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I have in the past written two rants dealing with ownership; one on ownership of things and another on owning ideas. After my last rant on software patents, I have decided to revisit the topic once more while trying to cover both areas of ownership within one rant. First, let's mention the state of affairs of ownership as it is today. At the moment, one can own essentially anything. Things, from pigeons to particles, can have an owner. An idea can also have an owner; such as a copyright on a word to a novel. Pretty much anything can have a designated owner. And if it doesn't have an owner, most likely it is owned by the government or "all people". Either way, you could probably find an owner for everything in this universe. The question becomes whether or not this is an acceptable state of affairs. A note, though, about this rant. I am taking the view that money has anything to do with ownership. Money is really bogus, but that is for another rant. Just keep clear that any ownership hear is purely theoretical and I do not deal with how ownership came to be unless specified; just whether it is ethical to own something for any reason, regardless of the method of how the thing or thought came to be owned. To start, can a thing be owned? Common sense would say that the answer is yes, but things are not that simple. Take land. You would think that owning land is a perfectly reasonable thing. But what allows you to lay claim to a piece of land? Originally ownership came down to who stuck a sign in the ground first and claimed it or who could defend their supposed land. So it would seem the strong get to own land since they can defend their claim. This is how animals seem to work. Many various living things stake out their territory by marking it and defending it. Nature it seems, supports the ownership of land. It could be said that we still use this idea of owning land by defending it even today with the government acting as a body that is used in defending the ownership of land; control the government and the laws, then you own land. So land ownership seems to be supported by evolution and nature to a decent extent. What about other things? What about things that are manufactured? OK, so when something is made you take something from the universe, expound some energy, and end up with something that does not completely resemble the materials used to make the new thing. Let's start at the beginning of this chain. Can you own something taken from the universe? We have loosely established that you can at least own a part of the universe. So does this extend to things? It would seem that if you own a piece of land, then you would own everything on that land. It would seem logical then that you can own the raw materials used to manufacture. You own your time and energy, so it would seem that you own what you make. Can you own living things? Land is inorganic. Owning something inorganic would seem inconsequential now. But what about a living thing like a plant or an animal? Do you have a right to be able to control something living, even as small as a single-celled organism? This is a tought issue. Obviously owning a human being is wrong. That is not refuted by any sane, logical person. So what about supposed "lesser" creatures? Take dogs. If you have a dog as a pet, do you own him? Do you have the right to use him in bartering? If the dog runs away, can you say that your property was lost? I would have to lean toward no. I think it should more be viewed toward the idea of support and protection. When you have a pet, you protect it and support it. You do not have a pet like a dog to cause it harm (unless you are a sick bastard who should be removed from this plane of existence). But how far does this protection go? Do all living things deserve this type of protection from ownership? I would have to say no. But this has to do with my view on living things and which ones hold the same rights as human beings. I say that if an animal does not show compassion and an understanding of right and wrong then they are not above a complex chemical reaction that just happens to be organic (which in itself is nothing that special). So an incompassionate living thing, such as bacteria, hold no higher level in the hierarchy of life than dust. So you could basically own bacteria, if you really wanted to. It would appear we have worked through the extremely basic issues of the ownership of things. Now we must deal with ideas. This is a completely different ballgame. Being intangible makes ideas a sticky situation. On second thought, though, it might make it painfully clear. If thoughts have no physical representation to themselves, what is there to own? Nothing, really. The only thing that could give you the possible right to own an idea is that you come up with it first, but that is ridiculous since proving who came up first with an idea is very difficult, especially when considering how long people have been on the planet. Another problem is what defines being different enough from one idea to another to allow ownership of a similar idea. If I write a book and it is the exact same as the current bestseller except for the last word is my idea different enough to allow me to own it? How about a sentence? A paragraph? A page? A chapter? How about if we allow no overlap in ideas. Then could someone then own the idea to the alphabet? The english language? Someone initially came up with those ideas. Obviously this all seems ridiculous, so maybe the ownership of ideas is ridiculous in of itself. Even allowing ownership of ideas comes up with the issue of how long that idea is owned. Obviously thinking that someone can own the english language seems ludicrous. So would it not also seem ludicrous that you can own any other idea? Don't even bother using the argument that complex ideas deserve to be owned. The english language is a monster, with intricacies that make it a very complicated beast. But the inventer of the language is obviously dead, so the knowledge is public domain now. So just because someone is dead, ideas are now free? Let's look at this at a new angle. Your mind is yours, period. No one owns your mind, nor could they ever. You control it, you own it. And yet, under our current system, it is possible to learn a new idea that someone supposedly owns and thusly have someone in your mind that you don't own. That's right, your mind is filled with ideas that someone owns. Doesn't that seem wrong? Especially since your mind is this intangible ether. How the hell can you own ether? You would think that once you learn or acquire an idea, that idea is yours, regardless if it is similar or practically the same as someone elses. If you don't want someone else using your idea then keep it to yourself. So physical things, it would seem, can be owned while ideas cannot. This causes an interesting problem. What if a thing contained an idea? Take hard drives in computers. They store ideas that someone has typed down and stored on that hard drive. You own that hard drive, so does that mean that you own the ideas on that hard drive too? No. You own the physical hard drive, but the ideas are still free; they just happen to have a physical representation, just like writing an idea on a piece of paper. Owning a piece of paper does not mean you get to own an idea represented on that paper. It would seem that you can't own an idea by owning a medium that contains a representaiton of an idea. Another issue is what rights do you have once you own something? Let's say I have a CD. Am I allowed to do anything with it that I like? Can I resell it? Sure, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to sell something that you own. Can you altar that CD? Once again, if you own the CD, it is yours so you can do what ever you want to it. Can you copy that CD? Ah, an issue! Currently you can only copy a CD for backup purposes only. But this restriction is there only to protect copyrights on the CD which we have established are not ethically right. So you should be able to copy a CD if you want. This causes huge ramifications for computer software. This means that a program has no true owner. So when you buy a computer program you are essentially buying the CD it is pressed on; you are not licensing the right to use the software as the software license requires you to subject yourself to. This means that there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to copy software; you are performing an action upon a piece of your property (the CD) and that is ethically allowed. What is interesting, though, is that this makes cracking (often wrongfully called hacking) unethical. Why? Because you are changing the state of an object (a computer) that someone owns. When you copy a file from someone without their permission you are bound to change something, whether it is the hard drive or some electric gate in the RAM. Either way, you would change someone's personal propery in some way that they did not authorize you to, making the act unethical. This also makes that intercepting information on the Internet unethical since you will once again cause a change in someone's computer somewhere. The copying of the info in itself is not wrong; just in the way you go about getting the info is wrong. Ownership will never be settled. It is one of those things that will be argued over for as long as their are living things to argue over it (essentially as long as intelligent life exists). It also seems no one has yet to adopt a system similar to the one outlined in this rant. Most groups and viewopints either completely support or deny the idea of ownership; it is very rare to separate ideas from physical things when it comes to this issue. This topic will be a thorn in everyone's side forever. |