familiar with this site and can fairly be said to have a legitimate opinion on how the site functions. Unlike highly esoteric or abstract questions about who owns the "social surplus" or who should own a factory or a bank, a question about who "owns" rhizzone is the sort of question that I would expect people to feel comfortable talking about without having a huge theoretical background. In a none pejorative sense its a sort of Idiot's Guide to the philosophy of property and ownership.

I'm going to try and avoid my usual tendency of setting out a long and detailed opening post, because honestly this is one of those discussions that doesn't need all that much context. I will offer a couple of my own thoughts first.

There are three obvious ways to think of this question, so far as I can tell. They are:

The Nihilist/Pragmatist Way of Thinking: This school of thought would deny that "ownership" is even a meaningful concept. "Ownership" is actually just a way of saying "this person has legally sanctioned control over this resource" and nothing else interesting can be said on the matter.

The Legalist Way of Thinking: This perspective would emphasize the existing legal and property regime in the United States or in the global legal community. It would presumably emphasize germanjoey's formal ownership of the site and his ability to do with it as he pleases within the boundaries of existing law.

The Cult of the Creator Way of Thinking: Presumably such a perspective would emphasize that if you expend creative efforts to set up a new enterprise, then you should have an extremely strong morally derived ability to control the future operations of that enterprise. The distinction between this way of thinking and the legalist or pragmatist way of thinking is that its based primarily on an ethical claim: Lowtax controls the site and that is how it should be. In a Lockean sense we might say that germanjoey came accross the empty url "rhizzone" in a state of nature, and then "mixed labour" with the website, creating a vastly successful multi-format shitpost generating enterprise that he has every moral right to enjoy the fruits of.

The "Property is Theft" Way of Thinking This perspective would emphasize that while various admins played an invaluable role in starting the site and attracting people to it, an equal or perhaps even far greater contribution has come from the tens of regular trolls and perpetual fuck-ups who frequent rhizzone's forums and actually generate the majority of the content and who constitute the vast majority of the eyeballs that attract heaps of non-existent advertising revenue. This uncompensated creative work generates profits for the small minority of people who actually derive income from the website.

I don't intend for that to be an exhaustive list. That was just my attempt to broadly summarize four approaches that I think would intuitively appeal to a lot of people.

An interesting example to think of here (thought its not perfectly equivalent) is Huffington Post. HuffPo was unquestionably the creation of Ariana Huffington, but its success was only made possible by the massive amount of free content (as well as some paid content) and reporting that was provided by numerous bloggers and readers. When Huffington eventually sold the site for $315 million a lot of people were upset that the bloggers on the site itself were uncompensated. Were those complaints legitimate? Or should we say that those bloggers clearly derived some kind of satisfaction based on their willingness to keep contributing, and therefore have no right to complain?

I should note that this thread isn't really intended to provide a definitive answer. Instead the question is supposed to provide a framework for thinking about broader questions of property, ownership, creativity and collaboration in the 21st century (with an emphasis on the internet, though I encourage people to bring in non-internet examples).

So often talking about "property" feels very intimidating. I'm hoping that by using a familiar and accessible example that everyone on this website should feel comfortable discussing we can encourage people to move past their reflexive assumptions about ownership and actually challenge themselves to see if their beliefs rest on anything other than inertia.

thanks for reading.

tldr: i actually OWn rhizzone all the time w/ my posting.
#2
Kurdt
Post rating: +++++
you can't "own" rhizzone man
#3
Post rating: +
a bundle of shitposts
#4
Post rating: +

I've wracked by brain now and again trying to think of genuine ethical reasons to ban sexuality in childhood, but in all honesty I couldn't come up with any real reasons. As the OP mentions, it sure seems like the trauma of experiencing sex as a kid is more of a cultural thing instead of a more objective psychological thing. Doesn't mean it should be fine and dandy, though, since culture IS a relevant factor in ethics, I'd say.

Hell, a few tribes in the Guinea Islands have sex with young boys and their society seems to work just fine. They believe that boys can only begin to mature and produce their own semen after it's implanted in them (orally as well as analy. ick).

I only know two guys who were first exposed to sex as kids, but they seem to have an unusually difficult time coping with their emotions.
#5
Kurdt
Post rating: ~
nice upvote on that
#6
Post rating: +
maggot master owns us constantly
#7
[account deactivated]
#8
Post rating: +
well, though the output is rather low now, isn't there a lot of labor that goes in on creating forums as a tangible social product? like, beyond just the coding and server upkeep, there is administrative aspect and a expended labor aspect which shape the geography of the Rhizzone. Like, for example, there's some Badas posts about a guy that owns us all the time by wearing a shirt of the frontpage, and then there's a fairly fuckin good copy paste that i skimmed. What accounts for this? Isn't it toil, however profoundly lazy and noncommitted?








I think, ultimately, that this is a good post i made.
#9
[account deactivated]
#10
Post rating: ~
Me. close thread
#11
Post rating: ~
Master Blaster
#12
Post rating: ~
helsing wants to be mod
#13
Kurdt
Post rating: ~
sorry bub, that job is permanently and eternally occupied by Dear Moderator
#14
FLAWDA
Post rating: ~