Aaron Swartz: Thoughts on the Death of an Idealist

by Nomad

The tragic story of Aaron Swartz, and the events that led up to him taking his life,  got me thinking deep thoughts about the age we live in. 

When Stealing isn't

The digital age has clearly thrown many past concepts into disarray. Particularly when it comes to the definition property and the definition of ownership. No small matter because after all, property ownership is the basis of capitalism.
If ownership of property is a concept that has been turned on its head then so has the idea of stealing the property. 
Most people can understand the concept of stealing. 

You got it. 

I want it. 
I take it. 
Now you don’t got it.

As most of us know, stealing normally involves the taking of property that the thief has no right to. It also implies that the original owner is deprived of that property by the act of theft.

So when a top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts in charge of a computer hacking investigation blankly states that “stealing is stealing, whether it was done with a computer or with a crowbar” many people might completely agree. It sounds right. Stealing is stealing, except....

Yet, in the brave new world of the digital medium, (songs, books or images) can be copied endlessly and in seconds, and that copy is exactly the same as the original, without any damage to the original, is it theft or is it something else?

True, while no property is actually lost, its relative value may (or may not) have decreased when everybody has free access to it. 

If somebody broke into your home and made an illegal but perfectly exact copy of your prized Chinese vase, would it be stealing? Would damage to the owner be the same as if somebody had broke into your home and snatched- or smashed- that vase?

What happens if you had wanted to keep my original vase behind closed doors and only let your special friends view it? Or make people pay money to get a peek? Would it be so immoral to make a copy so that the rest of the world could appreciate it? 

According to law, it would qualify as outright theft. That’s the message that the film and music industry, (which has supposedly taken a bit hit from illegal digital copying), has spent millions of dollars in advertising to push: Copying is stealing. 

If you want to argue, you are condoning criminal activity. You are making Beyonce go hungry. Copying a film, they say, is equal to stealing a DVD from a store. You are spitting in the face of Nicholas Cage when you do it. For the industry, the issue is black and white. 

Many technophiles, however, would beg to disagree. 

Few could argue that duplicating somebody else's creation and selling it on the cheap is ethically wrong. True creative artists deserve compensation, after all. Additionally most of us can see the harm done to the actual value of the property if the robber then made millions of copies of the hypothetical vase and gave them away. 

And that is the main problem.

It wasn't a moral or ethical question at all. It's a question of profit-making, pure and simple.

That is what has the "haves" so very upset.