new concept of owning

[Matthias Grob <matthias@grob.org>]

I did not read all the long mails and emotions about cracking and 
sampling, but offer my point of view here, as short and clear as 
possible:

At this point of evolution, the concept of owning changes:

In the past, the owner had the responsibility for whatever he owned. 
Whatever he did not want any more, he traded to a new owner, together 
with the responsibility.
( The capitalist system weakened this in the past century, because 
shareholders don't share responsibility and the CEOs of subparts of 
companies are fired so frequently and immediately that they often 
don't go as far as identifying themselves with what they lead - but 
that's not what we discuss here. )

We still live the old moral concept: All that is traded or stolen 
leaves the hand of the previous owner and what did not belong to 
anyone before we do not consider ours either. (occupation of land and 
exploration of natural resources are problematic exceptions).

The idea o patenting extended this concept, but without exploding it:
Any idea comes from the collective mind of humanity and should not be 
owned by anyone, but once someone assumes the execution of the idea, 
which means that he invests work into it, he should become 
responsible for it and should be considered the owner of the 
*implementation* of it and be rewarded for success.
More complicated if someone continues the elaboration of the same 
idea: Neither should he be hold back from doing so, nor should he 
disrespect the work of his precedor. Unfortunately its very difficult 
to create laws to force such "partial royalty". More difficult even 
if the "user" of an idea is not in the industrial scale, where 
patents can be negotiated.


In the last century a new form of goods became important:
The technology for copying on tape and photo weakened the ownership 
rules, but still, an original existed and the copy was inferior. 
Someone can buy the original painting for a lot of money and the 
artist "feels a part of himself going away", while we don't loose 
anything if someone gets a copy of our art, we just may get richer by 
some $ and some admiration.
The case of software its more radical because the original and the 
copy is identical. So to make another copy is not stealing in the old 
sense, because the owner does not feel a difference, or even a 
positive one since his energy is spread and becomes known. That's why 
there is so much given away on the Internet: Not because we have 
become so much more altruistic, but it has become much simpler to 
give, because its not really giving any more, not even sharing, just 
letting copy, we lack of a word for this!
Of course the creator of music or software needs to be rewarded, but 
obviously, its not any more by everyone who holds a copy but 
hopefully by the maybe 20% that really profit from it. Solutions like 
"light versions", cheap betas, trial period,,, reflect this need for 
several "degrees of ownership", but its all to new to be stable.
I find rather doubtful to make the payment depend on wealth of either 
user or creator. Its the "socialist anarchy" of saying: I am poor and 
Gates got billions so why should I pay for his soft... but I did not 
buy Word either :-)

So this is a new test for our morality:
Are we able to reward justly the creators of the software we are using?
I have cracks of several programs that I just open sometimes, for 
curiosity or to solve an uncommon problem, so why should I pay for 
them or what would it help to trash them? But the ones I use 
regularly and end up making money with, I have to pay, yes, sure, 
nobody doubts that, right?
The whole problem is that there are no strict rules and we depend on 
responsibility of each user and its good to discuss this anyway, 
because:

This awareness hopefully teaches us about another drastic new kind of 
ownership:
Through pollution each one of us influences the whole globe to some 
extent. Even the poor guy that shits in the back of his hut has his 
shit washed into rivers and it ends up in the sea. Although he may 
never see the sea, he must become aware that he is a coowner of it 
and has some responsibility. He can delegate it to some water 
cleaning institution, but better even he would shit into a tank and 
let it dry for a year until it's bacteria free and then spread over 
the land!
Similarly, we car users are coowners of our air, and when we drive 
around we  should at least ask ourselves whether its really worth it.
If someone destroys a common good, is this steeling?
Kind of, somehow the opposite of the software case, since the 
"previous owner" looses the goods, while the new one does not hold 
them in hand.

So we should treat ownership laws in 3 categories:
- HW: what someone receives, the someone else looses
- SW: what someone receives, nobody looses
- Ambient: what is lost, nobody receives.
-- 


          ---> http://Matthias.Grob.org