What Colour are Your Bits Response

The author of this post, mskala, hithertofore referred to as Ms. Kala or Kala for short, considers the implications of intellectual property and how different people—namely “lawyers” and “computer scientists” feel about them.

Kala says that information can be described as “bits” that may or may not have “Colour,” which basically boils down to the properties that distinguish one thing from another. Kala argues that computer scientists do not see the Colour that files have; they are Colour-blind. They just see the bits that make up a file. However, lawyers believe in the Colour of things because they must judge things by their Colour—meaning that one thing is right and the other is wrong. To them, it matters where the bits come from. Kala’s argument is a bit more complicated than that but I have tried to boil it down for simplicity and argument’s sake.

With that being said, I think Kala brings up interesting points. I would have to side with the lawyers on this issue, because I think it matters where bits come from and what they are meant to do. Just because you scramble up a copyrighted file while it is en route to your desktop doesn’t make it any less illegal that you’ve downloaded it. But at the same time, I understand that to programmers, bits are just bits and it doesn’t matter how they get to where they’re going. I found it interesting when Kala brought up the idea of plagiarism and how bits could occur the exact same without being stolen, but it is very rare. In this way, Colour is vital to keeping the digital world under control. To me, without Colour, you don’t have any way of saying what is right and wrong. Ignoring the philosophical “what is right?” debate, I think no matter which way you look at it, if you get a book or music for free that isn’t in the public domain, it’s illegal. I’m not saying most people haven’t done it and I’m not saying it should be punished as heavily as it is, but technically it’s illegal. Whatever child pornography argument Kala brought up, I didn’t buy—it matters where the bits come from.

Though the idea that Colour doesn’t exist because even tags that give bits Colour are just more bits is fascinating to me. When you start digging this deeply, though, debate almost becomes pointless because everything can be brushed aside. “Why should this be illegal? It’s just information.” I don’t deal with arguing like this very well.

But still, this idea is what torrenters thrive on. Individually, people only submit tiny bits of information. However, when pieced together, you get a torrent of information (such as a movie or a new album). Separately, it doesn’t seem too illegal to download a split second of a movie; however, when you’ve stolen an entire movie, it’s suddenly completely illegal. Where is the line drawn? This seems to be at issue in the article: bit by bit, there is nothing wrong with this. However, the final product is illegal by its very Colour.

Overall, I agree that the digital age has ushered in interesting contradictions in legality. But I don’t think either side is completely right. Like Kala says, computer scientists should try to understand Colour more, but only to try and explain to lawyers why Colour is not that important. The more we immerse ourselves in a digital world, the more loopholes and tenuous distinctions we will have to make.