Property

The non-physical, "virtual" nature of information causes numerous complications for traditional notions of property.

Intellectual Property
In a number of aspects, electronic material is problematic with regard to copyright. Analog (non-digital) media such as paint, film, and audio tape can be converted to digital information and disseminated worldwide, easily and inexpensively. And copies of digital media such as music CDs and computer software are often perfect, exact copies, their contents indistinguishable from the original.

The contexts in which such reproduction is legal or illegal are often unclear. Long-standing copyright-law concepts such as fair use (which allows, for instance, certain reproductions for educational use) and first sale (which allows libraries to buy works and lend them to borrowers) are being reconsidered in the age of digital reproduction. It has, for example, always been legal to make backup copies of one's own music for personal reasons, but it has never been legal to distribute or sell those copies; this remains true for digital music.

The popularity of peer-to-peer (or "P2P") file sharing programs such as Napster, Gnutella, Morpheus, and KaZaA have brought the digital intellectual property debate to a head. Massive amounts of file sharing—especially of audio files in mp3 format—caused Internet "traffic jams" on many college and university campuses, suddenly putting those institutions at an unclear amount of legal risk for housing and enabling the transmittal of illegal copies of copyrighted material. Some campuses responded by cutting off P2P traffic entirely; others imposed a limit on the amount of P2P that could occur at any given time; still others did nothing at all.

Because of the ease and low cost of digital reproduction and distribution, and because digital copies are virtual, not physical, many users do not even consider whether their participation in digital copying of copyrighted material is legal. Consequently, many users are blithely ignorant of the question of whether or not they are committing theft. And many choose to remain in that ignorance.

These pages were written by Jeffrey L. Nyhoff and Steven H. VanderLeest and edited by Nancy Zylstra
© 2005 Calvin University (formerly Calvin College), All Rights Reserved.

If you encounter technical errors, contact computing@calvin.edu.