Copyfraud and Beachfraud

An interesting intro to a new book, Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law, illustrates the author's thesis by way of an analogy to beachfront property owners claiming more than they lawfully possess -

California has 3,427 miles of shoreline. Under the state's constitution, the shoreline is available, up to the mean high-tide line, for the public to use. Owners of beach-front homes, however, would prefer to keep the whole beach abutting their properties to themselves. In Malibu, homeowners place phony "No Trespassing" signs on the public beach, and they deploy security guards on all-terrain vehicles to chase away beachgoers. In Malibu's Broad Beach neighborhood, residents have bulldozed wet sand from the shoreline up to the high-tide mark to create a giant access barrier. At Carbon Beach, gated homes spanning multiple lots from a wall that blocks access to the shoreline from the Pacific Coast Highway. Whenever public interest groups have sought to open up pathways to the beach so that the state's constitution may be honored, homeowners have vigorously fought back. In 2005, DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen's decision to give up the keys to locked wooden gates next to his Malibu home, allowing the public to enter a stretch of beach, was headline news because it followed years of litigation and daily fines imposed upon Geffen for unlawfully blocking beach access. Battles over beaches occur in other states as well. In most states, the wet sand area of a beach is held by law in public trust, meaning it exists for the use and benefit of the population as a whole, even when the adjacent property is privately owned. Yet property owners routinely attempt to make their rights go farther than they actually do by interfering with people's ability to access beaches. On the New Jersey shore, homeowners have obstructed public entry points near their properties by erecting fences, and private beach clubs have set up entrance gates that admit only paying members onto public lands. On the island of Oahu, in Hawaii, gated subdivisions have turned public beaches into private sands. And in certain New York municipalities, local voters have passed ordinances limiting the use of the beach to town residents, notwithstanding the fact that they have no legal right to do so. Increasingly, the beach - the public's playground - is subject to private claims.

Like the owners of beachfront property, owners of intellectual property regularly claim more than the law gives them.