“What does ‘ownership’ mean when property is infinitely reproducible, highly malleable and the surrounding culture has neither coercive power relationships nor material scarcity economics?” (Raymond, 2000)
The Internet, initially developed for use by the military in a time of Cold War has now become a heated battle ground for those fighting the war over information and knowledge. With such high profile cases in the news as The Pirate Bay Vs the IFPI this has never before been as abundant in the Internet user’s consciousness as it is now. Before the internets inception the concept of ownership was an easy one to define: you owned what you made, what you bought or what you obtained through noble means, the concept of paying for a physical item and not actually owning it was a foreign one. It can be argued that these three simple rules of engagement over ownership of a physical object can be applied to that of knowledge, as Eric Raymond observes in his online open source book Homesteading the Noosphere:
“There are, in general, three ways to acquire ownership of an open-source project, (the first) is to found the project … The second way is to have ownership of the project handed to you by the previous owner … The third way to acquire ownership of a project is to observe that it needs work and the owner has disappeared or lost interest.” (Raymond, 2000).
While Raymond is refering in particular to the open-source culture and community visibly abundant on the internet, I have observed the same three rules applied, admittedly sub-conciousley, to knowledge in general. For example within the youtube community there are a number of community projects where people can respond to an initial video posting with their own video responses thus adding to the project in a way that reflects open source methods. Youtube itself has in light of this started a couple of sponsered community projects, one of which is called “In My Name” and has several large charity organisations in partnership. This youtube sponsered project called upon its huge community of video posters to submit their uniuque content to the project, the best of which would be included in a big mashup video and has according to the project page been played on screens throughout the United Nations Headquarters in New York, as well as on Time Warner Cable’s UN Channel 78 (You Tube, 2007). Similarly community projects can be seen in other community websites, another example would be my own pixel-art project hosted on deviantart called The Isometric Grid Collaboration, here you can see a subsect of a larger arts community working together to complete a big project that would be extremely difficult if undertaken individually. The question stands in both these cases, of whom claims and who has ownership.
While ownership of each project in my aforementioned examples is not in dispute, ownership over the material submitted to each project can be questioned. Youtube makes it very clear in their Terms of Service under the heading of “Your User Submissions” section eight, subsection two, that while each user retain all of their ownership rights they are required to grant limited licence rights to YouTube and its users (You Tube, 2009). While initially this sounds innocent it is not until you realise that by limited, youtube means in time and not by liscenced rights. In section ten, subsection one the “limited” liscence you grant youtube and its users gives both a:
“Worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence (with right to sub-licence) to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform that User Submission in connection with the provision of the Services and otherwise in connection with the provision of the Website and YouTube’s business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels,” (You Tube, 2009).
The only limitation of this liscence is that once you delete your submission, the liscence is null and void as defined by section ten, subsection two, otherwise it is very open in what it allowes both youtube and its users to do with your content within the youtube community. This however shouldn’t be a problem, for the vast number of youtube submitters whom publish their works to share with the community, for these users are actually protected by the youtube terms and conditions in a similar way to publishing their work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike liscence (Creative Commons, 2009). Both liscences allow sharing either by copying, distributing and transmittion, so long as the original owner is attributed and it is distributed under the same liscence as the original work was published. The difference between the youtube terms and conditions and those for the creative commons license is that youtube does not openly allow adaptions of uploaded work. For the comminity of youtube submitters this means their uploaded videos can be embedded on any website but not downloaded which protects their right to terminate the liscence between themselves and youtube as highlighted in section ten, subsection two. However while youtube makes every effort to stop users from downloading video content from its website for storage rather than the allowed streaming, it is still possible and as such the information contained on youtube is infinatly reproducable not only through streaming but through direct downloading and storage.
The idea of licensing data while not a new one, it is a very problematic one; while the origins of licensing can be traced back to London in the 1770s, modern licensing started making its mark in the 1930s when Herman “Kay” Kamen secured the licensing rights to Walt Disney properties (licensing.org, n.d), this modern form of liscensing exploaded with the invention and subsequent rapid uptate of the television which provided the liscencing industry with year on year profit increases worth $50 Billion in 1985 increasing to $110 Billion in 2003 (licensing.org, n.d).
It can be argued that the concept of liscencing knowledge is a noble one because not only does the original owner of said knowledge retain their ownership but those whom wish to pay for liscenced useage of that ownership for inclusion within their own project have the ability to do so, giving professional artists and coporations the ability to restrict how others use their intilectual property (of which they have substantially invested in) while not completely blocking the creative process of building upon excisting work. The problem of liscening doesn’t revolve around the traditional usage between two companies it becomes problematic when applied to consumer products such as audio cd’s, dvd’s and electronic derivitives of them. In May 2007 UMG caused huge controvesy within the online community by targeting legal action against one Troy Augusto for selling rare albums on the online auction website eBay. The rare album in question was a three year old promotional copy, however UMG stated that as they were promotional copies they where not authorised for sale to the public (Plummer, 2008), however the digital rights lobby group the Electronic Frontier Foundation disagreed with UMG stating that: “UMG seems to think that the promotional use only label somehow gives it eternal ownership over the CD … While this might make sense to a goblin living in Harry Potter’s world, it’s not the law under the Copyright Act.” (Plummer, 2008)
EMF’s simile while humourous is quite right in its description and thus proves the problem with liscensing consumer products because at some point the owner may need or wish to sell it on. Within his BBC article Plummer comments that the record industry seems happy to let promos from the 1960s or 1970s go up for auction but has chosen to crack down on newer items (2008)even though both are still subject to the same original “no-resale” liscence.
In the 2004, twentieth century fox film, iRobot there is a scene during which the character Del Spooner played by Will Smith is moving through a futuristic train while trying to evade the police. During this sequence we see several of the trains’ passengers reading foldable electronic screens which are obviously electronic newspapers, the sequence cuts to a close up of one newspapers front page as it refreshes showing Del Spooner’s face and a wanted title. At the time of the films 2004 premier we already had downloadable e-books, pdf’s and very simple portable readers of a clunky nature, technology a world away of that depicted within the aforementioned film. However Just three years later the international online book shop Amazon.com revealed the Amazon Kindle an e-book reader which arguably brings us a step closer to the reality of the iRobot film.
The Kindle utilizes the 3G wireless data network to provide it with up-to-the second live information from the internet (Amazon, 2009). Owners can pay a subscription to have e-book versions of many of their favorite newspapers sent to their Kindle’s automatically while regular books can be bought and downloaded in a similar way to purchasing ring-tones or games on a traditional mobile phone. While consumers may be blind-sided by the technical mile stone that the Kindle represents or simply by its gadget appeal there are problematic questions to be answered concerning ownership. When someone purchases a book from the Amazon shop and it is posted to their house they have physical ownership over that item, they have paid legal currency in exchange for a printed version of knowledge, be it a cook book or a collection of 17th century poetry. Amazon wont hunt them down if once read they decide to sell it on eBay, pass on to a second hand shop or simply give to a friend. Amazon simply isn’t like UGM in that respect. However had that someone chosen to have the book transmitted to their Kindle instead, this transfer of ownership becomes very problematic because while the consumer would believe that they owned a copy of the book, legally ownership of the file would remain with Amazon and the publisher while the end user is sold a limited license to read. In much the same wording as the YouTube terms and conditions, section three, paragraph two of the Kindle License Agreement says:
“Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.” (Amazon, 2009)
This agreement is extremely problematic to the question of ownership when the license restrictions in section three, paragraph three are taken into consideration:
“Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content.” (Amazon, 2009)
These restrictions highlight the problem of releasing knowledge for consumers under license because many will question why once they have purchased an e-book on their kindle they can’t sell or transfer it to a friends kindle in the same way that they would be able with the physical copy, especially if the cost difference between the two versions is negligible. It can be argued that these very contrasts between what consumers see ownership as and what the publishers see ownership as, are the driving factors behind the support for piracy of the kind I touched on in my introduction.
The one problem I can identify in each of the case studies I have touched upon is that of different interpretations of ownership. For the studios, the publishers and the companies that represent them, ownership never leaves their possession, instead what consumers are purchasing from them are licensed goods that have to be given back if that license is breached. The end consumers in this case never receive actual ownership over what they have bought beyond that of physically being able to hold and touch it. From the consumers point of view, they own what they have exchanged currency for and believe that they have the right to secure their ownership through making backups as well as the right to pass on or sell to make back a proportion of what they originally spent on it. With respects to physical, tangible items there is little knowledge producers do to stop the re-sale of goods sold, thus the whole second hand book industry and websites such as ebay. The one case of UMG vs ebay seller I explored at the beginning is important because it shows the knowledge producers doing something that looks suspect in the eyes of consumers and highlights the difference in opinion over the meaning of ownership. The Amazon Kindle further highlights this separation of opinion, because now that books can be distributed in electronic forms there are no material scarcity economics to give that file value other than the value of its content, the example also works to bring to the surface how publishers and distributors believe ownership is distributed between knowledge creators and its consumers in this case by limiting the consumer to doing nothing else other than reading, once they have purchased the file they cant re-sell it, it is not theirs to sell. The difference between being able to sell a physical book and not being able to sell its electronic derivative is a shocking window into the mind-set of the knowledge industry today, an industry that would rather you purchase a cd, then purchase the mp3, then purchase the 30 second ring tone, rather than purchase the original cd then rip to the computer then upload to your phone, the consumer would see no problem with that, they have bought the cd and feel they have the right to listen to it how they wish. The content providers however feel differently, they believe this is stealing because the consumer only originally paid to listen to the cd and cd’s should only be played on stereo systems.
These multiple definitions of ownership confuse the consumer and make it difficult for lawmakers to pass appropriate legislation. This is incredibly problematic and the root cause to today’s piracy culture. The one encompassing problem that is highlighted within this struggle is the Internets, interconnectivity working against it in the eyes of the knowledge producers. They like to keep tabs on their investments while those consuming them would rather they don’t.
Amazon. (2009, February 9th). Amazon Kindle: License Agreement and Terms of Use. Retrieved April 28th, 2009, from Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530&#content
Amazon. (2009). Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device. Retrieved April 28th, 2009, from Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA
Creative Commons. (2009). Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States. Retrieved April 26th, 2009, from Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/
licensing.org. (n.d). History of Licensing . Retrieved April 2009, 27th, from International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association: http://www.licensing.org/intro/history.cfm
Plummer, R. (2008, June 3rd). Music firm ‘goblins’ in copyright war. Retrieved April 26th, 2009, from BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7412671.stm
Proyas, A. (Director). (2004). I, Robot [Motion Picture].
Raymond, E. S. (2000, August 24th). Homesteading the Noosphere. Retrieved April 26th, 2009, from http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/
You Tube. (2009). Terms Of Use. Retrieved April 25th, 2009, from You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/t/terms
You Tube. (2007). The In My Name Channel. Retrieved April 26th, 2009, from You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/inmyname
