I certainly don't think so, and in that respect I vehemently disagree with Peter Dejager and his Globe & Mail column. I agree with him on most everything else in his piece, however; he's just more pessimistic about where we are in the digital age than I am.

He wants a micropayment system, which I'd embrace if the money went directly to creators, and not through some government welfare agency. But he describes the existing intellectual impasse well. An example:

The lines of conflict between those who believe that digital works exist for the taking, and those (like me) who believe that creators of any form of intellectual property have the inherent right to control the use of that work, are well and clearly established.

To one camp, the rampant downloading of music is not just copyright infringement, it is also a blatant form of theft. To the other side, they believe it is their right to copy whatever they want under the auspices of the notion that information "wants to be free." Unfortunately there is no hope of any softening of either position. Those who feel they are being mugged will not absolve the muggers of their guilt, and those who are 'sharing' will insist on their right to share.

The accusation that copyright infringement is "theft" is met with extremely logical debates centred on existing legal and dictionary definitions of the word "theft." The basic premise is that since nothing physical was removed, since the owner still has their "copy," no theft has occurred. If these arguments were not so frustrating they would be humorous. By definition they are totally accurate. According to existing dictionary and legal definitions, copyright infringement isn't theft. End of subject. They win the debate.

But this only means that the definitions, or the words used, are outdated. Created before the magical world of exact digital duplicates, these definitions of theft don't take into account aspects of value, inherent in all creations, whether they are physical or virtual in nature. Like it or not, the value of a physical or virtual object is diminished when the object is copied. When that copy is made without permission, "value" has been lost, and therefore value has been "stolen".

And this needs to be said far more often:

Many of us have music on our PCs which we listen to frequently, but have never paid for. The argument about whether or not we would have purchased this music from a store is a straw man. The fact is, we've not paid for the music, we've copied it, and we're enjoying it. The fact that we've invested the time to find and download it, to listen to it, means that it has value to us, value we've not returned in kind.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 3:39 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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