this thread at slashdot touches on an issue near and dear to me. i know it is human nature to hold on methods and institutions that have served one well in the past. nevertheless, our notions of copyright and intellectual property are going to have to go. before we had this nifty global communications network and big cheap hard drives, the concept of intellectual property made sense. the only reason it made sense, however, was the fact that mass production and distribution of intellectual property required an enormous investment. these considerations went hand in hand with our willingness to maintain the fiction that the products of thought and creativity were 'property' of any kind.
how many of us are given to the belief that publishers of music, books, and software were selling us things when in fact they were only selling us access to them? in the past, this was only fair because of the investment of time, money, and labor that went into production and delivery of the means of access. the howls of fury from the music industry, the software industry, and the early mutters of discontent from book publishers and movie industry are laughable in light of the technological revolution we've witnessed over the last ten years. protest they may, but the tide is on its way in and nothing is going to stop it, short of blowing the moon out of the sky. don't think they won't try.
but the times they are a'changin'. it's funny how human beings hold fierce to their pet pieces of the status quo, full of spit and vinegar over their illusory entitlements despite a mountain of evidence that the world is completely indifferent to them. i'm sure that the executives of mass entertainment around the world are salivating at the prospect of finding a secure means of electronic delivery for their goods. the aformentioned enormous investment in the production and delivery of such goods via concrete routes represent a heavy weight on their bottom lines. wouldn't they just love to continue selling you the same things for the same prices despite the significant savings that accrue from doing away with those annoying physical products. they could also dispense with those pesky retailers who want their own piece of the profit pie.
the problem is that they can't wrap their minds around the nature of the internet. they cling too fiercely to their out-dated realities, always seeking some means to impose those old rules on a medium that fundamentally defies them by its very nature. the internet was never about centralized control. it inhabits a foreign world where these pompous salary men are lost strangers. they are terrified of it, fascinated by it, and hostile to it, but all the same, its promise inspires a hot rush of greed in their bellies.
they need to read some literary theory because then they'd realize the pitfalls of a closed system that is defined in terms of itself. all attempts to secure the means of electronic production begin and end with the electronic world. this is why music publishers have been unable to prevent the duplication of their products. bits of software can almost always be undone with bits of software. there are no perfect locksmiths to prevent the chattering masses from entering the factory and taking over.
of course, i doubt they will simply blink out of existence. they'll adapt like good capitalists, but only when forced to do so like bad capitalists. the market is not a passive audience, and it's pushing back to the tune of tens of millions of empowered human beings. they can't count on their customers' lack of expertise and access to information anymore. the internet has opened the doors to the wealth of the human hive mind. any enterprising and curious teenager can track down a crack or a hack for his entertainment of choice in the blink of an eye. the more adventurous college students are taking advantage of globalization now that they know how little their textbooks cost in other countries just as employers have discovered how little human sweat and toil cost abroad.
the freer and more readily available information becomes, the more desperate some people are to control access to it. the silliest things are patented these days. i shudder to think what the world of programming would be like today if these people were in charge a few decades ago. what idiocy it would be to patent something like the binary search or quicksort algorithms for programming. however, some people would love to advance this idea of hyper-ownership because they truly fail to see the consequences if it were taken to its logical conclusion. ideas have little value unless they can be shared and applied to a variety of circumstances. ideas have long given birth to other ideas, but there are some who would love to turn them into so much mummified red tape.
amidst the screams for protection of the investment in research and discovery we need to remember that every freely available idea or discovery reduces the cost of that investment. what would our world be like if newton had patented calculus? in essence this is the situation some people want to create. they want to erect toll booths all across the information highway because they are inveterate control freaks determined to cut themselves and others off at the knees.
a leaked memo from micosoft detailed that behemoth's concern over the threat that open source programming posed to it and outlined possible strategies to attack this process. they never stop to think about the enormous benefits of a million astute programmers poring over lines of code, seeking out weaknesses and inefficiencies. there will always be a few who harbor malice, but again, there will always be a greater number who will fix these problems in return for the right to use and modify that software for their own purposes. even the mischief-makers are useful because they highlight weaknesses that need to be addressed. that's why some software security companies make it a point to hire crackers who cause so many of their headaches. it's really no different from law enforcement's practice of making use of criminals to fight other criminals.
when the office-holders of capitalism start droning on and on about the perils of restricting the free market, it is important to note how often they call for restricting the market for their own purposes. for decades, they've have the upper hand on avenues of information. that has changed, and a lot of them are acting like crybabies in the nursery. we need a new balance for protecting the investment that intellectual production requires, but we need to be careful not to strangle the source of creation and inspiration - intellectual property itself.
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