Intellectual Property - Common Is That They
(DOUGLAS KEARNEY, Rize O Electric Revolution)
Language Game: Common Is That They
A string of words claimed and unlicensed, each word probable from the last (in the high-frequency sample from the Corpus of Contemporary American English) but never appearing after the previous three (in all of Google Books). Likely language is found, and returned to a commons, with the proper forms all filled out, with payment to the relevant authorities. A kind of afterimage of John Cayley and Daniel C. Howe's "How It Is In Common Tongues," and perhaps some of Allison Parrish's and Kenneth Goldsmith's work, along with less familiar anticipatory plagiarists (as the Oulipo put it). Note: none of the figures mentioned in the previous sentence were informed or in any kind of endorsement or approval. The author claims ownership of this language, having caused it to be produced, in order to give it away, but denies having said any of it, denies its meanings & effects. Opinions expressed, resemblances to anything real, were accidents already in the language.
Github repository is here: https://github.com/notkrd/common_is_that_they
Theory: Intellectual Property
Law, especially American, imagines language to be a kind of commodity subject to ownership, sale, lease, and theft in a manner similar to physical commodities, and with similar consequences.