Hi editor,

 

I thank Ms Jane Lim for her constructive comments on my earlier letter.  Perhaps I should not have used the term ‘piracy’ due to its negative connotation.   What we see in Sim Lim Square at present is merely a symptom of society struggling with the best mechanism to facilitate the flow of knowledge, in this era of the knowledge-based economy.

 

I am not hoping to win anybody over in this issue.  I am only sharing them so that all of us who have opposing views can be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of our own arguments.

 

Given that knowledge, unlike physical goods, has the characteristic of being freely made available to all once somebody comes up with it, is the current pricing system the most conducive in promoting knowledge expansion?  Furthermore, is it necessarily true that, if knowledge creators are unable to charge people for their effort, they will be discouraged?

 

There are enough experiments done with children to show that monetary rewards for creative efforts would only dampen their motivation.  Nevertheless, I would like to present two observations about the real world that will summarize my views towards the above two questions.

 

Our academic professors work under a system where, anyone among them who makes an original contribution to knowledge would immediately share it with the other professors in the same field.  Besides the satisfaction from being the first to come up with it, the main reason is to allow the other professors to examine the new contribution and to make modifications that will only result in a higher knowledge base for society.  These other professors need only to acknowledge the fact that they took the information from others in their modifications.  It is clear to all of us that professors are not worried about being unable to charge for their contributions, nor are they worried about people extending their work in ways in which they have no control because that freedom is very important for knowledge to be rapidly diffused and improved. 

 

To people like Ms Lim and others who can confidently state that, “Theft is theft, regardless of the value of the item,” I am certainly glad that, even though I did not come up with the English Language, I will not be called a thief for using English creatively to come up with this letter so that knowledge can be spread around.  Nobody owns, nor has the right to own, the English Language because it has been modified numerous times by so many people.

 

In the computer world, we can also see examples of such diffusion of knowledge at work.  The explosive growth of the world-wide-web occurs because Tim Berners-Lee open-sourced his html and http codes for the world to improve on them.  At present, we also have an alternative operating system to Windows, the Linux system, which too has open source codes.  In a world of open source codes, the revenues cannot come from traditional intellectual property rights alone, as I have mentioned in my earlier letter.  One must provide some sort of other value, be it help desk, easy installation, or extra features, in order to be paid.

 

Currently the software industry does not allow such a method for the transmission of knowledge.  The source codes for most of these programs are not open for others to examine, nor are others allowed to make their own modifications to it.  People may argue that basic knowledge and commercial knowledge are different, but I believe the key question is not what the software firms need but what society needs.

 

My second observation will provide a simple test on the theory that the knowledge creators would be the people hurt if they do not have the ability to charge for their contribution.  The explosive growth of the Internet as well as the creation of MPEG Audio 3 (mp3) means that the music industry now faces a similar problem as the software industry; people can now feasibly download songs without paying for them.  If the above theory is right, we should expect to see the artistes and the songwriters themselves being the most vocal in protesting against mp3 distribution.

 

What we clearly observe, however, is that the record companies are the main parties suing the mp3 websites.  The ‘true’ creators of music are remarkably silent on this issue.  David Bowie himself allows his fans to download his latest songs from the web in mp3 format.  All around the world, small amateur bands are hailing websites like www.mp3.com for allowing them to spread their own alternative music to the whole world, bypassing the record companies completely.

 

I am not a musician but let me offer my explanation for the above phenomena:  Before the explosion of the Internet, the record companies are acting as gatekeepers, defining for us what songs we should or should not hear.  With the current situation, they no longer have this power.  The mainstream artistes as well as the underground ones alike are now free to expose the world to various forms of music.  I will leave it up to the readers themselves to decide whether they agree with me that such a system will indeed unleash the true creativity of music, as it has with the English Language.

 

Kelvin Tan Tuan Wei