Copyrights are Boring and Copying is Fun

Reading “The Longtail Blog”, I found myself reading about copyright and free business models. Anderson (the blogs author) makes reference to a paper where the author suggests 14 business models for a world without effective copyright. I didn’t finish reading the paper, simply because copyright its just plain boring or being law related makes it unreadable. Maybe is my perception that copyrights, are old fashion, that we get a feeling that is boring. In contrast I find copying fun, even when you might be doing it every day or not seen as a big deal. There is just something fun about doing stuff that are suppose to be “illegal”.

Is being “illegal” the reason its fun? Well for the daredevils out there it might, but at the end of the day copying is fun because we share. Humans beings are social beings and share is a act of being social. Sharing creates some type of conversation where we comunicate our ideas, feelings, frustrations and dreams, and that “ladies and gentlemen” (also a song by Saliva) is being human and … fun. Ponder on the following: do think people spend hours sending emails, SMSs, messages, poking, chatting and in social media just because they don’t have nothing better to do? Neither they do it because its their job (maybe a habit), but since its part of being human and humans are social and being social is fun. You share it with a friend, in a torrent or a neighbor and a bet some sort of conversation is born, either because you comment on the media being shared or because serves as small talk for bigger things. And the beauty of it that we do it so effortless and natural,  even if they is wrong, it just feels good. So go ahead and have fun and continue being human….copy

By the way, I almost forgot to tell you, there was something interesting from the copyright paper: a graph that illustrates a relationship between the Per-capita income vs. fraction of software pirated, where lower per capita GDP countries trend to have high levels of piracy.

[source: "Copying and Copyright"]

For more on piracy stats check this report by the Business Software Alliance ( check your countries stat ).

Since I’m already in kind of a side note, I will like just to say that although piracy, based on the old standards is “stealing”, I’m not against it and I encourage it. The report from the BSA likes to show how much billions are lost every year, because people use “pirated software” instead of buying it. That is just a stupid number. I don’t have no all the facts, just my common sense and it tells me that most of the people that use pirate software does it because they can’t afford it. And if a person can’t afford a software, how is that a “sure sale” that transforms into a loss when the person uses private software. However the report doesn’t show how many lives were change because they had access to doing something productive with there computer. Also how are they sure that this people will buy that software? How is that a loss? Of coarse its easy to say this when is not your “intellectual property” that is being copy, but at the end that is a good thing. Its means that if the yare coping it you are doing something right.