iPhone and Intellectual Property in the Digital Age
Aug 27, 2007
It was the summer of 1984 - the very dawn of the digital age.
Stewart Brand and I were having lunch with several other people
near the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla,
California, where we had just given lectures in the
morning. That was when I first heard Stewart say
"information wants to be free." He said it again over
lunch. And I replied - well, maybe so, but creators of
information still need to eat. I was a staunch
supporter of copyright and patent.
I’m still a strong believer in copyright. But, in the two
and a half decades since then, the wretched excesses of the RIAA
and like organizations have caused me to clarify to myself and
others exactly what I mean. And that would be: If some
person or organization wants to make money from my writing or other
creative work, they need my permission and of course need to pay
me. I'm not allergic to money. But if someone wants to take my book
out of a library, read my blog, listen to my podcast, buy a
second-hand copy of my book, that’s fine, even great. I'm
delighted, and I don’t expect to get paid. Which means that,
to be consistent, I should have no problem with someone acquiring a
new copy of any of my books and not paying me - and, in fact,
that’s fine, too. I have no problem at all with
that.
And that's why, as I wrote yesterday, I was so happy about George Hotz and his re-soldering the iPhone to work with a T-Mobile sim card. Apple and AT&T were wrong to lock the iPhone in the first place. What George did was not only legally permissible but ethical laudable.
In the digital age, you can best make money - as well as friends -by including not excluding.
See also A Lesson from
AT&T History.
For more on Stewart Brand and the history and fut
ure
of intellectual property, feel free to beg, borrow, or buy my book,
The
Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information
Revolution...
