Communicating Entitlements: Property and the Internet

35 Pages Posted: 11 Apr 2012

See all articles by William Hubbard

William Hubbard

University of Baltimore - School of Law

Date Written: April 11, 2012

Abstract

Communication about property rights is essential to our lives. Property rights determine fundamental aspects of our behavior, such as where we can walk, live, and work. For these rights to have meaning, many parties must communicate. For example, potential buyers, potential trespassers, and authorities must understand the nature and extent of an owner's property. This communication involves costs, like the costs of fencing or of surveying the boundaries of a parcel of land before constructing a building. These costs must be balanced against the benefits of successful communication, which include the gains from transferring entitlements and the cost reductions of avoiding infringements of property rights. Prevention of infringement through successful communication may be cheaper than securing redress for infringed entitlements. For example, if the boundaries of a parcel of real property are not accurately communicated, an adjoining owner may construct a building that spans the property line. Even if the encroachment is small, the misplaced building may have to be demolished. Communication costs are a type of transaction cost, and should be addressed in an efficient manner -- that is, additional communication costs should be incurred until the marginal costs exceed the marginal benefits.

Existing scholarship analyzes some of the concerns involved in communicating property entitlements and suggests some techniques for achieving efficient communication. In this Paper, I seek to fashion a general framework that supports a more comprehensive analysis of communication costs while also accounting for these existing theories. This approach helps identify and fill both minor and more significant gaps and also suggests that this framework can be applied to some non-property communicative contexts, including the Internet.

Keywords: property, entitlement, communication, efficiency, internet

Suggested Citation

Hubbard, William, Communicating Entitlements: Property and the Internet (April 11, 2012). Yale Law & Policy Review, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2004, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1486102

William Hubbard (Contact Author)

University of Baltimore - School of Law ( email )

1420 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
United States

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