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Wired 2.03: The Economy of Ideas

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Saved by 3 people (1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2007-06-02


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"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson

Highlighted by senzafine3

If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?

Highlighted by senzafine3

Issue 2.03 | Mar 1994

Highlighted by senzafine3

we are sailing into the future on a sinking ship.

Highlighted by tonycurzonprice

Digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, where property law of all sorts has always found definition.

Highlighted by tonycurzonprice

Law protected expression and, with few (and recent) exceptions, to express was to make physical.

Highlighted by tonycurzonprice