This will be brief. But as I read technical articles, inevitably issues about IP (intellectual property) and copyrights come up. While I disagree with the way many companies handle things, fine. I’ll humor you and listen.

But, what really irks me is when people say copyright infringement is the same as stealing. People who don’t really understand what is going on say that. And they give really faulty examples like, “Of course people should be upset when they copy their song. It’d be like if they walked up to you and stole your car”.

No. No, that’s simply wrong. Wrong on so many levels. Look, let’s break this down logically for people who simply cannot see the difference.

Situation 1) Steal the car

Starting condition: You have a car
Action: Car is stolen
End result: You no longer have a car

Situation 2) Copy your music

Starting condition: You have the music (protected by copyright)
Action: Music is copied
End result: You still have the music (but have lost the opportunity for a sale)

Note: I’m not saying it isn’t wrong to copy music. But what I am saying is that if you want to defend your point of view, make sure that you are using accurate examples. Failure to do so makes you look foolish, and drastically diminishes the validity of your argument.

I began to explore this concept in a previous post about Internet Service Providers. So why would I bother revisiting such a topic anyhow? It’s simple: how the internet is controlled (or not controlled) affects all of us in a very real way.

For starters, think about how many different things are tied to the internet. Global economy is a great starting point. Your personal emails. The daily web browsing that you do. Thinking about it, we (for better or for worse) as a global people are deeply tied to the internet.

So what’s the big hubbub about net neutrality? The issue is as follows (this is a serious oversimplification mind you). Wikipedia defines it as follows:

that is applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all networks. A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, on the modes of communication allowed, which does not restrict content, sites or platforms, and where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams

The ramification of not allowing a neutral net is staggering. Certain devices, locations (such as a city or a web site), people groups, information types, or whatever could be severely crippled. Additionally, this begins to dip into the issue of censoring. If the net does not remain neutral, it could become seriously censored. On the surface censoring (almost always) appears to be a great thing: we want to protect people from harmful content. Great, and I agree. But here’s the hitch: who defines what is harmful content? To what degree are things considered harmful?

There is also an economic tie to this. Sites could pay for higher bandwidth. Once again, at a first glance, this may not seem bad. If a site is willing to pay more money for higher bandwidth, then why is that so bad? Well, let’s go down that path. Companies like Microsoft and Google who have enormous storehouses of wealth could suck up large portions of bandwidth. This could, in turn, hurt competitors. If you want to say that’s all fine and good since it’s just competition, then let’s make it a little bit more personal. Those emails / IMs that you love to send so quickly could crawl to a snail’s pace. Simple web searches could take significantly longer than they do now. Startup companies would also be severely hampered as they would not have the capital to pay for sufficient band width usage.

There are plenty more reasons beyond this to defend net neutrality. While I have been lax in talking about the technological issues for a while, I hope to begin to revisit these issues. It may seem unimportant on the surface, but there are deep cultural undercurrents that make these issues incredibly important.

So I’m adding this blog entry on my new Macbook.  I’ve had it for a few short hours and have been tinkering with it for a little while now.  My initial impression: I’m very, very impressed.  There was nothing to set up.  Next to no updates to download.  It is fast.  It is efficient.  It is sleek.  The monitor is about 13″, and it makes excellent use of such a small retail space.  Whereas in Windows I’m always feeling constricted for space.

The other wonderful thing about Macs are that they are a Unix direvative.  Which means I can use the command line (terminal) to interact with my Linux box (or any Linux box for that matter) that has SSH enabled.  Mmm… Unix and SSH.  Oh Apple, how happy you are making me right now.

The RIAA has recently been touting that its efforts to sue consumers that illegally download and pirate their music is to benefit the artists that create the music.  Okay, I’ll humor you.  But wait…  Doesn’t this seem ironic?

The concept of scarcity should be fairly familiar to many of us - even if we don’t realize it. As noted on Wiki, “Goods and services are scarce because of the limited availability of resources … along with the limits on our technology and skillful people relative to the total amount desired.”

This should make plenty of sense to us because we are so accustomed to it. The food you buy at the store, the gas you buy at the station, or the television set you bought last week, these are all scarce goods. There is a limited amount that is available to us as a society.

The converse then is the concept of a free good. A great example of a free good is air. We are also familiar with this - something that is virtually (or literally) limitless seems a bit foolish to have to pay for.

Armed with these concepts (which are rooted in physical things) allow us to apply these concepts to the digital world. Things suddenly become tricky when we enter this arena, and it is important for you, the reader, to understand these things. The reason is simple: the market forces we are experiencing now are deeply impacted by technological factors. Having a poor understanding of these factors will result in poor business decisions, poor products, and even poor legislation (as many lawmakers are uneducated in this area, but that is another post for another time).

Consider this page that you are reading. Is this a scarce or a free good? This should be easily identified as a free good. It is limitless. You can copy the link, send it to all of your friends, and all of you can access it as often as you like whenever you like. However, to me, the owner of the site, this is not a free good. I have to pay the upfront cost to get hosting. So do you see where the complication begins? I, however, have no issue with anyone accessing my site - I paid the money to put up a site where people can read what I have to say and post any comments that they have. The computer you are reading it on, however, is a scarce good.

Many of you have probably seen the ads warning against stealing music or movies by downloading them. This is a faulty jump in logic for several reasons.

First we must understand what we mean by stealing, or theft. In the United States our legal system typically refers to theft, or stealing, as larceny. The FBI’s website notes, “The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines larceny-theft as the unlawful taking, carrying, leading, or riding away of property from the possession or constructive possession of another; attempts to do these acts are included in the definition. This crime category includes shoplifting, pocket-picking, purse-snatching, thefts from motor vehicles, thefts of motor vehicle parts and accessories, bicycle thefts, and so forth, in which no use of force, violence, or fraud occurs.” It isn’t difficult to see that all of our concepts of stealing and scarcity seem to be grounded in physical goods.

There is no mention of digital goods. Additionally, theft often is thought of as stealing a physical object from another party. If I steal your bicycle, I have taken it from you and you can no longer use it. But if I copy a file from your computer, you still have full access to it and as such, it should not be thought of as theft. Now, keep in mind, I am not arguing the morals of this. I think it is wrong to make unauthorized copies of files or works.

Returning to the discussion of scarce and free goods. Technically speaking, digital goods are free goods. There is a cost to initially produce them, and once they are produced, they are virtually limitless. There really is no concept of “stealing” here, and we need to be very careful of selecting our terminology to present accurate cases. With all of this understanding in mind, enter the copyright and the patent.

These two concepts serve to make free goods scarce. While I certainly understand the needs of the producing company to make money, there is a flaw in forcing an infinite good to become a scarce good. It is like trying to hold back a waterfall - eventually it will overpower all of your efforts. We see this time and time again as DRM is hacked each time an “improvement” is released (I will also discuss DRM later). Once again, I am not arguing that this is moral behavior, I am simply approaching this from an economical and technical perspective.

Therefore, the concept is to use your infinite goods to promote your scarce goods. This is a strange concept to some people, and I will go into more details later. But for now, the best example of this that you use on a daily basis is Google.

My point is this: there is a difference between physical and digital goods. We need to understand and appreciate that difference. Downloading one of your favorite songs from the internet is not the same thing as stealing the CD from a store. When you steal a CD from the store, you are robbing them of the chance to make money off of the physical item, and not the content. The content (the music) simply helps to promote the physical item (the CD). Are both wrong? If the law says so, then yes, they are both wrong to do. But I think there are better ways to use our infinite goods instead of forcing them to become scarce goods. More on that later.