Predvidevam, da je beseda iz naslova znana vsakemu, ki je kdaj prebral kakšno knjigo ali podrobno pogledal originalno zgoščenko. Predvidevam tudi, da se na besedo in njen pomen požvižgate, ker zloadate vso svojo priljubljeno glasbo, nadaljevanke in filme iz svetovnega spleta. Nelegalno seveda.
Beseda vas je verjetno zahrbtno napeljala na misel, da pomeni pravico da nekaj skopiraš, reproduciraš, čeprav v resnici izhaja iz mračnih časov angleške monarhije nekaj stoletij nazaj in pomeni nekaj drugega. V času po izumu tiskarskega stroja so knjige postajale vse bolj dostopne in kraljem se je to zazdelo precej "nevarno" in ogrožujoče. Zato so se premeteno domislili, da bodo sami podeljevali pravico kdo lahko tiska točno določeno knjigo in tako uveljavili nekakšno cenzuro. Ko je kralj podelil to pravico tiskarju, se je pravica zapisala na listino in kopijo te listine je dobil tiskar. Od tod torej Copyright: kopija pravice in ne pravica do kopiranja, kar nam beseda pomeni danes.
Avtorske pravice pa plujejo v čedalje bolj čudno smer. Milka je na primer prišla na dan z neponovljivo idejo, da bi avtorsko zavarovala svoj odtenek vijolične barve. Naj poudarim, da to pomeni, da je nihče ne sme več uporabljati - vse barvice v smeti! Na drugi strani je vse več ljudi, ki se zavzemajo za nekakšno ukinitev avtorskih pravic, predvsem na softwearu. Eden takšnih je Eben Moglen, ki je od profesionalnega hackerja pri petnajstih letih napredoval v profesorja prava na Columbia Law School:
Anything that is worth copying is worth sharing. "Thomas Edison made it possible for music, which had been for the whole history of human beings an act of communion, a thing inherently shared, that music turned into a product, an object, a commodity. And from the commoditization of art grew the belief that art could be owned. Which made sense even when art was bumps on a thin piece of tin foil in a plastic disc. But art has returned to the formlessness from which it came. It has returned to being what it was throughout the history of human beings until Edison: it has returned being something that must be shared to exist - bitstream. "All that was solid melted into air, and air was something that we all knew we could freely breath."
Billions of minds hungering for knowledge and for beauty, to whom everything can now be given. In a world where everything is a bitstream, where the marginal cost of culture is zero, where once one person has something, everything can be given to everybody at the same costs that it was given to its first possessor, it is immoral to exclude people from knowledge and from beauty."
