(Original, now old) Senior Thesis Proposal

Devin Gaffney
Senior Thesis Proposal
April 29th, 2009

IP over IP (Intellectual Property over Internet Protocol)

The first laws regarding intellectual property came to being alongside the first generation of printing presses; it is not a far stretch to see this as direct evidence of the relationship between intellectual properties (IP) and information and communications technologies; as the first machine to easily and (comparably) efficiently distribute information was created, so too were the laws governing and limiting what could be printed, or more specifically, the manner in which they could be.

My studies at Bennington have always been in pursuit of one central question: how are computers changing our world? Clearly something has happened as a result of them, but due to the contemporary nature of these changes, it is hard to exactly describe what the net effect has been; in the hopes of starting to approach that answer, I wish to look at one of the facets of it: the role of intellectual property in the age of the internet protocol.

Simply put, my thesis is this: To what extent do information and communications technologies (ICTs) alter the perception, violability, and efficacy of intellectual property rights? In what way does the consumer justify these alterations? I wish to look at the history of computer file sharing to examine exactly how it is that the infrastructure of the internet is organized into a way that changed how intellectual property restrictions are seen and how the copyrights were treated, and look at how the infrastructure has and continues to create a breeding ground for new interpretations of the meaning of intellectual property and the restrictions upon it, either conscious or subconscious.

I intend to start my paper the same way I have started this proposal; I want to illustrate the deep, inherent connection that ICTs have to intellectual property laws. This is an essential framework that must be laid down before any deep examination can be conducted.

I want to then move on to my first section, covering the early history of computer piracy, the era of the Home-brew Computer Club (the first significant gathering of computer enthusiasts), which gave rise to such industry leaders as Apple Inc., and is largely considered to be the beginning of personal computing. This history is essential, as it lays the foundation upon which the rest of personal computing rests, and in this club was the first instance of hacking, which it can be argued begot file sharing on the scale and scope of which I intend to discuss.

Continuing on, I will dissect the history of the trajectory of infinitely faster speeds on the internet from its inception to now; it is this expansion of bandwidth that has largely provided easy access to file sharing, legal or non-legal; in short, it widens the bottleneck through which information could be transmitted. Early in the days of computing, illegal file sharing wasn’t as rampant simply because the cost (both in terms of time and money) of reproducing media was too high, and the community too small (which, it can be argued is for the same reasons). During this time, the Sneakernet (a colloquial term for the physical transportation of information on physical media such as tapes and disks) had more importance to early PC users than the internet. As computers became networked, however, these sneakers that laid the roots of file sharing were replaced by wires, which laid the groundwork upon which the rest of the story of file sharing has taken place. It is at this point that I will talk about the technical aspects of how the internet works, and why it has been so successful in allowing piracy.

The paper at this point will be largely concerned with why the internet has provided the perfect infrastructure for the transmission of information. Although altruistic in its original intent, a side effect is that it has created a place ripe for file sharing, legal or, more likely than not, non-legal. To conclude this half of the paper, I will talk at length about the essential components of the internet: mainly, the concepts of de-authorization (that is, the obfuscation of authorship, and as a result, the declining respect and recognition of it), anonymity, and physical separation from the media that intellectual property had previously been committed to. I intend to make the case by this point of the paper that when we are talking about problems with intellectual property and copyright, the medium upon which information is transferred is not as important as the ease of reproducibility that the medium allows. Additionally, I will argue that the internet has created a place ideal for the most efficient means of information sharing, and that, coupled with the historical open nature of the personal computing world, has allowed an implicit gateway for the open transmission of any sort of data, for any purpose imaginable.

After this, I intend to move on to an equally important topic of intellectual property in the information age. Without the infrastructure, the level of copyright infringement that we have seen in the past two or three decades certainly wouldn’t have been the same, but in order for copyright infringement to exist at these levels, people that are copying the information must be complicit with it, and must make a risk assessment, either consciously or subconsciously, of doing so. As of now, this section is admittedly vague, but is essential to understanding the role of intellectual property. As stated in the thesis, the goal of this section is to ascertain in what way the consumer justifies the changes in intellectual property rights. The inherent assumptions about products do not apply in the same way when we talk about products over the internet; with a normal movie or album, the content is delivered physically, and comes with a physical sense of ownership; over the internet, it is simply a sequence of binary digits, a sequence that is information in its purest form, without any form of physicality. Inherent in original documents of free speech is the sense of the freedom to create, transmit and receive information or ideas; I intend to argue that the infrastructure of the internet achieves this “information” clause of free speech through its physical separation, anonymity, and sense of de-authorization, and therefore allows a consumer to inherently assume that copyright infringement through this new medium is “less theft” than in other, more clearly physical in nature, mediums. The argument that I used to make this assertion will likely change, as this is not as solid as I would like. The full, fleshed out argument will come as a result of deep research; this only serves as an example of what may be.

In the section where I discuss why people decide to infringe copyrights, I also intend to discuss the motivation for major distributors of copyrighted material; without covering these motivations, the paper would be incomplete, as much of the copyrighted material tends to come from only a few major hubs of distribution. Additionally, I intend to talk about copyleft movements at this point, as they serve a similar function in the movement against copyright on the internet.

It is hard to say what conclusions will be gleaned from this research as of this time; I do intend, however, to take the position that the role of intellectual property restrictions barring free distribution seems to take less precedence in the information age, with a few exceptions. There are are a few ways that these changes in how intellectual property is perceived might be viewed going forward; either a new suitable business model will arrive at a point where the consumer, in their risk assessment on illegal file sharing, arrives at the conclusion that it is in their interests to accept copyright and download legally. Another possibility is that intellectual property restrictions may become a moot point as the internet allows faster, easier, and more reliable routes of transmission of information that circumvents copyright laws and the traditional forms of distribution; or, as with books, the laws that govern intellectual property may change in a way that makes any circumventions no longer viable. It is my optimistic hope that I will be able to arrive at one of these points by the end of this project.

Considered Works:

DiMaggio, Paul, Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, and John P. Robinson. “Social Implications of the Internet.” Annual Review of Sociology. 27(2001): 307-336. Print.

Fowler, Thomas B. “Technology’s Changing Role in Intellectual Property RIghts.” IT Professional 4(2002): 39-44. Print.

Halbert, Debora Jean. Intellectual property in the information age : the politics of expanding ownership rights. 1st. Westport, CT: Quorom Books, 1999. Print.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. 1st. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. Print.

Tuomi, Ilkka. Networks of innovation: change and meaning in the age of the Internet. 1st. London: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.