[Air-l] ethics - aol data

[Jim Porter]

> But "property" is generally understood as the right to exclude, and is a
> right good against the world. Chattels and copyrights share that
> characteristic.

Yes, Dan, but as you point out in your reference to digital music,
intellectual property is not subject to the scarcity limitations of physical
property. If I use your horse, you can't use it. If I copy your words, no
loss to you. What you said. Copying does not "steal" your property in the
same way. This is why I am troubled by the horse analogy. (I would like to
read your article. Can you send me a copy?)

> I can't "steal" movies or music in the zero-sum sense, but can instead
> *infringe* copyright in movies or music, meaning I have violated the legal
> right of exclusion that is intended to place the copyright owner in the
> position that materiality places the owner of the horse.

With intellectual property there is no scarcity limitation (as Thomas
Jefferson and John Perry Barlow have pointed out), but there is an incentive
issue. If intellectual property can be copied without recompense, credit, or
capital, then what's the incentive for creators to produce it? Here is where
I am persuaded by the balance of copyright arguments (Sandra Day O'Connor
and others) and by term limits on copyright (some reasonable length of time,
not the Sonny Bono absurdity). The 1976 Fair Use provision is an attempt to
mediate this difference, with its appeal to a common good, but it doesn't
seem to be working anymore, if it ever did, as a guide for content
developers and content borrowers of digital material.

I guess I would like to see us move in the direction of a New Fair Use
provision, one which addresses the specificities/peculiarities of digital
material, rather than to slip into a uniform and elided notion of property
that restricts/prohibits creativity.

Jim


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James E. Porter
Co-Director, WIDE Research Center
Writing in Digital Environments
Olds Hall 7
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI  48824
porterj8 at msu.edu
office: 517.353.7258
fax: 517.353.9162
http://wide.msu.edu/
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