I got a response from someone quite disturbed with my "Open Content and Piracy" post. She says that what most people from the new generations are doing is nothing but stealing and should be treated as bands of thieves.

I beg to differ. It is not stealing. It is accessing content that is kept from our access.

I go to the movies, buy music CD's, pay for software I download, all of the commercial software I use for my work is either properly licensed and paid for or is, for the most part, Open Source. And I pay for an expensive high speed broadband collection (about US$75 here in Chile).

Yet, I still download stuff I don't pay for and access content I don't pay for.

That's reality and that is the world we are all living in and will be living in.

Distribution models have to change, for the world has changed. Revenue models have to change, for the world has changed.

I pay some US$7 to watch a movie (although I end up paying another US$7 on pop corn and sodas) every time I go to the theater. And I pay some US$100 for cable TV, the premium network and movie channels, high speed Internet and basic phone services.

Yet if I want to watch one more time a movie I already paid for, my only legal choice is to rent or buy a DVD and pay some more. And if I miss an episode of Dr. House, Grey's Anatomy, Heroes or Eureka, I have no legal choice of watching at a later time more convenient to me.

You see, I'm not a cheap thief. I do pay for most of my stuff.

And I also give back to my community. I have been developing and promoting Open Content for 10 years now.
And all of the things I do and create I make them freely available.

Now, I came to be in a very different world and paradigm. A paradigm of equal and universal access, not one of restricted and controlled access.

I have seen some of my content taken by others and been reused for commercial stuff without even a thank you note and I'm still here, not a scratch.

The damage of piracy is a fallacy, only true in the closed and limited paradigm of those standing on the better end of the Intellectual Property equation.

Intellectual Property as it stands today is a deceiving manipulation of human rights and distortion of social value.

In the past, patents were awarded for 5 to 15 years to inventors. And we were able to invent a way to deliver electricity, invent the telephone, airplanes, the printed press, vaccines and all those remarkable human milestones that changed our world.

How is it that today, in a world that changes so fast and new things become old quickly and where we have so much inequalities, we now have to deal with 75 year patents and even protection of 60 years after the death of the inventor????

As most of the people of my generation, I will continue to buy music cd's and software, pay for commercial downloads we value, go to the movies and download whatever else is available.

There is no antagonism for us in this phenomena. It's the way things are and will continue to be and the world we have grown-up in.

You can not artificially control access to content and knowledge by means of regulations and Laws.

Where there is a physical or digital way of doing it, it will be done.

I would like to see some truly convincing argument on the value to society and to us at the bad end of the Intellectual Property equation of the current status quo. Explain to me how it serves the best interest of the Caribbean nations other than not upsetting the big countries that threaten to punish us and affect our trade if we don't accept their rules (yes, I know, rules we signed to abide by, but nonetheless under coercion and threat of losing our markets and special benefits) ...

Or are we just defending it because it's the Law, because it's what we learned at school, because it's the institution's policy, because a poor old mega-star will suffer if someone downloads his/her latest song, because the mega-media corporation 3rd quarter revenue projections will be affected and they fear having to cut the number of private jets and leisure trips the executives take on them, because Hollywood will have less millions to spend in extravaganzas...

Give us an argument not an indictment. Give us a reason not a reprimand. Perhaps we will understand, but it is very unlikely anyone will stop downloading stuff, for the entire world is at everyone's reach and I don't see how that can be a bad thing.