Copyright, IP, trademarks and patents are all products of a system attempting to protect the rights of originators. In short, I own the copyright, I own the knowledge and you can’t use it. But we know that even so called ‘original ideas’ are not as they in invariably build on a number of concepts developed and shared by others. [Melancholy Elephants](Spider Robinson: Melancholy Elephants) is a short story suggestive of the ultimate madness that copyright and other licenses push us towards. It only takes 5 minutes to read but a lot longer to think about. My own experience is that sharing knowledge only helps everybody create more choice for themselves and move forward. Pat Kane sums it up nicely in his article on the Play Ethic.
At the beginning of this new century, the social group that seems to be playing for keeps is the digital generation. For them, play is naturally what you do with your world: there?s no angst or self-loathing about it. The technology that hovers like an axe over the neck of the traditional worker, is more like a toy for them - something to express yourself with, not a machine to be subjected to; a means of empowerment, not exploitation. They’ve left for the Playstation, these screenagers and cybernauts, and they?re never coming home. This is also the generation that was allowed to download their lives for free - browsers for nothing, web-mail for nothing, bootlegged software for nothing, and now everything from free operating systems (Linux) to Eminen?s latest CD (MP3) for - you guessed it - nothing. So they?ve already got a weird, almost dot-communist sense of property rights, which subverts the work ethic at its core. How much do you have to labour for stuff, when the stuff often comes as a gift anyway? How much do you have to grab for yourself, when sharing what you already have (the basis of Napster) generates so much more?