Intellectual property isn't something the entertainment industry invented. It's something every six year old independently invents when telling her younger brother to stop being such a copycat. Creating is hard, copying is easy, and making the two equal is not fair.
Nor is the problem limited to art. Engineering design is currently sheltered from the problem by manufacturing, just like music used to be sheltered by physical media. When we can download cars, that won't be true anymore. If you think the argument over what you can do with an MP3 is ugly, just wait until we're arguing about printable handguns, airplanes, medicines, and combine harvesters.
I'm firmly convinced that that future is coming. Not quickly; some manufacturing processes will take centuries to replace, and some may never be replaced. But such a world does seem to get steadily closer with each passing year.
We need to figure out a practical and fair way to deal with information BEFORE it gets here.
Intellectual property isn't something the entertainment industry invented. It's something every six year old independently invents when telling her younger brother to stop being such a copycat. Creating is hard, copying is easy, and making the two equal is not fair.
Nor is the problem limited to art. Engineering design is currently sheltered from the problem by manufacturing, just like music used to be sheltered by physical media. When we can download cars, that won't be true anymore. If you think the argument over what you can do with an MP3 is ugly, just wait until we're arguing about printable handguns, airplanes, medicines, and combine harvesters.
I'm firmly convinced that that future is coming. Not quickly; some manufacturing processes will take centuries to replace, and some may never be replaced. But such a world does seem to get steadily closer with each passing year.
We need to figure out a practical and fair way to deal with information BEFORE it gets here.