Lawrence Lessig Quote
If piracy means using value from someone else’s creative property without permission from that creator–as it is increasingly described today – then every industry affected by copyright today is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, radio, cable TV… Extremists in this debate love to say You wouldn’t go into Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why should it be any different with online music? The difference is, of course, that when you take a book from Barnes & Noble, it has one less book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3 from a computer network, there is not one less CD that can be sold. The physics of piracy of the intangible are different from the physics of piracy of the tangible.
If piracy means using value from someone else’s creative property without permission from that creator–as it is increasingly described today – then every industry affected by copyright today is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, radio, cable TV… Extremists in this debate love to say You wouldn’t go into Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why should it be any different with online music? The difference is, of course, that when you take a book from Barnes & Noble, it has one less book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3 from a computer network, there is not one less CD that can be sold. The physics of piracy of the intangible are different from the physics of piracy of the tangible.
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