Canada’s Debate

… continued from yesterday.

For any reconsideration of how we share information to take place it is important for a society to have a clear view of how that information is valued. In the case of intellectual property the “information” or content of the property can be seen as the imaginative work undertaken by the author. How then do we as a society perceive this content as valuable? McFarlane identifies two schools of thought regarding property rights, which are the legal manifestations of a cultural perception of value. In this case two different views are explored, the Lockean (McFarlane 5) and the Hegelian (McFarlane 5) views.

According to Locke, a person acquires property rights to something by investing labor in it. For example if someone goes out into the forest, cuts down a tree and saws it into firewood, that wood becomes his property. Even though he did not own the tree or the land it was on and did nothing to plant the tree or make it grow, by putting the work into turning the tree into something useful, the product is his (McFarlane 5.)

Extended this understanding of property rights to the realm of intellectual production, it is not the idea which informs intellectual property, but the work expended in creating a tangible product from the ideas. This understanding places a firm emphasis on the transmissive work involved in communicating the information from the author to the reader. In contrast (although not in direct opposition) the Hegelian point of view is that an, “Essay, book, musical piece, or other creative work is an act of self-expression or self-realization, and this is an extension of the creator’s person. As such it belongs to the creator, not just as an object of possession, but as a part of the self” (McFarland 5.) What this view entails is that a creator has rights as an extension of the act of creation, not the labour itself. This demands that any intellectual product has value before it is made tangible, and any such work demands the consent of the creator and appropriate compensation. As prescient as this understanding may seem given the implications that cyberspace has for information transmission, it still fails in that it does not recognize the eventual work required in translating the information into a tangible form. In Lockean view however, taking a collection of scrambled electrons and converting them into a photograph or into music would perhaps entitle the user to the rights that we normally bestow upon the originator. What is necessary is a reconfiguration of rights where the user acquires some rights from the creator for translating their information into a tangible asset, in exchange for compensation as determined by the creator. This third option, one exclusively for the Internet, can perhaps be identified as the Transmission view of property rights. It entails that the creation of intellectual property bestows upon an author rights to entitlement, and in the process of communicating those ideas transmits certain elements of those rights to the user who produces a tangible form. The user controls their own use of the material, and any further transmissions are seen as a communication between the creator (in the form of the original material) and the new user who again produces a tangible product.

… to be continued.