Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
changes in the best interests of our society, or are politicians catering to special interest
groups?
In this chapter we discuss how information technology is affecting our notions of
intellectual property. We consider what makes intellectual property different from tan-
gible property and how governments have created a variety of mechanisms to guarantee
intellectual property rights. We examine what has been considered “fair use” of intellec-
tual property created by others, and how new copy protection technologies are eroding
the notions of fair use. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer networks are making it easier than ever
for consumers to get access to music and movies without purchasing them. We look at
what the entertainment industry is doing to fight free access to copyrighted material. We
also explore the evolution of intellectual property protection for computer software and
the rise of the open-source movement, which advocates the distribution of source code
to programs. Finally, we take a look at one organization's efforts to make it easier for
artists, musicians, and writers to use the Internet as a vehicle for stimulating creativity
and enhancing collaboration.
Intellectual property
is any unique product of the human intellect that has commercial
value [8]. Examples of intellectual property are books, songs, movies, paintings, inven-
tions, chemical formulas, and computer programs.
It is important to distinguish between intellectual property and its physical mani-
festation in some medium. If a poet composes a new poem, for example, the poem itself
is the intellectual property, not the piece of paper on which the poem is printed.
In most of the world there is a widely accepted notion that people have the right
to own property. Does this right extend to intellectual property as well? To answer
this question, we need to examine the philosophical justification for a natural right to
property.
The English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) developed an influential theory of
property rights. In
The Second Treatise of Government
, Locke makes the following case
for a natural right to property. First, people have a right to property in their own person.
Nobody has a right to the person of anybody else. Second, people have a right to their
own labor. The work that people perform should be to their own benefit. Third, people
have a right to those things that they have removed from Nature through their own
labor [9].
For example, suppose you are living in a village, in the middle of woods that are
held in common. One day you walk into the woods, chop down a tree, saw it into logs,
and split the logs into firewood (Figure 4.2). Before you cut down the tree, everyone had
a common right to it. By the time you have finished splitting the logs, you have mixed
your labor with the wood, and at that point it has become your property. Whether you
