Digital Theft, Oxymoron (Part 4 of 8)
THE FILMMAKER'S ROADMAP TO FREE (part 4 of 8)
This is an article in a series. You may read all the articles by clicking here.
DIGITAL THEFT, OXYMORON
Regardless of my own views on morality, I suspect our global society's understanding of "theft" and "property ownership" in the digital age is being slowly redefined. Unlike an apple, an idea is not a scarce good: if you have 10 apples and and I take one, you only have 9 apples. That, we can all agree, is theft. By contrast, ideas are an infinite good—nobody can claim ownership over an idea because we can all think them: if I take an idea from you, you are not left without that idea.
However, the digital age has been thrust upon us and we've inappropriately grafted that ancient concept of scarce property ownership onto this modern market of infinite ideas and called it "intellectual property". In a digital age, things like CDs, DVDs, and software can be copied infinitely, like ideas. If I pirate a movie from you, you aren't left without a movie—you still have it. Thus, in the digital age, "theft of digital products" reads like a vestige from a time when resources were finite and not shared without violent complications. With infinitely duplicative media, our world isn't entirely a zero sum game anymore. Once most of us realize that, P2P networks will finally be seen as the blessing they actually are—a highly efficient means to share infinite goods.
This article is part of a series called The Filmmaker's Roadmap to Free. You may read the entire articles by clicking here, or the other articles here:
The Filmmaker's Roadmap to Free: An Introduction
The Free Debate:
The Filmmaker's Roadmap to Free:
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