Ownership and Originality

I think that this is a question that I end up bringing up quite often.  Who owns what?  A rather large question seeing that the natural response is “well it depends on ‘what’ it is that you are talking about.”  My friend Olivier wrote a post on his blog, The Brand Builder, today dealing with the question of ownership on the web and in regards to blogging specifically (incidentally I have not sent Olivier and email asking him if it is okay that I am referencing his blog but I am hoping that because I am giving him credit and linking to his page that we shouldn’t have any problem). 

The interesting thing for me is asking what makes something worth owning in the first place?  Personally I  would assume that it has to do with a value on which the thing creates.  Obviously if that which is owned can produce some sort of financial gain then it becomes an item of more value for owning.  But ideas also are taken quite seriously in the whole ownership deal.  Sure ideas can turn a profit in some ways but I think that often the importance of the ownership of an idea is merely the desire for the credit in saying “I was the one who first thought of that.”  Further more, probably everything that is of some value of ownership, whether it be an object that we purchase to own ourselves, a cooperate company, a work of literature, or any number of other things that are considered owned, all of them had to begin as an idea at some point.  Does that make the idea thinker the prime owner and one deserving of credit for the existence of the thing?  Does the person who first invented the coffee pot actual own the coffee pot, or does the consumer who buys the coffee pot own it, or the company that manufactures it?  Obviously I am being a bit absurd about this.  We know that we live in a system in which we have patents and copyrights which points to who owns what in a certain way and probably we don’t have to worry about Mr. Coffee Company employees coming into our houses to reclaim the coffee pot that they insist is theirs.  But I still have to wonder about ideas.  Who really owns an idea?

I suppose the challenge is in realizing that ideas are not something that can come out of void.  We, as thinking people, think in context to so many elements around us.  Take for example this blog post.  While I consider it an original piece (I am not stealing or plagiarising it from somewhere else, these are my original thoughts) I cannot deny that had I not read Olivier’s blog post I may not have thought to sit down and write this post myself.   Even the existence of this MadLord Innovations blog isn’t a complete original idea on my part as it is a cooperate between myself an Mad.  Ideas do not spawn out of vacuum, there is context from which they grow and originate.  Ideas are the incorporation of a whole number of elements including personal experiences, observations, the intake of other ideas, etc, etc.  So what is a truly original idea?  Does one actually exist?  My answer would be both no and yes.  No because again I do not believe an idea can just come from nothing, they are products of a whole number of different things.  Yes because somebody can take all the unique aspect that they encounter and use them to formulate a thought in a truly original way.  Perhaps the ownership is in the moment that we begin to think differently using what thoughts have already existed.

I have my Bachelor’s Degree in English with a Writing option which means that while I was in college I wrote a hell of a lot of papers.  One of the most emphasized things of importance that was ground into me in college was the use of proper citation whenever I was writing anything that referenced other works.  I have nothing against this because I think it is important to give credit where credit is deserved and when writing a critical paper often times many of the ideas you are dealing with are coming from other sources than your own sheer creativity.  Now that I am out of school I am not writing nearly as many papers that need a lot of citation (every once and awhile I write a little something in which I make sure to jot down bibliographic info in regards to who previously wrote or said what).   Recently I have been doing a lot more writing on blogs and often times I will post about quotes and links and online material that I find interesting.  I tend to agree with Olivier’s stance that if one is blogging and wishes to reference something else that they find on the Internet then providing the credit for who wrote it, or said it, or drew it, and also giving a link, is reasonable enough because honestly it doesn’t seem to me to be all that much of stealing any such thing it is merely referencing something that caught ones attention.  The matter becomes different when we see people trying to pass off others’ works as their own at which point I would have to consider it a theft and say that they need to remedy the way they are handling other people’s material. 

But isn’t it important that we also think about the way in which we make things public on the Internet.  I am constantly reminded about all the potential problems that can arise with sites like MySpace or Facebook and the content that users put in these websites.  Who actually owns that stuff? I believe you’ll find that the terms of use for such sites say that the site itself owns what is put on there and that the users need to be aware that the information they are sharing is being made potentially public.  But that is so even in the matter of my blogging here.  There is nothing that can really stop just about anyone from reading what I have written here.  If I do a Google search for my name this blog will actually turn up somewhere down the list (actually quite far down the list seeing that first several links go to some ancestor of mine from Ipswich Massachusetts).  The thing is that the Internet is not a private medium in which we can feel secure with everything.  If we are concerned about ownership then that is fine but we should realize how we willingly allow certain degrees of relinquishment of ownership depending upon where we put our material.

It is a great discussion that I believe will exist for a very long time.  Ownership and originality.  How do ideas move about the greater human culture?  I love thinking about it because it provides a challenge that I do not doubt will in itself spawn many new ideas. 

~Nathaniel

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Tags: ideas, internet, originality, ownership

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