Because cyberspace is a real social space, ownership in cyberspace has effects on real relationships of all kinds, and a number of the themes which we have been discussing are relevant to property and ownership.
The easy duplication of objects in cyberspace (computer programs, digital recordings of music or personal information such as health records) implies a need to think carefully about theft, what it is, and why we may be justified in outlawing certain forms of duplication.
The easy aggregation and use of data means that the power of information has greatly increased. We might hardly have thought of a piece of casual knowledge about someone as a 'thing' which we or someone else 'owned'. But substantial 'data shadows' (see Chapter 3) exist relating to individuals and groups; for example, the trading of mailing lists and data records for profit.
The power of ownership of standards raises questions about justice and inequality, at the very least in relation to the market economy. Some standards that enable programs to work together are proprietary, designed and owned by particular companies. It could be made prohibitive for a new company with a good product idea to become established in cyberspace, due on the one hand to the cost of licensing the proprietary standards, and on the other the impossibility of becoming established without access to those standards. This raises questions about the fair use of power.
In the physical world, we have various rules (some with a biblical heritage)
about redistributing good things - whether wealth through charity and taxes,
or food and other essential items to sustain life. It is obviously bad to withhold
the physical necessities of life, and it is obviously bad to mislead people
with wrong information (propaganda), but what are our responsibilities over
sharing and using information?
Christian theologians have been more or less unanimous in rejecting the understanding of property that was based upon Roman law. In Roman law, to own something was to have an absolute right to do whatever one wanted with it. Certainly, God has such a right over what he has created; but human beings are to be answerable to God for their use of the good things of that creation. There may be legitimate choices about how to use these good things, but if we use them in ways which serve against the building up of our common life, we are liable to judgement from the one who is the true owner.
Christians have not, on the whole, believed that property is a bad thing.
Even though they have a biblical vision and example of common ownership (see
Acts 2.44, for example), many of them have nonetheless also justified private
property. The claim is made that the ownership of property is good; it serves
as a basis for personal responsibility and moral growth; it allows us to be
co-workers with God in bringing about his purposes. This is actually another
way of stating our responsibility to use these goods wisely. Ownership is always
relative to God's call on what is owned.
This strong vision of responsibility before God is one that we need to translate into the realm of ownership in cyberspace. We may first of all imagine that because life is about flesh and blood, cyber-property must be irrelevant to matters of life and death; but think of the questions of access to your medical records, who owns them, and whether they are available to the right people at the right time to save your life. We may regard the casual copying of some software as having cost no one anything at all, but we should then be reminded that someone has gone to considerable pains to produce that piece of software, and 'the worker is worthy of his wages' (1 Timothy 5.18) - perhaps the only way the programmer can earn money to support self and family.
There are mutual responsibilities here. Charging for a service implies some responsibility, yet software notoriously comes with so-called guarantees and warranties whose only practical effect appears to be the disclaiming of any responsibility. Once you've opened the box, you've paid for it and accepted it, warts (or bugs!) and all, whether it works or not. So manufacturers aren't perfect, as these warranties sometimes explicitly admit. Of course, if a manufacturer wants to stay in business and get a good reputation it needs to develop a reputation for good-quality software, whatever its licences say. The users of the products often don't feel very guilty copying their products when they shouldn't make copies, so they aren't perfect either.
Copyright questions relate not just to the capacity to earn money, but also
to the right to take credit for some piece of work, or to publish it. Placing
something on a generally accessible web site is placing it before the public,
and making it freely available. A first question to ask might be: Is there a
right to make this thing public? Has the author consented, for example? There
may then be further 'accountability' questions about whether and how we should
ascribe responsibility for the content of what is placed on the web. There is
heated debate over these issues. When cyberspace had few businesses in it, commercial
questions like making money and worrying about copyright were far from everyone's
minds. Now profit-making publishers have brought into cyberspace all the conventional
worries of copyright and ownership.
There are more points that we might make about the changes which cyberspace is making in our perception of the handling of property issues.
New forms of marketing are being encouraged by the easy copying of objects in cyberspace. The concept of shareware is one where programs (or data) may be distributed freely, and the user is trusted to pay a fee if he or she finds it useful after a trial. The responsibility is on the user to pay, and interestingly users in the United Kingdom seem less likely to do so than those in the United States. One interesting analogy might be with the policy of not charging for admission to a cathedral, but making a suggestion as to the level of donation which would be appropriate. No one is refused admission just because they cannot pay, but there is a recognition that the benefit to those who visit the cathedral has a cost, which those who can pay ought to help to meet.
A variation on shareware is public domain software, where the programs (and perhaps the programming code for the programs too) are freely distributed without any cost (apart, perhaps, from a copying fee). The benefits of public domain are that standards are raised, and that people benefit. Public domain material is often the work of large groups of people, many of them experts in the relevant area. Thus public domain software is altruistic, and often of a very high standard because it has been open to public scrutiny. A variation of public domain is copyleft, which as its name implies, is an alternative to copyright. In copyleft, the authors assert basic rights to be recognized and allow for the material to be freely copied provided that it is never changed. {post-publication note: A correspondent has pointed out that this description is incorrect. It should read: ... provided that certain conditions are respected. The most common conditions allow modifications provided that the modified version is also available to all on the same terms.}
New considerations about the pervasiveness of the work of others in what we think of as 'our own work' may make us more aware of our mutual dependence. If I build a web site, it is certainly the result of my labours, but it is equally certainly not independent of the labours of others. My web site may contain material written or designed by other people (such as little pictures); it relies on standards which are proprietary technologies. It may be that the 'work of our hands' has relied on the labours of others much more than we have been willing to admit in the past. Cyberspace might make us more aware of this, and less willing to take all of the credit.
It is hardly surprising that in the realms of property and ownership cyberspace
offers both opportunities and dangers. Issues that have been noted are: the
recognition of responsibility for authorship; the need of workers to earn a
living by the results of their labour; and the power of information conceived
as property, both positively and negatively (think of the possibilities raised
by ownership of genetic data). Our conclusion, then, is as follows: that ownership
in cyberspace no less than anywhere else is subject to the higher claims of
ownership that God has on everything that exists, and which implies specific
responses to issues of indifference to need, exclusion and exploitation. Right
use can be judged by service of the commandments to love God and neighbour,
and in the building up of common life.