different regulation, not looser (Score 4, Interesting)

The article on increasing congestion in namespace ends by suggesting that ``perhaps the law just needs to relax...[a] system based on property rights in names may be the wrong approach.'' While it may be true that we want the current implementation of property rights in names to be relaxed, it is also generally true that as common resources --- highways, clean air, fisheries --- become congested we need stronger rules for allocating those resources, not weaker ones. The congestion of the namespace, together with modern commercialism, means that the market use of language increasingly intersects with non-market use. This means that the context of speech which, as Gleick notes, had served to differentiate one private meaning of a word from another commercial one is breaking down. (In order to stay in character, I must say...) On the one hand, this supports Gleick's conclusion: the control of commercial language increasingly infringes on non-market use. This point is expressed particularly well by Rosemary Coombe in ``The cultural life of intellectual property.'' The book argues that the creation of meaning and value in a name is more a function of consumer use of the product than of corporate construction and therefore control of a name should not be exclusive to the originating company. However the real picture is not so clear. In the case of ``famous'' marks, tightly controlled language is just what buyers of a name want. The value of the good that they buy, ``Nike'' for example, is at least as much caught up in the name as in the product. While some extra-corporate uses of the name are positive (and certainly companies and courts need to be more discerning in their attempts to suppress these) consumers of the goods, as much as the company, have an interest in blocking negative associations with the mark. If I have invested several hundred dollars in Nike paraphernalia, and by association invested that money in my image as a Nike-wearing-guy, the last thing I want is to have to reinvest in a new label because the Nike name has been devalued. At the same time, it is true that property rights have been used to suppress relevant consumer information. Even more troubling, this right to control meaning has been extended in some states to generic names --- witness the (failed) product disparagement lawsuit brought against Oprah for her derogatory comments about beef --- surely a sign that the laws on names need loosening, not tightening. But again, there are complications. In addition to increasingly rival uses of language, we have accelerating change in technology and trade. This means that both in owned (trademarks) and unowned (descriptive) language, the attributes of the goods underlying a particular name might be shifting more rapidly than consumers' understanding of the name --- consider the debate on whether ``food'' includes genetically modified products. The potential distance between use of a name and consumer understanding of the name suggest the need for greater scrutiny of use, not less. Saying that control of a name should not be exclusive to a particular corporate entity or entities is not the same thing as saying that control of language should be loosened overall. We are coming to a point in crisis in market language analogous to the crisis in natural resource commons. Gleick's article illustrates this, but points toward a need for new solutions, not necessarily just loosening the old ones.