Peer to Peer
From MetaforasWiki
| Foundations | Structure | Metafora | Inflection | Return to Metaforas.org |
Peer-to-peer sharing systems—networks of people linked together by programs such as LimeWire or Bittorrent—have moved music out of the library and into the networked World Brain. One interesting consequence of this is the peculiar phenomena called "mash-ups." Users mix songs together using inexpensive digital tools, then release them into the World Brain. Other people can download and listen to them, or even take the mash-ups and remix them again, creating second- and third-generation mash-ups. The notions of originality and authorship are becoming more complicated as the essence of intellectual property rights change.
Ownership of intellectual property—a music CD for instance—was once based in the metaphors of owning real property: scarcity and possession. If I have a CD, you cannot have it. But in the twenty-first century, the Internet allows users to share and effortlessly duplicate music and movies in digital form. Our society is engulfed in discussion, conflict and litigation over the ownership of digital creativity, yet it is hard to imagine that the current guidelines for intellectual property rights, based in seventeenth-century thinking, will continue to dictate the terms of the global exchange of digital media.
See Also
- Peer to Peer
- Highway
- Friedman
- Whitman
- Shakespeare
