Silent Theft

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert				April 29, 2002

David Bollier has just written an excellent book on the enclosure and
commercial exploitation of the commons, titled Silent Theft: The Private
Plunder of our Common Wealth <http://www.silenttheft.com>.

The book describes the broad scope of the commons -- such as the
environment, natural resources, our culture, genetic material, public
spaces, government research -- and the corporate looting of it.

"We are living in the midst of a massive business-led enclosure movement
that hides itself in plain sight," Bollier writes.  Silent Theft's great
contribution is to collect and distill material from dozens of fields of
inquiry to make this enclosure movement visible and easily understood.

The book is especially strong on corporate plunder of intellectual
property, the Internet commons, and the privatization of public
knowledge and federal drug and information resources.  But it also has
useful chapters on the commercialization of culture and public spaces
(including schools), and the academic commons, among many other topics.

Silent Theft is important history.  It will help environmental,
anti-commercialism and consumer activists to understand how their work
fits into the broader pattern of the assault on the commons. It is rich
with analogies we can use in efforts to protect different kinds of
commons.

But Silent Theft is no mere anti-corporate rant.  It argues persuasively
how the shrinkage of the commons hurts business, especially through the
concentration of market power and the stifling of innovation in computer
software, on the Internet, and in science, generally.

If we are to stop the commercialization of nearly everything, we first
need to know what the commons is, what we have lost, and how we lost
it.  Silent Theft is a great place to start.

<---->

Following is an old English folk poem, circa 1764, reprinted from Silent
Theft:  

They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common'
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

<----->

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-- 
Gary Ruskin | gary@commercialalert.org 
Commercial Alert | http://www.commercialalert.org/
Congressional Accountability Project | http://www.congressproject.org/
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