I Think Your App Should Be Free

Would you bother to donate? Or are you only willing to give money to musicians in the form of buying music?

Unfortunately, your argument falls apart immediately.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" -- United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.

While you can make the argument that it may be a lesser right than the more primal human rights, it's factually incorrect to say that it's not a right. Says so in the Constitution, the document that defines our rights.

But wait, there's more.

Your argument falls apart even more because you are incorrectly placing the value of a work on the physical representation of the work. Using your interpretation, the primary value in the book Huckleberry Finn is in the pages of that book, not the words and ideas printed in the book. Alternatively, if I take Huckleberry Finn, run it through a jumbler and create a document that has all the words rearranged randomly, that it is just as valuable as the original work.

Also, you're factually incorrect about the concept of property rights being limited to physical property. If that were the case, plagiarism would be a legitimate practice. If theft is limited to the physical representation of a thing, then it should be legitimate for me to sit down and right a copy a work word for word and pass it off as my own. After all, there is little to no value in the words, so I'm not doing anyone any harm.

Smarter - and yes, more ethical - people properly respect the wishes of creators when it comes to how they express their right to distribute the fruits of their labor. They certainly don't spend six bloviating paragraphs to say "If there is something I want, I should be able to take it."

Brevity is the soul of wit, after all.

Hmm.. gamify it by adding some badges and you might be on to something there!

You've missed the point completely.

This was never about "I want stuff for free". It was about the avoidance of a hyper-invasive police state.

For what it's worth, I actually work as a producer. I'm on the sell side, not the take side. And moreover, I don't pirate. Between Pandora, Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes, (not to mention the general firehose that is the internet) I have such an astonishing array of free and very reasonably priced stuff, that I have no need to pirate. I mean, I don't even have the time for the stuff I've actually bought.

When working, I pay strict attention to rights and clearances. Not just because I'm a nice guy, but because I have to. I mean, compliance is so deeply engrained in the system that it's unavoidable. It's just the way things work. Moreover, I support this system. In spite of the complexity, it makes a lot of sense. In terms of a system for governing interactions between industry players, copyright is as good as anything else I can imagine.

But I'm not just a producer. I'm also a human being. I recognize that what works in a small, professional circle cannot scale to the point where it can govern everybody with a laptop and an internet connection. That's like expecting people to get formal authorization from the SEC every time they want to transfer $100 from checking into savings.

More to the point, I recognize that attempts to scale the existing system mean the creation of auditing and enforcement mechanisms that are absolutely terrifying in terms of raw power, and susceptibility to abuse.

It's the difference between a nuclear reactor quietly purring on the outskirts of town, and a nuclear bomb detonating in the heart of the financial district. Saying "hey, they're essentially the same thing" is true on one level, but it ignores context to an extent that is batshit crazy.

So unlike the jerkswho say "I have my rights, all I care about is my money, so fuck you pay me" I actually have a social conscience. I recognize that the way I made a living was dependent on historical conditions that no longer exist, and that like society itself, I need to adapt. If that means avoiding a nightmarish police state by radically redefining the limits of property rights in the sphere on the intangible, so be it.

The point is that those of us who make a living from intellectual property need to understand that we'd be toast in a country without strong democratic freedoms (i.e. the First Amendment). And we need to recognize that the extension of existing copyright law into every nook-and-cranny of digital life entails the development of a surveillance apparatus that will destroy American democracy. No app, novel, song, or movie is more important than that. And the real artists understand this better than anyone. After all, they're the first to get murdered when things really go bad.

Fortunately, our privileges (or, as you call them lesser rights) are limited. They take a back seat to the much greater rights of humans to live in freedom from the kind of surveillance and policing that copyright law - carried to its logical extreme - entails.

Personally, I think we should limit the application of copyright law to incorporated entities only. That is to say, individuals should be free to do what they want with whatever they find. In essence, it's about taking the concept of Fair Use, and expanding it to comply with the realities of the present day. While I don't think that authors should give up all control, I think that control should be limited to what incorporated entities do with a work.

Obviously, this doesn't mesh with today's business models. But so what? Today's models are leftovers from a bygone era. It's a new foundation for new models which creative people can adapt to. What it allows for is tremendous freedom for people to develop the culture using the works within it. That's a benefit for artists and audiences alike. Any business that becomes successful enough to merit incorporating steps up to the role of box office. Unlike individuals, these businesses would be subject to copyright rules, and would have to work with artists and producers to the mutual satisfaction of all involved.

I have donated to software projects before, but it's so annoying to keep track of it. I honestly couldn't tell you if I have donated to Adium, Colloquy, or both. I don't think donations can ever achieve the fairness and efficiency of buying songs.

To clarify on the fairness, buying software and music almost feels like a donation already. And I have been surrounded by anecdotal evidence in my youth who happily cracked "silly" casual shareware games, which just felt awkward to pay for, then played them for months. Yet when their favorite brand's AAA game was released, they bought it, played it for three days, then proudly put the box on top of their shelf and claimed that they do buy software -- but only when it's worth it. I can easily see the same thing happening for higher-profile vs lower-profile bands.