Two responses.

First, on the “public domain landmarks and cultural reference points” business, I am so with you on that. Visual communication is as much a part of the common lexicon as is written communication, and if an icon becomes so common as to be identifiable as disconnected from any particular time or place, it ought to be thought of simply as a “word.” See “xeroxing.”

Second, re the gun exchange program. Too often, intent in law is not realized in practice. I think of another famous (and controversial) exchange program, the needle exchange program, where heroin users can exchange dirty needles for clean ones, no questions asked. Drug control laws have (arguably) reasonable intent, that being public health, but this program would seem in contrast to directly achieve those ends.

Perhaps there is an instinct to think that a problem is “solved” once a law is passed whose intent was to solve it. Certainly, in the first few years of such a law being in effect, its actual effects (good or bad) are hard to see. Maybe the irony is that it is long after the sense sets in that the problem is being solved that the secondary issues begin to assert themselves.

On a completely different tack, the following is a pretty simplistic reading of American law (Kristen, care to comment?), but it seems as though laws in the U.S. are generally “negative” (i.e. “Thou shalt not” and so forth). Even a law which establishes a federal organization or office is really roping in what was once a rather libertine process into some sort of structure. This errors come where people do those things which are verboten. Often, this produces a change in the law, either to make it harder for someone to run up against a previous law or to loosen the previous law altogether.

This seems to contrast with the situation in science, where a scientific law is actually a “positive” statement; “thou shalt” fall at 9.8 m/s/s. Of course scientific law also has errors, coming in when things fail to do what they shalt (in which case here also the law is revised to reflect the new data). I should say here that not all scientific laws are deterministic; some are probabilistic, and so take the form “thou shalt do A some of the time and do B the rest of the time.”

I suppose in a totalitarian govt there would be more deterministic (hence positive) laws, like “thou shalt show fealty to Dear Leader on a daily basis” (although in practice they would manifest as negative; people would only do what they could not not do without being arrested).

Perhaps what is strange about this tix for guns program is that it looks more like (probabilistic) scientific law than “legal law;” one will positively receive b-ball tickets in exchange for a gun, positively either/or. Of course, one could say that the law is actually constraining federal employees to execute this exchange rate, but that of course is why this is a simplistic perspective.

By Josh on 02.22.06 10:50 am

It’s a good thing they don’t do that in Seattle. I have the feeling that a lot of people would be trying to turn in Sonics tickets in exchange for guns.

Go Seahawks(tm)!

By Kai on 02.22.06 1:28 pm

On a completely different tack, the following is a pretty simplistic reading of American law (Kristen, care to comment?), but it seems as though laws in the U.S. are generally “negative” (i.e. “Thou shalt not” and so forth).

I think you hit on the reason for this with your later comment about totalitarianism. In a programming context, rights systems are usually permissive or restrictive, and the US legal system (again to be utterly simplistic) is a permissive system. In the same way that the states are granted any powers not specifically delegated to the federal government, people are given any rights not explicitly denied by law (state, local, or federal). Were we to live in a restrictive system, we would have those more deterministic laws. Which, honestly, I think would be a very bad idea, since it would imply that anything not specifically declared as legal would be illegal.

It would also probably be a ton more overhead, legislatively speaking. Then again, maybe that would give our government something to do. Having lunches with lobbyists and flying private jets around can only take up so much of their time.

By Dan on 02.22.06 2:03 pm

From that BBC article:

Las Vegas already has a dump for old neon signs, the so-called Yesco graveyard.

Not only did we fail to get Krispy Kreme donuts in Vegas, we didn’t go to the neon sign graveyard? Damn, guys.

By Dan on 02.22.06 2:07 pm

I wonder whether gun exchange programs really work. That is, we need to objectively measure how many guns there are in the “wild” before and after these programs. And also before and after legislation.

Meanwhile the “thou shalt / not” law wording reminds me of Margaret Atwood’s concept (from “The Handmaid’s Tale”) of two types of freedom: Freedom To, and Freedom From. Freedom To would be things like our freedom of speech and religion. Freedom From could be the freedom from gunfights on the street, or terrorist attacks. The purpose of government, within this framework, is to balance the two types of freedom.

By zandperl on 02.22.06 9:03 pm

Josh said “Kristen, care to comment?”

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: First of all, Xerox spends a lot of time and effort defending their trademark. It’s not simply a “word.” It’s actually one of the most hotly contested trademarks, which has been successfully defended on multiple occasions.

Any aspect of the law is complex, and trademark law is certainly no exception. Companies spend so much time developing and then defending their trademarks that it would be pretty unfair to have a loophole in trademark law that could make them “public domain landmarks and cultural reference points.” Suddenly, businesses would have to worry about being too visible, about what the repercussions of success will be, about how their competitors will use their success against them. Once you start to chip away at someone’s right, it’s easy to lose the right entirely. Giving the public rights in regard to trademark would also bring up questions as to whether the public has the right to sue if a company chooses to change it’s trademark. It all gets messy very quickly.

Regarding the gun exchange program, I think it’s a good idea. It’s nearly impossible to write federal gun control legislation. Hell, it’s nearly impossible to write gun control legislation on any level. The meaning of the second amendment may be a widely debate topic, but until the Supreme Court interprets it differently people have the right to have guns. Period. States can try to limit that right with legislation. But in the end, there will always be guns on our streets, legal or otherwise.

This program is obviously aimed at poorer, inner city kids and young adults. One might even argue that this program aims to take the guns out of the hands of young gang members. Because honestly, the affluent gun-owning couple in the nice parts of the city can afford to go buy their own Sixers tickets. If Philadelphia pulled in 900 guns over the course of 3 days by giving out jerseys, then tickets will probably be a bigger draw. I think that taking any guns off the street makes the program a success. It might not lower the murder rate. (After all, people can kill with innumerable things beyond guns.) But they’ve developed a social program that accomplishes a goal that really no legislation can.

And finally, the thing Josh actually asked me about, my thoughts on the “negative” law debate. Josh, I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to compare the laws of men to the laws of science. They’re just too different. I think you and Dan and Andria each make some really good points about why it seems like most of the laws in the U.S. are “negative.” It’s sort of easier to say “you can’t do these five things” rather than “you can do this list of 6 million things.”

However, I think it should be noted that there are a lot of laws on the federal, state, and local levels that you would never even think about. There are laws that simply establish legal definitions of things. Most tax law is actually “positive” in nature. It’s the “you can’t do this” laws that stick out in people’s minds because they’re the easiest to grasp and the most likely to be confronted in daily life.

Also, if I’m understanding your intention, I think that merely using the words “shall not” in a law does necessarily make it fit your definition of “negative” laws. Looking at the Bill of Rights, nearly all of those amendments contain such wording, but the end result is limiting what the government can do and broadening what individuals can do. (You can bear arms. You can worship freely.)

Anyway, that’s my 30 minutes worth of thought on the subject.

PS- Jason, I can totally make it over 18 seconds on that game… but then again, I have super vision.

By Kristen on 02.23.06 10:54 am

Okay, well seeing as everyone has thoroughly demolished my rather spurious thought, I guess I’ll just mention that when I brought this up at a dinner for logicians the patriarch of the group, a rather spry 70ish man, insistently began talking about the virtues of trial by combat (in the context of the legal system). Apparently the Scots have extensive rules governing it. Believable, but odd…

By Josh on 02.23.06 11:33 am

Apparently the Scots have extensive rules governing [trial by combat].

And that is why I love Scotland.

Man, Kristen’s comment is basically book length. That is awesome. If you ever write a book, H.C., I’ll definitely buy it.

By Dan on 02.23.06 2:25 pm

I can respect the opinion that it would be unfair to corporate trademark holders to just pull the rug out from under them all of a sudden. I would also like to point out, though, that I’m certainly not the first person to suggest that intellectual property law has moved away from its original intended functions (and the people from whom I borrow this opinion are, by and large, lawyers and legal scholars).

Leaving aside copyright for the time being, consider that the purpose of trademark law was originally cast in terms of the public interest, whereas to defend it now requires casting it in terms of corporate interests. It was once about avoiding consumer confusion and aiding in product differentiation; it is now about who gets to regulate the use of words and images that are as ubiquitous in our daily environment as trees and birds, if not more so. While there are technically legal exemptions for “fair use,” the average person can’t really afford to take her chances in a big court battle if some trademark holder decides “that’s not a valid use of our intellectual property.” And so you get folks getting sued for making parody logos and such.

Even in the example linked above, the language of the court’s opinion reflects the original purpose of copyright law—but can we honestly say that the Starbucks parody logo labeled “Consumer Whore” is in fact “confusingly similar” such that people would have a hard time determining whether Starbucks really produced it? Why is it that cartoons can be considered protected by parody but t-shirts cannot, as if moving the same image from one medium to another renders it no longer “speech”?

The Roman empire was not capable of preventing Vulgar Latin from developing into Romance languages. McDonald’s wasn’t able to get the word “McJob” removed from the dictionary because it seems unfair. Neither should Xerox and TiVo be able to direct the development of the English language just because they have more money to burn than the average citizen. If your corporate brand is faltering, there are alternatives to insisting that the world see things your way.

By Jason on 02.23.06 2:40 pm

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