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+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.77 -->
+
+<title>The Curious History of Komongistan (Busting the term
+&ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo;) - GNU Project - Free Software
+Foundation</title>
+
+ <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/komongistan.translist" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+
+<h2>The Curious History of Komongistan (Busting the term
+&ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo;)</h2>
+
+<p>by <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard M. Stallman</a></p>
+
+<p>The purpose of this parable is to illustrate just how misguided the
+term &ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo; is. When I say that <a
+href="/philosophy/not-ipr.html">the term &ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo;
+is an incoherent overgeneralization</a>, that it lumps together laws that
+have very little in common, and that its use is an obstacle to clear
+thinking about any of those laws, many can't believe I really mean what I
+say. So sure are they that these laws are related and similar, species of
+the same genus as it were, that they suppose I am making a big fuss about
+small differences. Here I aim to show how fundamental the differences are.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty years ago everyone used to recognize the nations of Korea,
+Mongolia and Pakistan as separate and distinct. In truth, they have
+no more in common than any three randomly chosen parts of the world,
+since they have different geographies, different cultures, different
+languages, different religions, and separate histories. Today,
+however, their differentness is mostly buried under their joint label
+of &ldquo;Komongistan&rdquo;.</p>
+
+<p>Few today recall the marketing campaign that coined that name:
+companies trading with South Korea, Mongolia and Pakistan called those
+three countries &ldquo;Komongistan&rdquo; as a simple-sounding description
+of their &ldquo;field&rdquo; of activity. (They didn't trouble themselves
+about the division of Korea or whether &ldquo;Pakistan&rdquo; should
+include what is now Bangladesh.) This label gave potential investors the
+feeling that they had a clearer picture of what these companies did, as
+well as tending to stick in their minds. When the public saw the ads, they
+took for granted that these countries formed a natural unit, that they
+had something important in common. First scholarly works, then
+popular literature, began to talk about Komongistan.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of papers in prestigious journals of Komongistan Studies
+actually treat some aspect of one of the three &ldquo;regions of
+Komongistan&rdquo;, using &ldquo;Komongistan&rdquo; only as a label. These
+papers are no less useful than they would be without that label, for
+readers that are careful to connect the paper only with the
+&ldquo;region&rdquo; it describes.</p>
+
+<p>However, scholars yearn to generalize, so they often write so as to
+extend their conclusions to &ldquo;more&rdquo; of Komongistan, which
+introduces error. Other papers compare two of the &ldquo;regions of
+Komongistan&rdquo;. These papers can be valid too if understood as
+comparisons of unrelated countries. However, the term
+&ldquo;Komongistan&rdquo; leads people to focus on comparing Pakistan with
+Mongolia and Korea, rather than with nearby India, Afghanistan and Iran,
+with which it has had historical relationships.</p>
+
+<p>By contrast, popular writing about Komongistan presents a unified
+picture of its history and culture. This bogus picture encourages
+readers to equate each of the three &ldquo;regions&rdquo; with the whole of
+&ldquo;Komongistan&rdquo;. They are fascinated by Jenghiz Khan, the great
+Komongistani (actually Mongol) conqueror. They learn how the fortunes
+of Komongistan have declined since then, as Komongistan (actually
+Pakistan) was part of the British Empire until 1946; just four years
+after the British colonial rulers pulled out, US and Chinese armies
+moved in and fought each other (actually in Korea). Reading about the
+Afghan Taliban's relations with neighboring Komongistan (actually
+Pakistan), they get a feeling of deeper understanding from considering
+the matter in the &ldquo;broader Komongistani context&rdquo;, but this
+supposed understanding is spurious.</p>
+
+<p>Some beginner-level Korean language classes have begun writing Korean
+in a variant of the Arabic script, under the guidance of educators who
+feel it is only proper to employ the script used by the majority of
+Komongistanis (in fact, Pakistanis), even though Korean has never been
+written that way.</p>
+
+<p>When these confusions are pointed out to professors of Komongistan
+Studies, they respond by insisting that the name Komongistan is
+useful, illuminating, and justified by various general characteristics
+shared by all of Komongistan, such as:</p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>All of Komongistan is in Asia. (True.)</li>
+
+ <li>All of Komongistan has been the scene of great power rivalries.
+ (True but misleading, since the three &ldquo;parts&rdquo; were involved in
+different rivalries between different powers at different times.)</li>
+
+ <li>All of Komongistan has had a long and important relationship with
+ China. (False, since Pakistan has not.)</li>
+
+ <li>All of Komongistan has been influenced by Buddhism. (True, but
+ there's little trace of this in Pakistan today.)</li>
+
+ <li>Nearly all of Komongistan was unified by the Khagan Mongke.
+ (True, but so was most of Asia.)</li>
+
+ <li>All of Komongistan was subject to Western colonization. (False,
+ since Korea was subjugated by Japan, not a European country.)</li>
+
+ <li>All the &ldquo;regions of Komongistan&rdquo; have nuclear weapons.
+ (False, since Mongolia does not have them, and neither does South
+ Korea.)</li>
+
+ <li>Each &ldquo;region&rdquo; of Komongistan has an &lsquo;a&rsquo; in
+ its name. (True.)</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>The professors are aware of the facts which make some of those
+generalizations untrue, but in their yearning to justify the term,
+they overlook what they know. When reminded of these facts, they call
+them minor exceptions.</p>
+
+<p>They also cite the widespread social adoption of the name
+Komongistan&mdash;the university Departments of Komongistan Studies, the
+shelves labeled Komongistan in bookstores and libraries, the erudite
+journals such as Komongistan Review, the State Department's
+Undersecretary for Komongistan Affairs, the travel advisories for
+visitors to Komongistan, and many more&mdash;as proof that the name
+Komongistan is so embedded in society that we could not imagine doing
+without it. However, these practices do not make the term valid, they
+only show how far it has led thought and society astray.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the discussion they decide to keep the confusing name,
+but pledge to do more to teach students to note the differences
+between the three &ldquo;regions&rdquo; of Komongistan. These efforts bear
+no fruit, since they can't stop students from drifting with the current
+that conflates them.</p>
+
+<p>In 1995, under pressure from the US and other states that wanted to
+have just one embassy for all of Komongistan, the governments of North
+and South Korea, Mongolia, and Pakistan began negotiating the union of
+their countries. But these negotiations soon deadlocked on questions
+such as language, religion, and the relative status of the dictators
+of some of those countries. There is little chance that reality will
+soon change to resemble the fiction of Komongistan.</p>
+
+<p>The parable of Komongistan understates the stretch of the term
+&ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo;, which is used to refer to a lot more
+laws than the three that people mostly think of. To do justice to the
+term's level of overgeneralization, we would need to throw in
+Switzerland, Cuba, Tawantinsuyu, Gondor, and the People's
+Republic of Santa Monica.</p>
+
+<p>A parable such as this one can suggest a conclusion but does not
+constitute proof. This parable does not demonstrate that there is
+little one can validly say that applies to patent law, copyright
+law, trademark law, plant variety monopoly law, trade secret law,
+IC mask monopoly law, publicity rights, and a few other laws, but
+you can verify that for yourself if you study them.</p>
+
+<p>However, simply entertaining the possibility that these laws may be
+as different as this parable suggests is enough to show that the
+term &ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo; should be rejected, so that
+people can learn about and judge each of these laws without the assumption
+they are similar. See <a href="/philosophy/not-ipr.html">
+Did You Say &ldquo;Intellectual Property&rdquo;? It's a Seductive
+Mirage</a>, for more explanation.</p>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+<div class="unprintable">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
+<a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org">&lt;gnu@gnu.org&gt;</a>.
+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
+the FSF. Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
+to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org">&lt;webmasters@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+ replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+ We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+ translations. However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+ Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
+ to <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org">
+ &lt;web-translators@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+ <p>For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+ our web pages, see <a
+ href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+ README</a>. -->
+Please see the <a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting translations
+of this article.</p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
+ files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should
+ be under CC BY-ND 3.0 US. Please do NOT change or remove this
+ without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first.
+ Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
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+
+ If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too.
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+ being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system).
+
+ There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers
+ Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. -->
+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 2015 Richard Stallman</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p class="unprintable">Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2015/04/21 15:27:30 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>