Plagiarism versus the new online reality

Memiwanzi recently touches on the origin of the word plagiarism but in this one case, the meaning is far more interesting than the etymology to me.

Ah plagiarism and its related demon, intellectual property rights. With the digital age, "plagiarism" becomes terribly confusing morally and intellectually, if not effectively meaningless. Some intellectual issues follow:

1. Define "copy". Copying can be whole or in part, so at what point can the act of copying be sensibly called "plagiarism"? How can such a fuzzy delineation be made methodical and fair?

2. Define "author". On the net, what does "author" really mean if, say, someone remixes a preexisting song? What if the derivative work of another gains more social value than the original work of an original author? And then should one be paid for derivative works too? How derivative is "too derivative" though?

3. Define the basic moral issue with "plagiarism". Is plagiarism an issue about recognition of authorship, financial compensation, social appreciation, a combination of the above, or something else? Or is this more broadly about the fair compensation of any contributor (anonymous or otherwise, online or off) by means of any "currency" (based on financial value or some other value) according to the overall "value" of the contribution (evaluated by any kind of value or group of values)?

4. A new participatory economy? How might the pre-digital-age free-market model adapt to the new reality of open information exchange where "copying" is a gradient concept, "value" includes non-financial metrics, and where collective contribution and exchange blur the lines of an agent with her environment?

To resolve this pesky issue of plagiarism, we need a new digital economy that:
A) upholds the netizen's inherent right to copy and paste information.
B) recognizes doubly that mere copying adds no participatory value to the system.
C) sufficiently rewards contribution according to its measure of originality and overall social worth.
D) destroys any meaningful gain (in time and money) from stealing another person's work.

Cage Innoye has many interesting insights on just such an economy at his blog Diverse Philosophy. Whatever their exact details may be, competent solutions demand less laws and a more developed value theory.

The great economic cycle

It's come to my attention that there are whispers of stock market collapse as the US finally admits to its troubling economics that some might say began in the 70s, let alone 2001. At any rate, it's been my experience that not only does history repeat itself but that merely knowing history doesn't really prevent anything.

The more practical purpose to learning history is not simply to know it but to understand it. That is, to understand why things happened the way they did and to reapply that knowledge to the present world, the world we live today. History is a source of information that we so often fail to take advantage of. This then is sadly why it's very easy to trick many fools into thinking that any system can last forever without change.

Is problem solving dependent on money?

Sometimes I google for much more than informative websites or blogs. There are a wealth of interesting journal articles available too, sprinkled all over cyberspace like tasty candy for the mind. But beware of greedy corporations and old-school institutions who try their best to interfere with the inevitable future of the internet: free information exchange.

For example, there was this interesting article called Is problem solving dependent on language? that I wanted to get my dirty hands on. If you follow the link, you can see that ScienceDirect.com basically says "Cough up my $31.50 if you wanna see the article alive!" So I was like, "Omg, how rude. No thanks, creep." Realistically, the average person just doesn't have 30 bucks to throw away for every article that they need to read. If there was ever a time when that was true, it's certainly not now.

So being a rebel to the core, I went back to google and searched directly with the query: "Is problem solving dependent on language?". My defiance paid off and I recovered the abstract plus article which is accessable in pdf format here for the low low price of *ZERO* dollars. I celebrated afterwards for my victory against the machine with a soothing cup of tea. (Yeah, I'm a geek. What's it to ya? Lol.)

Now what have we learned for today, class?