Property! Posted Mon, 23 Jun 2008

I've always been bothered by those "Property Of Blank University" t-shirts that used to actually be the loaned (or stolen) property of college athletic departments but have now become popular enough that you can find them, for sale, in nearly any university store or gift shop in the US. Few people would assume that somebody with a "Property of" shirt had stolen their clothing. In fact, it's often impossible to find the shirts except on sale anymore -- and rarely from universities themselves.

Here's my response.

/copyrighteous/images/property_of_pj.png

For those that don't know (and that's certainly many), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is the nineteenth century French anarchist and mutualist most famous for saying, "La propriété, c'est le vol!" In English: "Property is theft!"

You can buy my t-shifts (red on black, where possible), in my Printfection store. Source SVG is here. Please share variations in a comment.

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Responses to This Post

I see the proliferation of these shirts as having anti-propertarian effects.  Almost every time you see someone wearing one, the shirt is not the property of the university whose name it bears.  What's more, people now know that the shirts are on sale, and therefore no longer expect the words "Property of Brannigan University" to be true.  That in turn undermines the legitimacy of the claim that by stamping "property of" on an object you can keep it legally tethered.  If people don't take such claims seriously when it comes to shirts, they're less likely to take them seriously when it comes to CDs, software, microchips, and other objects whose initial owners want to have their property and be paid for it, too.
Posted by James Grimmelmann at Mon Jun 23 22:46:32 2008
I would like a hat, like a Che Guevera hat, but with a stylized image of Proudhon instead. The face from the painting featured in the Wikipedia article would work well. Does Printfection offer hats?
Posted by Chris Burkhardt at Tue Jun 24 00:44:48 2008
What does the "vol" mean?
Posted by Some Guy at Tue Jun 24 02:29:17 2008
Property of the state

Private property of Ayn Rand

Privatized property of Milton Friedman

Property with Value Added by The Worker
Posted by Andrew at Tue Jun 24 05:21:54 2008
Some Guy: "Vol" means "robbery" or "theft" in French and it is the word used in the original quote. I'm not thrilled with it, but I couldn't really think of anything else more appropriate to put in there.
Posted by Benjamin Mako Hill at Tue Jun 24 08:51:01 2008
@benjamin

Try "voleur", it means thief (according to babelfish) and it makes a bit more sense

a circle-A would also work well
Posted by anthony at Wed Jun 25 16:22:01 2008
@Chris Burkhardt:

Something like this?
Posted by Jason F. McBrayer at Wed Jul 2 13:16:22 2008
Thanks for an addition to my weird T-shirt collection:

http://brucebyfield.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/weird-t-shirts/

For the record, I put your .SVG on a grey T-shirt, since that's usually the color of such apparel, at least around Vancouver (and definitely at my alma mater).
Posted by Bruce Byfield at Tue Jul 8 22:51:40 2008
Oh, another version (from another base image).  Of course, feel free to use these images as you would like.  Intellectual property is theft.
Posted by Jason F. McBrayer at Fri Jul 11 08:08:52 2008
Great idea.  I just bought one; I hadn't heard of Printfection.com before -- I'm glad to find out about an alternative to CafePress.  If the quality is good, maybe I'll make a store of my own.
Posted by Jesse Weinstein at Wed Apr 8 14:11:42 2009

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