Quentin Smith - Intangible Property

Nicholas Negroponte’s “The DNA of Information” introduces an interesting concept. The bits that comprise digital information are far more valuable than the atoms on which they are stored. He values his PowerBook at $2 million, even though its physical atoms are only worth $2,000. In the information age, intangible “data” can have incredible value. Historically, traditional property law has been applied to information. However, there is an obvious problem with this application of property law: matter cannot be created or destroyed, but bits can be duplicated ad infinitum. Bits can be copied with no loss of quality and no detriment to the original owner. It is this ability to copy bits in the information age that has led to all the trouble surrounding P2P file sharing.

“Stealing” is the traditional term for property that is unlawfully taken from one person by another. Stealing implies that the original owner no longer has ownership of the property. The Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America use the term “stealing” when they talk about peer-to-peer file sharing. The, they calculate inflated amounts of lost money based on the value of their intangible property, and they use that calculation to prosecute people under traditional property laws. These traditional property laws should not apply when there are no atoms being stolen.

The associations’ idea of prosecuting users for copying (not “stealing”) data is drawn from some faulty assumptions. The first assumption is that a user who downloads an album or movie would have purchased that song if they had not been able to obtain it for free. There is no evidence that this is not the case; in fact, there is empirical evidence to the contrary. People are more likely to download media they are unsure of than to purchase that media. Thus, users are exposed to more artists and given more opportunities to purchase media than they would without free access to media.

Another faulty assumption is that users always prefer to download for free instead of purchasing a legitimate copy. The success of stores like the iTunes Store has shown that to be false. If users are given a reasonable alternative, they are perfectly willing to pay for their media.

As a result of being scared of losing their revenue from traditional, physical distribution of CDs and DVDs, the media industry has been afraid to embrace technology. It is now costing them dearly, as other companies and groups are stepping in to provide the services that take advantage of the ability of bits to be copied with no loss to the original owner.

Microsoft – maybe – gets it with its new Zune media player. The Zune includes wireless networking, which allows users to transfer media to another person’s device. But Microsoft then crippled its player by encrypting transferred media and only allowing the recipient to view it three times. There is no way for a user to override these restrictions, for instance, in the case of public domain music or music by sharing-friendly artists. Technology companies are intentionally crippling technology to preserve the outdated idea of bits as property.