Defining digital and visual rhetoric II

I am a little late for this blog as I was out of town for a week with no computer access. I read "The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net." The article focuses on how we can protect our ideas and property when it is reproduced and distributed all over the world. Intellectual property law cannot be revised to encompass digital technology. In the past, it has been easier to protect physical expression with a patent or copyright because it always resulted in some thing such as a book or other physical object. The article tells us that for something to be patented, it has to be a thing and it has to work.

It is increasingly difficult to enforce existing copyright and patent laws that cover the free exchange of ideas. By attempting to solve the problem of protecting the ownership of speech, forms of more vigorous enforcement may threaten freedom of speech. In Cyberspace, there are no national or local boundaries to contain a crime and to determine a method of prosecution, and no clear cultural determination of exactly what the crime might be.

There now seems to be a world economy that is based on goods that have no material form. It may be hard to determine how to reward the creators based on the use of their products. Copyright and patent law were developed in most western countries for the purpose of promoting the creation of ideas and inventions and to help ensure those responsible would be compensated. Since we can now convey ideas to each other without them being physical, claims are made to own the ideas, not only their expression. This makes it difficult to determine actual ownership.

Laws regarding unlicensed reproduction of commercial software are harsh, but rarely observed. It is not reasonable to assume that laws made to protect physical things would also be appropriate for ideas communicated on the web. Unbounded intellectual property is different from physical property and cannot be protected the same way. If the information and ideas are not protected, the creator cannot be compensated for his work. When currency is meaningless, people will go back to bartering. Societies develop their own unwritten codes, practices and ethical systems when they develop outside the law. Technology may undo law, but it also offers methods for restoring creative rights.