Suggestive and emotive phrases are vehicles for the proliferation of novel ideas and through their usage impose interpretation of social and material facts. In the field of intellectual property 'enclosures' has become shorthand for the expansion of proprietary control over 'immaterial goods' such as trademarks and copyrights, but also for knowledge based processes as in pharmaceutical copyrights.

One knows that a point of ubiqiuity has been achieved when even those hostile to the reasonances of the term are obliged to allocate it a revered role in their discourse. Thus the entrepreneurial set's appropraition of 'enclosure' as part of an insurgency agaiunst the recapturing of the rergulatory system by yesterday's captians of industry and a stanching of innovation means that the phrase now has tow distinct set of partyiosans with veru different political obkjectives and understandings as to what the term applies. For strategic reasons there are actors in both camps who believe it prefereble to leave this oppuryinitic alliance of conveneijnec intact rather than pissing in the pot.

Anywayz. Over the weekend I reread much of Iain Boal and James Brook's excellent 'Resisting the Virtual Life", published in 1995. First time round it escaped my notice that the first section of the book is entitled "Information Enclosures" and given Iain and Jim's strong social radical trajectory it shoyuld be clear that their main interest is not in innovation. At this time mopst of the legal commenators were more concerned at the Communication's Decency Act than the all-devouring intellectual property behemoth. The WIPO WCT hadn't been passed. The NII reprt hadn't been issued. No Sony Bono, no NERT, no DMCA hell, No TRIPS. Thus I declare their use of it pre-figurative, bully for them....!!