Since history has been recorded, information has been copied.
I find myself wondering about the whole intellectual property/copyright/pirating/mp3/movie downloading/bit torrent topic quite a bit. While I can fully understand the one side of the debate: that people create "art" or something of value through their creative processes and should be able to make money off it, and the other side that: the companies and people that make this stuff are rich enough and just being greedy, I still find myself on a middle ground in this.
Yes people have a right to make money from their creative works, but why should someone that has been dead for 40 years still be making money off their work? And just because you can copy something for free, does that mean you should?
The problem I always end up with is that I don't know what you are buying exactly when you pay for something that is protected by copyright. Are you paying for some medium that lets you consume the art? Like a CD. If you buy a CD and it is damaged or stolen, do you lose the right to consume that art? Or are you buying the right to consume the art?
Of course, if the former is true, then what's wrong with obtaining the art for free? You don't need the medium. You replace it with another. One that doesn't cost the distrubtor anything. So why would you pay for that? If the latter is true, then if the medium is lost, how do I employ my right to consume the art?
Then I think, how can any company or legal firm really prove you don't have the right to the art? My only guess would be if you have something that is an unreleased work. Why do I think that? Well people can recieve gifts. Or obtain things at no cost. Or really just without a financial transaction record taking place (it's called a cash sale). How do you know that I don't have the right to all the music or software or movies or... on my hard drive?
The 3 types of people in this world
Now this is where I started to think about something. I can only come to this idea: there are 3 types of people in the world.
1. Those that will never download and always pay for everything
2. Those that will always download and never pay for anything
3. Those that sometimes download and might pay for some things
For people that are artists and are using mediums that are easily copied with today's technology they really only need to focus on the third group. The first group, they already get their money. The second group, they'll never get their money. The third group, they could get their money.
If someone from the third group downloads, they might actually either: 1. go and buy a hard copy of the media to support the creator, 2. pay for a service that offers the media they are downloading anyway or 3. delete the stuff after viewing because it was rubbish (not worth paying for in their opinion)
As time goes by, new technology will always do away with previous things. And I'm not just talking about cassettes to CDs to MP3s etc. I always see people complain about machines taking people jobs in factories. They lose their jobs etc. Yeah well, guess what? Machines do things faster, more cost efficient and usually more accurately. And the same seems true to me in the intellectual property wars. The technology exists to copy (at practically no cost) some forms of art or information so why not employ it?
So what to do?
What I think needs to happen is people that want to make money off art or information that uses digital media need to realize what the future will be like. It's not like the old (LOL 'old') days when most people couldn't dub a cassette because they didn't have a cassette recorder AND a player AND a cable to link them AND the knowledge to do it. Everyone has everything they need sitting in their laps or pockets, and if they don't know how to do it they just Google.
The ability to mass copy and transmit art and information has lowered its value. The music and movie and book and what-have-you companies and creators need to realize this. Start investing in the technologies to give it to the people at the lowest price. That's where the money will be in the future.
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