Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has a great post on Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, a book by Robert Neuwirth on the sprawling extralegal cities of third world countries. In many ways, it seems to make a similar argument to Hernando deSoto’s in The Mystery of Capital, which I blogged about here. Cory explains how Neuwirth’s argument, like deSoto’s, is merely to facilitate for the third world what was once done in America, even though we may not appreciate or realize it:

All real-estate begins as “squatting.” Most of the [San Francisco] Bay Area’s title deeds represent claims filed by squatters during the gold rush. At some point, every titled parcel of land belonged to no one, but was then fenced in and declared property.

Cory draws an analogy between this process of becoming legal and the current copyright battles being waged around the world:

The parallels between the squatter story and the copyfight are fascinating. Last month, I gave a talk at a Berkeley law class and one of the students pointed out that when we talk about orphan works and the problem of discovering who has the right to authorize the use of old or obscure creative works, we treat this as a major difference between “intellectual property” and real property; but in the developing world, the ownership of physical land is anything but clear-cut; where you have squatters who’ve been sold deeds to their land by unscrupulous bureaucrats in exchange for votes, or where politicos have issued deeds to their cronies selling title to land that has been occupied for decades, or squatters who are granted title to their land, but who then have to resolve whether the squatter whose home is on the ground floor gets the title, or whether it’s the squatter who’s built her dwelling on the roof; or where you have squatters who’ve built and then rented out their squats to tenants who’ve occupied them for years — who owns that land?
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As I read it, I kept coming back to the questions I keep on asking of rightsholder organizations, questions like:

What’s the way to go from suing your customers by the thousands to turning them back into customers again?

Is it really socially beneficial to set up a world where network neutrality and privacy are sacrificed to protect your rights? Should universities really have to wiretap their whole network just to keep from being sued out of existence by you?

Does it really benefit artists to live in a world where 80 percent of recorded music isn’t available for sale because no one can figure out who owns it?

Does it benefit creation to declare remixing, mashing up, and sampling illegal? Are the people who make those works creators, too?

This is the sort of conundrum that Neuwirth is after resolving. The squatters are illegal, but what’s the alternative? Why were anti-squatting laws passed, and have they fulfilled their objectives? Neuwirth is a powerful advocate for the rationality of permitting squatting. It’s not only made me re-think my position on real property, but on “intellectual property” as well.

It looks like a really cool book, so I’ve wishlisted it. I think a lot of these economic questions are at the heart of what it will mean for the church to address global and domestic poverty and social justice issues. We may also have to be willing to support things that are outside the law (e.g. squatter businesses), even if it’s risky, to help the people who need it and can do the most with it.