Rather than re-enforcing the metaphor of the product of creativity as property, I think it would behoove lawmakers to realize that it is, indeed, just a metaphor, and we use it because we don't have a better one yet. A computer user can be baffled when the "document" she was working on suddenly disappears when her computer crashes because it's actually just a string of ones and zeroes, not the metaphor of a piece of paper she's using to work with it. A more educated computer user realizes this and backs up more often, or understands file corruption (rarely can a piece of paper become "corrupted" and "unreadable" in the same way -- only spilled on, ripped, and creased).
So, if we realize that the notion of IP as property is an imperfect metaphor, created simply because we haven't thought of a better one yet, we should also realize that forcing it to be more like property is damaging. We don't require people to simulate whiting out documents on a computer, we just let users delete things. Copy and paste would be a much more arduous process if MSWord were actually trying to simulate a typewriter and not be a publishing program. In the many metaphors we use with computers, we throw out the physical aspects that get in the way, because programmers realize they're manipulating numbers and not molecules. In the world of creative production, we're working with something even less tangible: experiences and knowledge. We've noticed that creativity intersects with property a couple times, and we've taken advantage of that coincidence, but we shouldn't bend either one so that it intersects more often than it already does. // Matt _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
