[American_Liberty] Re: Is "intellectual property" a valid concept?
The Bruce
> Can one really claim to *own* an idea or expression, if
> one asserts to have had it first?
Did Hank Reardon *own* the process by which his steel was
formulated, or did he *not*?
[snip]
> If IPR is a valid concept
If intellectual property rights are *not* a valid concept,
then I maintain that *no* property rights are.
> Will music disappear, as the moguls hint?
I'm not saying it will. I'm merely stating what, to me, is a
cut-&-dried principle: that intellectual property is the
same as anything else a man might create; it is the
property, by *right* of its creator; & by *right, its
creator is the only person who has any right to distribute
it.
---
Cogito ergo sum,
The Bruce
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The Bruce
concept,
> > then I maintain that *no* property rights are.
>
can
> protect.
Yes, that's the John Locke conception of property rights. I
can't fault the logic, though I do believe the implications
are rather beyond what most people would accept.
Essentially, what this means is that you don't have a right
to own more land then you can protect, & it can get
problematic for one man to afford enough armed guards to
defend, say, 10k acres. The Locke concept would say that the
land he is unable to protect or develope is free & clear to
anyone who wants to use it.
> If the RIAA knew what was good for it, instead of fighting
> Napster, they would find a way to get a piece of it.
I'd like to turn that around: if Napster had known what was
good for them, they'd have offered royalties to the
recording industry before they ever even went on-line. In
fact, that's exactly what Napster has now done.
IMO, the situation with Napster is *exactly* the way things
should work. One company/indidvidual has de jure rights to
something; another company/individual violates that right;
both sides seek a professional arbitrator to determine which
one is more at fault & therefore owes the other. What I'm
talking about here is something entirely different: the idea
that people seem to have, that merely by making & selling
recordings of music, the owners of that music have given up
any rights they had to it. People who would say things like
"Medical care is just like any other commodity thats
available on the free market" somehow don't apply that
*exact same reasoning* to intellectual property.
Michael J. Schneider
>
> > Can one really claim to *own* an idea or expression, if
> > one asserts to have had it first?
>
>Did Hank Reardon *own* the process by which his steel was
>formulated, or did he *not*?
No.
He was just smart enough not to tell anyone else how it was done. (If
Reardon whined about patents anywhere in "Atlas Shrugged", I don't
recall it, and I don't think Rand thought along those lines.)
This is an excellent analogy, however: No one, historically,
attempted to patent the process of steal-making. Rather, the
competition was in who was able to make it fastest and cheapest.
(Andrew Carnagie's "US Steel" was the clear winner, such that when he
threatened to enter the specialized markets for wire and other
finished products, a consortium of other steel-makers had banker J.P.
Morgan approach him with a buy-out offer. Carnagie sold for $600
million in turn-of-the-century dollars, and became the richest man on
earth.)
>[snip]
>
> > If IPR is a valid concept
>
>If intellectual property rights are *not* a valid concept,
>then I maintain that *no* property rights are.
How do you figure that?
Real property is finite: Two or more people cannot possess it
simultaneously. "Intellectual property" (which I am _this_ close to
calling an oxymoron) can be held by an unlimited number of people
without diminishing what the first person has. Copying music does not
cause your CD collection to disappear in the way that a stolen car
does.
> > Will music disappear, as the moguls hint?
>
>I'm not saying it will. I'm merely stating what, to me, is a
>cut-&-dried principle: that intellectual property is the
>same as anything else a man might create; it is the
>property, by *right* of its creator; & by *right, its
>creator is the only person who has any right to distribute it
And once it is "distributed" (i.e., sold), then it belongs to (is
owned by) OTHER PEOPLE. The creator loses his right to control it at
that point.
------ http://USFamily.Net/info - Unlimited Internet - From $8.99/mo! ------
Michael J. Schneider
> > If the RIAA knew what was good for it, instead of fighting
> > Napster, they would find a way to get a piece of it.
>
>I'd like to turn that around: if Napster had known what was
>good for them, they'd have offered royalties to the
>recording industry before they ever even went on-line. In
>fact, that's exactly what Napster has now done.
It's exactly why Napster will go out of business within a few years
-- and I'm sure they know it too. They're just going to make some
money off banner advertisements now that the government has made them
a household name.
Napster has *always* made me laugh out loud, ever since I first heard
of it two years ago: All they are is a medium of exchange convenient
enough for rank idiots to use (which is why they got to be big), in
much the same way as the world-wide-web itself is a much more
convenient way for you and I to kite news articles instead of using
cumbersome FTP searches.
There are already half-a-dozen clones of Napster out there in the
public domain, and anyone with three working brain cells can figure
out how to use Hotline and the "bulldog" tracker search-engine to
suck down any MP3 they want.
>IMO, the situation with Napster is *exactly* the way things
>should work. One company/indidvidual has de jure rights to
>something; another company/individual violates that right;
>both sides seek a professional arbitrator to determine which
>one is more at fault & therefore owes the other. What I'm
>talking about here is something entirely different: the idea
>that people seem to have, that merely by making & selling
>recordings of music, the owners of that music have given up
>any rights they had to it. People who would say things like
>"Medical care is just like any other commodity thats
>available on the free market" somehow don't apply that
>*exact same reasoning* to intellectual property.
They should. I do.
Note for example that the formula for Viagra would be tightly locked
up inside Pfeizer's white-coat heads were it not for the FDR making
them divulge what's in the stuff. Same as the formula for "Reardon
Metal". Without the government, it would be impossible for anyone to
manufacture their own Viagras to sell for profit without enormous
expenditures.
So what's the difference between hard-on pills and rock-&-roll CDs?
Nothing save a purely arbitrary difference in how hard it is for
non-original creators to make their own copies after having one in
their possession. Technology has rendered it drop-dead-simple to
duplicate music. Duplicating physical objects will have to wait for
Star-Trek type devices a century or more from now.
* * *
Right now, my cable television provider includes about thirty digital
music stations which play 24-hours a day. I could literally build a
database of over 90% of all recorded "hit" music in the 20th century
within a month if I set up a system to record everything on all those
channels which it hasn't already heard yet. It would be pretty
expensive right now to set up, but prices are dropping very fast.
Within ten years, it will be so cheap and easy that the argument
we're having will be a moot point. Within twenty years, storage media
will be so vast and fast that it will be possible to copy, in a
timely manner, all of the recorded music ever produced.
The Bruce
> gets there first should have some right. But owning an
> idea, that is granting total control of its use to the
first
> guy to claim it is another mater.
Why is it another matter?
> I am granting that the first guy to come up with a song,
> idea, etc. SHOULD have exclusive use.
In the first paragraph I quoted, you said the first man with
the idea should get "some right" -- now, you're willing to
grant "exclusive use". It would help to know which you mean,
or to which context you are referring, because these are
quite different ideas that substantially alter your point.
> But many of our ideas are the same as those in the minds
> of others. Granting any single holder rights of exclusive
> ownership is to deny the rights to all others.
You're missing the point. If I have the idea & set it on
paper before anyone else does, then they no longer *have any
rights in the matter to violate*. I've had a lot of ideas
for crap over the years, which someone else had the
wherewithal to actually convert from idea/concept to
sellable concrete object. Each time, I've gnashed my teeth &
wished I'd acted on the idea, but, since this other guy beat
me to the punch, it's *his*, & I no longer have any rights
in the matter to consider.
As I said the other day, when I write a song, or paint a
picture, or make a movie, I have produced a physical object.
I see the rules of commerce governing those physical objects
to be the exact same as they are with *any other* commodity
available on a free market. This is the basic law of
capitalism, which is why I have been so strenuously
insisting on intellectual property rights. Regardless of how
they are protected, I believe it is imperative that they are
respected.
---
Cogito ergo sum,
The Bruce
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/American_Liberty/files/al.htm
Dave Winslow
----- Original Message -----
From: John T. Kennedy <jken...@iname.com>
To: <American...@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 08:20 AM
Subject: Re: [American_Liberty] Re: Is "intellectual property" a valid
concept?
>
>
> Dave Winslow wrote:No one argues that their idea was not theirs, only
> that it may not be
>
> > exclusive to them. It happens all the time, people are always seeing
> > things
> > developed that they themselves had thought of. If there is a system we
> > all
> > freely buy into, an idea registry, then the first guy there gets the
> > prize.
> > Who would not agree?
>
> Anyone who would prefer theft to honest work. Do you suppose such people
> exist?
>
Hey John,
Sure there are plenty in this world, but in a better anarchist one, where we
would all be forced to take responsibility for ourselves, the value of
mutual cooperation and voluntary participation in protection contracts would
be expected. This would not be because everyone would necessarily put ethics
above their self interest, but because self interest would find great
effectiveness and security in ethics.
Dave W.
Billy Beck
> From: Dave Winslow [mailto:Da...@Winslow.mv.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 7:09 AM
> From: Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com>
> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 12:52 PM
> > > From: Dave Winslow [mailto:Da...@Winslow.mv.com]
> > > From: John T. Kennedy <jken...@iname.com>
> > >>>>> Great point, I didn't realize how this worked. How about
> > >>>>> everything becomes public domain at death?
> >
> > >>>> Like your house? That amounts to an estate tax of 100%.
> >
> > >>> Who said anything about tax. Public domain is not
> > >>> government, not yet.
> >
> > >> It seems to amount to much the same thing to me. You're
> > >> talking about ending property rights based on a perceived
> > >> need of the social collective.
> > >
> > > No, I am talking about the fact that no "owner" of an idea
> > > can show that it would never exist had he not thought of it.
> >
> > He doesn't *have* to. You're talking about forcing
> > someone to prove a negative, and elementary logic students
> > understand how stupid that is.
>
> I am not forcing anything.
Well, then, what's the implication of your words "can show"? <shrug>
"Force", "demand", call it what you want, but the fact is that your
standard of "never existing otherwise" is an absurd thing for anyone
to have to prove, and most especially in light of the fact of the
idea's existence *as* claimed by the "owner".
> I am, for exactly the reasons you give,
> suggesting that a person can not prove they are the
> exclusive owner of an idea. That being the case, why should they
> be granted exclusive and perpetual ownership?
Precedence. That's why. The thing we're talking about here is
*marketable* ideas, which is a crucial distinction. We're not talking
about "ideas" open to common parlance, like the idea of using a
screwdriver to pry the lid off a paint can, but rather ideas of
special origin and brought to *market* parlance: valued in terms of
and exchanged at market prices, like the screwdriver or paint can lid
itself.
> > The simple and straightforward positive fact of a new idea is
> > quite sufficiently probative.
>
> New to who?
Markets. That's where the action we're talking about is.
> To assume the first person to come along in a
> public way and express an idea is the only instance of such is
> not logical.
> > In 1903, the Wright Bros. solved the
> > problem of controlled directional flight with the
> > mechanism of warping wings.
[...]
> No one argues that their idea was not theirs, only that it
> may not be exclusive to them. It happens all the time, people are
> always seeing things developed that they themselves had
> thought of. If there is a system we all freely buy into, an idea
> registry, then the first guy there gets the prize.
> Who would not agree? The question is, should that prize be
> exclusive and perpetual ownership.
What other sort is there? Look: ownership includes the right of
disposal. Disposal is essential to the concept of property: if at any
point the right of disposal is abrogated, you're not talking about
"ownership" anymore.
Here's more bad news: Property can transcend one's own life, in the
fact of others' lives: the right of disposal necessarily includes the
right of gift to designees.
> > The fact is that they did, and you're making up something that's
just
> > plain dumb.
>
> What would that be?
That logic goof about proving the negative.
> > Get your head out of your ass.
> >
> Fuck you Billy, but as to your point, such as it is, I
> acknowledge that the Wright Brothers were first to
> come up with their idea. I have always in this thread
> granted that the guy who gets there first should
> have some right.
Jeez, that's swell. You give 'im about as much as is leftover after
you're done making up a concept of "right".
> But owning an idea, that is granting total control of its
> use to the first guy to claim it is another mater.
No, it's the same matter alright, it's just that the idea of a race
to productivity bugs you.
> > This...
> >
> > > On the other hand, with no protection of his
> > > right to exclusive use of his idea (song, book, etc.) he will
> > > be deprived of its market value because such things can be
> > > immediately copied etc.
> >
> > ...is merely rationale for theft. "If nobody can stop
> > me, I can take it."
>
> I don't understand your comment. I am granting that the
> first guy to come up with a song, idea, etc. SHOULD have
> exclusive use. How is that rational for theft?
It's a thread that runs through a great deal of the Napster action,
for instance. People can do it - the technology makes it possible -
so they do it, and the ethical dimension of it just doesn't occur to
them.
> > Anyone arguing along these lines is despicable.
That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.
> Argument by intimidation, very unbecoming.
Who said it was an argument? It's an evaluation. A *judgment*.
> I am looking for reasonable ways to resolve good arguments
> on both sides. I don't presume anything I have said to be
> ethical positions, only thoughts about the problem. That
> problem again is that we all have ideas, and they are ours,
> and we own them in a sense. But many of our ideas are the
> same as those in the minds of others. Granting any single holder
> rights of exclusive ownership is to deny the rights to all others.
Again: this is not about "ideas" that generally. This is about the
value of specific ideas at market, and what it takes to apply them to
specific value-exchanges. It's about meeting the market with one's
ideas so specially that the market responds in kind, and for all the
same reasons why markets exist to begin with.
Billy
VRWC Fronteer
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/
tcro...@hotmail.com
> John Kennedy wrote:
> > I don't see why anyone other than the owner ever gets a right
> > to that expression so long as the owner takes steps to secure
> > those rights.
>
> [...]
> I logged onto Napster a couple times. I did searches on all
> the small, struggling bands I collect -- & a few which I
> don't -- to see how much of their material was available. I
> searched for ZERO, Max Creek, Strangefolk, etc. -- not a one
> to be found. Then, I did a search on Britney Spears -- the
> search was halted after 100 entries were found, with the
> implication that hundreds more were available. Scanning the
> list, I wasn't at all surprised to see that 99% of the
> entries were tracks from Ms Spears' CD, which is perfectly
> available in any record store in the country. I did the same
> search on Metallica, & found exactly the same result. All
> you need do to obtain those recordings is be *ethical* &
> *honest* enough to go to the local store & plunk down some
> cold, hard cash.
Exactly so. I had hoped the same thing when rental videos first
hit the market. Great thing, I supposed, for all the
experimental theater groups and innovative film makers. Now they
would not have the expense of distribution, hiring theaters,
finding their niche audiences, and competing on the same rails
the Big Boys have used for their billion dollar money machines.
Wrong.
The video rental companies, by and large, CATER to the trash
pictures. Whole sections are devoted to Skin, others to Blood,
and others to Blackened Brains. Some few shops provide decent
Hollywood classic libraries.
But rare is the shop with significant collections of ballets or
operas. I have yet to see one with circuses, raw Olympic
competition footage, or avant-guard theater. Why don't the
Broadway performance musicals produce videos and sell them after
the shows have folded?
What happened here?
> I do not in any way endorse the idea that the high price of
> CD's makes it OK to copy them illegally, nor do I endorse
> the idea that it's morally acceptable to steal from record
> companies to "pay them back" for the decades they've spent
> ripping off artists.
Let me discuss this issue rationally and with principles. In the
first place, it is not rational that only a few performance
artists in the world are allowed to make their living as artists.
But this is one consequence of the phonograph and the radio. One
musician can now service millions with a single performance
instead of just a few thousand. As a result, the earnings of
that one musician are multiplied by the thousands.
Before WW II, who ever heard of a musician living in a mansion,
just from his earnings? And who can today afford to go to a live
classical music concert?
As went the music industry by dint of the phonograph and radio,
so went theater by dint of film and television. The actors are
rich beyond the avarice of kings, and yet who can today afford to
go to the live theater? In fact, who would want to go? The
theater companies are largely government funded, so they produce
plays that have little interest for the ordinary public.
The "intellectual property" of a performance is ONLY a property
issue by dint of law. It would not have to be so. When an
architect designs a building, he does not own all images of the
building -- and why not? Why can't he sue me if I sell
photographs?
I can take your photograph on a public street and sell a million
copies of your face to the world -- and not give you a dime. If
ever there were a theft of intellectual property, wouldn't that
be it? Should it be?
But if I take an open-air recording of a concert and sell it, I
am liable. It seems to me a wrinkle in the law.
In defining what should be right or wrong, we must state the
criterion for the determination. In the US, patent law was
devised for the expressed purpose of enlightened socialism. The
originator (reads the patent laws) should be allowed to profit
for a limited period in order to profit from his work, but then
the work should pass into the public domain in order to enrich
society at large.
Thus, if our criterion is the ultimate public good, we should
acknowledge that the current copyright law has resulted in
exorbitant riches in the hands of a few, with devastation of the
live performance market. If that's the scene we want to foster,
then let's go for it, complete with the FBI chasing down
copyright violators with public money to enforce the private
property rights of the excessively rich in Hollywood and New
York.
On the other hand, if we acknowledge that a blonde singer brings
no more good to the public weal than the average steel-ship
riveter, and the average record company brings no more than the
average furniture manufacturer, let's arrange things to adjust
their earnings and quit robbing the one to enrich the other.
On the other hand, if our criterion for determining these things
has nothing to do with public weal and everything to do with an
inner sense of fitness and rightness, let us map out a complete
strategy for IPR.
A photograph of a modern city scene contains may IPR violations,
all of which should be compensated before the photograph is sold.
The clothing designers of the people on the street, the auto
designers, the building architects, the faces of passers-by, the
arrangement of clothing on the pedestrians, the landscaping in
gardens, -- everything in the artificial environment is an
intellectual production of someone who owns it and could be
charging rent for the trespass.
Personally, I know that when I want a recording, I want top
quality -- I don't want bootleg quality. That is the reason I do
not bother collecting recordings from the radio or trading MPGs.
If it is good enough to own, it is good enough to own the best
of. IOW, I want studio quality on a CD or DVD. And I buy what I
want.
I assume the same is true of others, and the numbers seem to work
out. Britney Speers' record sales have not fallen as a result of
Napster -- most record sales have gone up, instead. The crying
and sighing of the record company fat cats is utterly debunked by
the plodding shut-down of Napster. I know that if they were
really hurting, Napster would have been gone within weeks, not
years, and their hip-pocket use of the FBI is good evidence of
this statement.
Thus, it is all crocodile tears.
Now, just to set this record straight, I am not personally callous to
intellectual property. When I use shareware and I like it, I pay
for it, without the enforcement of timed product failure. I respect
the people who do the work, and I want to see them rewarded.
On the other hand, when bootleg copies of Microsoft products have
fallen into my hands, I have used them without qualm. Regardless
of the statements of Mr. Kennedy, I KNOW the Microsoft history of
stealing software, including the high profile case when they ripped
off the "Stacker" disc compression source code to make DOS 5.0.
Stacker was not the only case, from code ripoff, through contract
violation, betrayal, and concept ripoff. Libertarians and
anarchists are fond of citing public reputation for keeping people
honest? -- My attitutude is the natural consequence of reputation
gone bad -- I do not respect improprietous property.
I have appreciated everyone's work on this issue, and I am sorry to
see the thread come to an end without a real consensus. I am hoping
I am wrong, and that it will go for a while yet. To argue this case,
let us start from principle, not the patchwork of existing laws, most
of which serve some special interest.
TCross
Dave Winslow
----- Original Message -----
From: Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com>
To: <American...@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 12:52 PM
concept?
>
> > From: Dave Winslow [mailto:Da...@Winslow.mv.com]
> > Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 5:56 AM
>
> > From: John T. Kennedy <jken...@iname.com>
> > Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2001 23:29 PM
>
> >>>>> Great point, I didn't realize how this worked. How about
> >>>>> everything becomes public domain at death?
>
> >>>> Like your house? That amounts to an estate tax of 100%.
>
> >>> Who said anything about tax. Public domain is not
> >>> government, not yet.
>
> >> It seems to amount to much the same thing to me. You're
> >> talking about ending property rights based on a perceived
> >> need of the social collective.
> >
> > No, I am talking about the fact that no "owner" of an idea
> > can show that it would never exist had he not thought of it.
>
> He doesn't *have* to. You're talking about forcing someone to prove
> a negative, and elementary logic students understand how stupid that
> is.
I am not forcing anything. I am, for exactly the reasons you give,
suggesting that a person can not prove they are the exclusive owner of an
idea. That being the case, why should they be granted exclusive and
perpetual ownership?
> The simple and straightforward positive fact of a new idea is
> quite sufficiently probative.
New to who? To assume the first person to come along in a public way and
express an idea is the only instance of such is not logical.
> In 1903, the Wright Bros. solved the
> problem of controlled directional flight with the mechanism of warping
> wings. Glenn Curtis was flying within a very short time, but he had a
> problem: he couldn't *turn* his airplane, until he studied and
> understood the mechanics of the Wrights' control designs. They had
> the idea first, it was theirs, and it was never necessary for them to
> prove that it wouldn't have existed if they hadn't thought of it.
No one argues that their idea was not theirs, only that it may not be
exclusive to them. It happens all the time, people are always seeing things
developed that they themselves had thought of. If there is a system we all
freely buy into, an idea registry, then the first guy there gets the prize.
Who would not agree? The question is, should that prize be exclusive and
perpetual ownership.
> The
> fact is that they did, and you're making up something that's just
> plain dumb.
What would that be?
>
> Get your head out of your ass.
>
Fuck you Billy, but as to your point, such as it is, I acknowledge that the
Wright Brothers were first to come up with their idea. I have always in this
thread granted that the guy who gets there first should have some right. But
owning an idea, that is granting total control of its use to the first guy
to claim it is another mater.
> This...
>
> > On the other hand, with no protection of his
> > right to exclusive use of his idea (song, book, etc.) he will
> > be deprived of its market value because such things can be
> > immediately copied etc.
>
> ...is merely rationale for theft. "If nobody can stop me, I can take
> it."
I don't understand your comment. I am granting that the first guy to come up
with a song, idea, etc. SHOULD have exclusive use. How is that rational for
theft? The only question is should the first guy have perpetual and
exclusive rights over something that is not necessarily exclusive at all,
i.e. an idea.
>
> Anyone arguing along these lines is despicable.
>
>
> Billy
Argument by intimidation, very unbecoming.
I am looking for reasonable ways to resolve good arguments on both sides. I
don't presume anything I have said to be ethical positions, only thoughts
about the problem. That problem again is that we all have ideas, and they
are ours, and we own them in a sense. But many of our ideas are the same as
those in the minds of others. Granting any single holder rights of exclusive
ownership is to deny the rights to all others.
Dave W.
Billy Beck
> From: John T. Kennedy <jken...@iname.com>
> Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2001 23:29 PM
>>>>> Great point, I didn't realize how this worked. How about
>>>>> everything becomes public domain at death?
>>>> Like your house? That amounts to an estate tax of 100%.
>>> Who said anything about tax. Public domain is not
>>> government, not yet.
>> It seems to amount to much the same thing to me. You're
>> talking about ending property rights based on a perceived
>> need of the social collective.
>
> No, I am talking about the fact that no "owner" of an idea
> can show that it would never exist had he not thought of it.
He doesn't *have* to. You're talking about forcing someone to prove
a negative, and elementary logic students understand how stupid that
is. The simple and straightforward positive fact of a new idea is
quite sufficiently probative. In 1903, the Wright Bros. solved the
problem of controlled directional flight with the mechanism of warping
wings. Glenn Curtis was flying within a very short time, but he had a
problem: he couldn't *turn* his airplane, until he studied and
understood the mechanics of the Wrights' control designs. They had
the idea first, it was theirs, and it was never necessary for them to
prove that it wouldn't have existed if they hadn't thought of it. The
fact is that they did, and you're making up something that's just
plain dumb.
Get your head out of your ass.
This...
> On the other hand, with no protection of his
> right to exclusive use of his idea (song, book, etc.) he will
> be deprived of its market value because such things can be
> immediately copied etc.
...is merely rationale for theft. "If nobody can stop me, I can take
it."
Anyone arguing along these lines is despicable.
Billy
VRWC Fronteer
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/
John T. Kennedy
Dave Winslow wrote:No one argues that their idea was not theirs, only
that it may not be
> exclusive to them. It happens all the time, people are always seeing
> things
> developed that they themselves had thought of. If there is a system we
> all
> freely buy into, an idea registry, then the first guy there gets the
> prize.
> Who would not agree?
Anyone who would prefer theft to honest work. Do you suppose such people
exist?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/American_Liberty/files/al.htm