Voluntary Own To Share Digital Object Licensing Agreement

Discussion

"It's absurd that we have capitalist dinosaurs filing lawsuits against information age kids.

What is to be done?

The Voluntary Own To Share (VOTS) digital object licensing agreement:

If you have it, you have it. Read it. Look at it. Listen to it. There is no law against it. You have nothing to prove. No questions asked. The creators respectfully request that you donate some amount if you intend to share it with others. No enforcement. It's voluntary. Plain and simple. End of story. No cops. No Big Brother. No law suits. Why must it be voluntary?: First, because to enforce industrial age copyrights on information age files requires a Big Brother level of intrusive surveilance. Second, there are people in poverty. Those people should have free access to digital art and information. We must accept the possibility that some rich people will take and not give in order to assure that poor people can take even if they have nothing to give. Third, it's better if you share it without donating than not share it at all.

This is digital age stuff. It won't work for shoes any more than the shoe model works for digital files. The shoe store guy will still call a cop if you take a pair without paying for it. But we won't call a cop if you share our files.

A distinction must be made between owning and having. There is a tendency to think, "If you don't own it, you shouldn't have it." But none of us own the air we breathe. There has to be some stuff we can have without paying someone for it. And in a civilized society there should be a whole lot that someone can have without paying someone for it. You shouldn't have to already have succeeded in business in order to experience the cultural artifacts of your civilization. Children in poverty are denied plenty; they should not be denied culture.

If you have something: Maybe you borrowed it, rented it, hunted it, or stumbled across it. If you own something: society says you have some special rights to it. Probably you traded some money or some labor for the right to say "I own it" instead of "I have it."

You have it? To share might or might not be okay. You own it? Share at will.

It is the morality of laws that cause us to obey. The penalties for non-compliance are there for the outliers. Most of us will not commit crimes even without formal sanctions.

So let us go forward asking people to pay a token amount when they like some cultural expression enough to pass it along." (http://bluehighwaypublishing.com/VOTS.htm)