Turns out that there’s a ton of law against unscrupulous operators, but exercising the rights granted under those laws gets problematic. Anything I create could be swiped at any time, and I’m unlikely to even know about it, let alone have actual recourse. Now, the monied segment of the content industry lobbies Congress to pass new stricter laws to ‘prevent intellectual property piracy.’ Might as well throw in a rider banning lustful thoughts while they’re at it.

The question might be how those who create intellectual property might thrive in pirate-infested waters, since it seems the pirates will always be there, just as they have always been there.

Scott McCloud in his brilliant Understanding Comics, classifies art as anything done without the explicit intention of making money from it. Under this rather strict definition, much of what fancies itself art, couldn’t quite qualify. That intellectual property my ex-partner swiped wasn’t art because I’d created it with the explicit intention of making money with it.

But much of what I create certainly satisfies McCloud’s definition. I write daily on a variety of topics, and I learned long, long ago that if I withheld by gift until I found a patron or sponsor, I wouldn’t do much writing. Me and the world might well be worse off for that decision.

So I give most of my stuff away. A few years ago, I had a semi-permanent gig writing provocative pieces for an online e-zine. Then the Great Recession happened and the editor explained that he no longer had a budget. I stopped writing pieces for him for a while, but finally submitted a piece that was just sitting around burning a hole in my heart, telling him that simply posting it would be payment enough. He sent me a small check and a huge appreciation. Today, there’s no market for content, but there’s more content than ever before. How could that be?

The Internet was founded upon some decidedly egalitarian principles. My friend Ward Cunningham, who invented the wiki, has steadfastly refused to charge a nickel for its use, and still doesn’t. He considers charging for his invention immoral, and I’m with him. Somewhere in there, commercial interests moved into the commune and began trying to charge for content. Most of these experiments have been crushing failures.

So, I’m sorry that there are pirates in the world. I’m sorry that people violate copyrights and therefore, presumably, short-change movie producers, news corporations, book publishers, and recording artists. I think their concerns are misguided and their energies better focused elsewhere. The people who gladly download a free pirated copy are not the same people who might gladly pay for that privilege.

The Internet is one bitch of an environment, worse if it’s mistaken, as so many of the later commercial operations have, as just another marketplace. It’s a bazaar, not a big box store. It’s a rough and tumble, wild west freak show, and it won’t be tamed or civilized. It thrives on the free exchange of ideas, and I figure I can choose to be a part of that free exchange or set my expectations where satisfaction is unlikely.

Of course the commercial interests have long lusted after some form of monopoly control over the free exchange of ideas. Not fully understanding that should they succeed in cutting open that cat and isolating its purr, it would necessarily sacrifice the cantankerous cat by doing so.

An Invisible Hum rules the internet, kinda roughly analogous to Adam’s Smith’s notorious invisible thumb. Like the thumb, it relies upon the goodwill of morally upstanding individuals. Sure, there are unscrupulous operators, and we’re schlemiels. We won’t find recourse in any rule or court of law. We could have understood what kind of place this was before we ever mistook it for the ultimate Big Box store.

©2012 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved