The Digital Rights of Man
O'ROURKE, P.J.
THE RIGHTS OF DIGITAL MAN BY P.J. O'ROURKE just got in a terrific argument with your assistant, Max"said the teenage baby-sit- ter,"about getting free music on the Inter- net....
...They come to you...
...Most of you "hackers" don't have the skills to manipulate NASDAQ or empty the International Monetary Fund into your bank card accounts...
...If your printers hold out, you can get five-fingered discounts on books.Advances in technology will soon let you sneak into first-run movie houses,jump the Sony HayStation 2 toy-store lines, and tell the cable TV guy exactly where his next rate increase should go...
...Fortunes used to be made by means of such things as the Firestone Tire Company--an aggregation of factories, machinery, and products that blow up and roll Mrs...
...Or will representative democracy obtain...
...The most important property right is your own inviolable right to self-possession...
...O'Rourke is author of CEO of the Sofa, published this month by Atlantic Monthly Press...
...If we don't, it's back to screaming at the neighborhood brats for doing wheelies on our hwn.And if we do have property rights in the information, then we're sneaking up behind ourselves and stealing our own wallets...
...Or, since I'm a political conservative and therefore regard the world as a thoroughly wicked place, let's just assume you're a bad person and don't have a conscience...
...I offer, for your imagination, the hip-hop stylings of the future group Bone Thugs 'N House of Representatives...
...Let me speak two words of caution: public toilet.And, if all information is to be public, by what means will the public manage its information...
...As more and more of you do this kind of thing, the likelihood lessens that any one of you will be caught, or if caught, prosecuted or, if prosecuted, punished.Thus is spawned a multitudinous generation of white-collar criminals who can't even be bothered with the collar.You are the sweatpants criminals slouching at your monitors, eating Skittles, drinking Jolt cola, and sacking and pillaging the earth...
...THE RIGHTS OF DIGITAL MAN BY P.J...
...Hardly any of us adults have jobs where we actually make stuff...
...Let's leave the questions of right and wrong to be settled between you and the bodyguards of Sean "Puffy" Combs after Puffy discovers you've been using MP3 to rip him off for royalties...
...Information technology means that what we do is think.And what we think is the information that the information technology runs on...
...He says MP3 file-swapping helps protect First Amendment rights, while I say it helps expand market freedoms" Young lady, I said, computers are helpful with many tasks, stealing, for instance...
...Money itself is merely information--0's and I'S in a database such as a bank accountmand I have checked mine and there aren't even any I'S in there, just O's...
...Oracle is not an aggregation of factories and machinery, it's a bunch of O's and I's...
...Who'll be in charge...
...The age of information technology is upon us, and everything of value (other than, maybe, the six-pack) can be digitalized...
...But you can shoplift CDs and read magazines without buying them...
...Encryption experts do their best...
...When other people get mixed up about the notion that you are your personal property, when they start thinking they own you, the consequences are horrendous: slave trade, the draft, my first marriage...
...Even if you get caught for the computer crime, the FBI agents assigned to cybertheft cases are polite...
...But eventually, when you grow up and get a career, you won't do anything...
...You own what you do.And there's the rub in the age of information technology.You don't do anything.Well, that's not true.You baby-sit...
...Property rights, however, mean more than unviolated herbaceous borders...
...O's SUV into a ditch...
...Do we own our thoughts...
...This raises two questions: the question of right and wrong and the question,Who cares...
...But when information travels into the global electronic network, the information is, in effect, a rich tourist wandering through the wrong part of town.The computer becomes the handgun of modern mugging...
...You own you...
...Reprinted with permission...
...You also have property rights in your actions.You own your efforts...
...The more interesting question is Who cares...
...Gee, Mr...
...you don't have to go to them.And they rarely use armed force, especially if you turn out to be a fifteen-year-old girl who weighs about a hundred pounds...
...Something else that's a bunch of0's and I's is the whole world's banking system, also all the financial markets on earth...
...But forget about your grandparents.There is no human liberty without property rights...
...Otherwise labor unions would be good for nothing but softball leagues...
...Fodor's-consulting, Bermuda-shorts-wearing information safe from the locals...
...Do we have property rights in the information that is available on everyone's computer...
...This takes less nerve and physical exertion than stashing a six-pack of beer under your coat and being chased down the street by an angry ballbat-wielding package-store owner...
...If you are adept with a computer, you can filch a Defense Department atomic bomb secret, some Limp Bizkit tunes, and a book report on Moby Dick without leaving your room...
...Will a completely open web promote idealistic anarchism...
...I know I don't...
...And it's hard to keep all this bankroll-flashing, Contributing Editor P.J...
...O'ROURKE just got in a terrific argument with your assistant, Max"said the teenage baby-sitter,"about getting free music on the Internet...
...Let's leave the question of right and wrong to be settled between you and your conscience...
...That is, will the plots of novels and casting for movies be decided by riots in Seattle...
...O, you might be right"said the baby-sitter.'Tll have to run some numbers on my computer to see if what you say makes sense from an econometric standpoint" 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 SEPTEMBER/OCToBER 2OOI...
...Most of us don't even provide a service in the traditional sense...
...Now fortunes are made by means of such things as Oracle Corp...
...Although not to your grandparents, who were--Max discovered, through information available on the Internet--the people who phced the anonymous phone call to the truant officer when they saw the boy across the street riding his bike during weekday school hours...
...You may resist the idea of property rights on the Internet because, when you think of property rights, you think of the crabby neighbors--your grandparents--with the KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign, who come out on their porch and scream at kids when they ride bikes across their front yard...
...If information is free for the taking, available to the masses without cost or risk, then information becomes public property...
...Possibly, you...
...Will information be the responsibility of elected officials...
...All information is public property" has a plummy utopian sound...
...All digitalized information is vulnerable, in some way, to being swiped...
...But the number of encryption experts is finite, while the number of young people who spend much too much time fiddling around on computers is infinite, if you and Max and my godson Nick are anything to go by...
...But how would the fact of information being public affect the quality of that public information...
Vol. 34 • September 2001 • No. 7
