Getting paid to hack
Many of the products we buy today are no more than large collections of zeroes and ones. High-priced software, high-quality music, and valuable reference material such as computerized databases or CD-Rom encyclopedias are commercial products like any other, but the media of their transmission makes them different in at least one aspect: it is possible to copy them freely, or at least extremely cheaply. A compact disc of Elvis Costello and the Attractions is different from, say, a ham and swiss sandwich in many ways, but beyond the obvious is one reason that makes the nature of the two items and their production and purchase very different indeed: I can only eat the ham and swiss sandwich once, while I can listen to the Attractions CD repeatedly. This is a result of the fact that the CD contains information, rather than an actual substance such as the sandwich has. The consumable material in the sandwich is actual food and is gone after its consumption, while the consumable material in the compact disc is encoded binary data that will be around for the life of the physical disc. Since the sandwich can only be consumed once, we pay out an amount of money that signifies what one sandwich is worth to us. If I want another sandwi
Obviously not everyone producing something is asking for money in return (as the previously mentioned GNU/Linux project shows), and the compensation in these cases is represented by the benefits experienced by the community as a whole, rather than the recognition or financial reimbursement that the artisan (in this case the programmer) personally receives. Copyright Law grants the owner of a copyright ". Since the artist, programmer, musician, or worker-in-general in question is putting some time and energy (and often money) into the production of whatever work of art, software, or music is in question, it only seems reasonable to compensate them in some way, the most universal of which is with money. Obviously there are differences, but are these enough to warrant the claim that ease of replicability implies a revised mode of ownership? Just because software and digital audio are easy to copy, does that mean we should? And does the digital nature of some products mean that the originator of those products should benefit any less than they would have had that product been in traditional physical form? An argument that may be used in favor of copyright protection for electronic media is that if an artist or programmer is hoping to make a substantial living through sale of their work, then that work should be protected. Marshall McLuhan conceived that the medium is the message - that the form which our communication takes is of more relevance than its actual content. Granted not everyone is capable of improving on someone else's creation, but as long as everyone has equal access and privelege to alter those creations, the best end product will eventually emerge. Prior to the printing press, communication had to be verbal, or copied by hand. In a capitalist organization, one concept inextricably linked to marketing and sales is that of ownership, or of intellectual property. But for those who wish to contribute artistic works to a community-based effort, under the assumption that others will revise and improve those works, protection should also be offered. In this light, it's irrelevant that the producer only spent $2. The reason we might be able to justify charging four grand for a ham sandwich is that in our usual structure of sales and ownership, we agree with the vendor to pay a price reflective of what the product is worth to us, the consumer. " This misnomer is familiar to anyone who's spent any time browsing the MP3 culture on the internet; it's often difficult to convince the mistaken party otherwise, since it is indeed common for MP3 to be used illegally, thanks to its high quality and portability. Just as the invention of the printing press vastly increased distribution and thus altered forever the ways in which ideas travel, the evolution of electronic recording and transmission methods directly affects the way ideas are copied, distributed, and recombined into new ideas.
Common topics in this essay:
Attractions CDs,
Copyright Law,
Public License,
Attractions CD,
Park T-shirts,
Sound London,
Puff Daddy,
Marshall McLuhan,
Windows Wordperfect,
Wide Web,
ham swiss,
intellectual property,
ham swiss sandwich,
piece software,
public domain,
copyright law,
commercial software,
compact disc,
source code,
swiss sandwich,
operating system,
gnu public license,
intellectual property theft,
it's irrelevant producer,
concept ownership ownership,
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Acceptance Essays
