The Artful Jurist

I was watching a TV program the other day. Its topic was the legal issues surrounding unathorized digital downloading of music. Included in the show were various "people on the street" interviews, and one of the questions that was posed to the people was whether they believed it was okay to make copies of music recordings to share with friends. One interviewee acknowledged the rights of those who own the copyrights on the music, but then he also talked of what he saw as a competing interest -- the right to share.

The right to share? Did someone sneak in a new amendment to the Constitution when I wasn't looking? Where does it say "Congress shall make no law abridging the people's right to share copyright infringing duplicates of intellectual property"?

In all fairness, I can't fault too much the young man who gave that comment about his perception of a right to share. Lots of people who ought to know better labor under the same notion that there's absolutely nothing wrong with making a copy to share with a friend. It's the kind of activity that's been going on so long that people often don't even stop to think about whether or not it's legal.

But just for the record...There's no such thing as a right to share that which you don't own. I can't, for example, share my next door neighbor's car with some other person. I don't own my next door neighbor's car and, as such, don't have the right to give someone else permission to borrow it, even if my neighbor sometimes lets me borrow it. The same holds true for music or other forms of intellectual property. Only the copyright holder has the legal authority to say who does and doesn't get a copy.

So, while "share and share alike" is a noble and courteous custom, it's not the law of copyright.