Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : David Golden
Date : Sat Sep 03 2005 04:11 am

Here are some URLs, the referenced documents might
help you comment more intelligently on joint ownership vs.
no ownership:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_estate
http://www.lawspirit.com/legalenglish/handbook/prop07.htm
http://indigo.ie/~kwood/tenancy.htm 

Maybe you should also consult people on "your" side (note use of 
term "IPR"): see document at the following URL for considerations of
German and English joint ownership laws as applied to copyrights
considered as  I"P":
http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/docs/docs.EN/JointOwnership.html

> You're making a pseudo distinction, because you haven't given a
> process for deciding what a 'common owner' can do. 

The requirement for a process to decide that derives from considering
the joint ownership of the property to exist (itself dependent on
considering ownership of the thing in question to exist).  

Jointly owned  property, like other property, is mostly a legal result,
so the laws for dealing with it that exist give it its "reality", in
ours or in a communist-oid legal system.  Is it so difficult to
conceive of a court upholding your various rights as a joint owner of 
public property rather than as an exclusive owner of a private
property?  

So a possible process for deciding what a "common owner" can do would be
to have the joint owners try to reach agreement without seeking a legal
judgement, and if they fail, the law courts, themselves perhaps created
in part for the very purpose of resolving such disputes, have the
authority to decide. The particulars  of the processes for resolving
disputes arising from joint ownership will depend on what rules and
laws people including the joint owners have made up, and thus vary from
jurisdiction to jurisdiction. 

In some places, where companies have come into existence as a means of
dealing with joint ownership, owners may wish to avoid the courts that
might decide on a disastrous division of the property as "fair", and
not let the property go to waste but profit from it (what a capital
idea...), and agree to form a "joint stock company" with the property
transferred to the company as stock and shares issued entitling the
holders to profits from the company's use of the stock (and exposing
them to liability for debts, if limitation of shareholder liability
hasn't yet appeared).  Executives might be employed, drawn from the
ranks of the or otherwise, to administer decisions about the company
and stock as "servants of the shareholders" to maximise returns on
behalf of shareholders.  And hey, executives of a company may become
terribly corrupt,  just as  "servants of the people" administering
various jointly-owned properties of a nation might.

Note that agreeing on particular uses of a property with other joint
owners is NOT the same as surrendering your part of ownership of the
property. We can still both own a field even if we agree it best for
you to grow hemp on it. If I'm married to someone, we can both continue
to own a house even if we agree it's best I convert the garage into a
shark aquarium.

> Whoever decides that is the  real owner.
    
Well, I wouldn't necessarily wildly disagree  with you if you are
asserting that it's executives and judges and arguing lawyers in the
West who are effectively "real owners", not the nominal property owners
- sure seems that way sometimes. 

Nor would I necessarily wildly disagree with you  that in large-scale
"communism" with central planning, the people in government allocating
stuff "in the best interests of the people" and the judges and
lawyer-analogues would be are effectively the "real owners" - in fact I 
came pretty close to expressing very similar sentiments.

"Unanimous consent or nothing happens" as in some small hippy communes,
would be a different matter, as would each joint owner agreeing to be
bound by majority vote among the joint owners, say, or agreeing to
decide based on outcomes of sporting events held for the purpose...

Of course, all this is just to illustrate that communal ownership
and no ownership are not at all "the same thing", I was not arguing for
or against communal ownership of assumed-ownable information OR
assumed-ownable stuff, particularly:   I don't agree in the first place
with ownership of information considered as independent of its physical
medium, only each physical copy of some information should be
"property".   [*if* ownership of information or copyrights exists, I'd
hold a possibility of joint ownership should exist and be recognised in
law, as appears to be the case for copyrights right now according to
one of the above links.]

.