Copying = Stealing?

Whether we're talking about food or a bicycle

it's easy to understand why is wrong to take someone else's property.

Taking something, of course, leaves that person without it.

In the digital world things are rather different,

to copy, is to duplicate information to somewhere else

by using your own computing power.

So this means that even though some bytes are "owned"

by somebody, copying does not affect the original bytes,

it leaves them perfectly intact.

So, why would copying be the same as stealing?

To steal is to appropiate something secretly or by force,

in other words, to take something wich belongs to someone else

without permission or right.

For now, just for the sake of the argument
lets not focus on the word right,

take is more our issue.

You can't truly take something from someone
if there's an unlimited supply

Anybody can have as much of it as he/she wants.

A digital photo, movie or song are hard to compare with something physical like a ball

because the ball is a finite resource.

Say you have a perpetually renewable resource of water,

and i take 10.000.000 liters from you.

You still have infinite water, i haven't really taken anything from you.

I really just made more.

When one steals something from someone

they're physically removing their property

therefore ensuring that the initial owner, no longer has access to it.

When one copies something to their hard drive,

they're not depriving anyone of anything in the process.

Technology has become easier and more accessible for everyone,

and this has generated it's own set of use.

Digital property is no longer valuable, we don't reasure it anymore,

many of us don't view it as property because it's not a limited resource.

So yes, we can pipe the sharing, we can discriminate
between the good bytes and the bad ones,

we can criminalise and monitor everything and anyone

and even try to deny ourselfs how the very
essence of information and culture works,

but we can never shut it down.

Because sharing is what we do each and every day,

it's part of what we are.

Copying is a ritual

Copy me