My pondering of online property rights this week have left me in limbo, with a greater understanding of why this topic is so difficult to pin down. I began this week sticking hard and fast to my idea that property rights should be protected at all costs. But when I got to thinking of what that would really mean, things got a lot more complicated. In my earlier post, I sited the examples of Viacom and Toyota missing the boat on asking for permission before using content they found online. That got me thinking. I post YouTube videos in my blog, images and logos. I didn’t create these, does this mean I need to ask permission for each and everything I use that’s not my own? How would the current online environment look if each and every blogger, Web site owner, social media user had to ask permission for each and every bit of content? Would any of us still be online, or would we have long since thrown our hands up in frustration? If online policing gets out of control in efforts to protect artistic rights, we could all find ourselves spending a lot more time outdoors.

In a recent Advertising Age article, Judy Shapiro quotes Jim Griffin of One House as stating, “The content-owner industry is one generation behind the content-consuming generation. If one thinks of content as a product then it runs the risk of becoming a commodity that is hard to protect no matter how good or bad copyright laws are.” Additionally, Shapiro noted that artists in the top of their industry are concerned with getting their work out there in the world and noticed by people. Indrani, a photographer of Markus Klink and Indrani (You might know her from Bravo TV’s Double Exposure), said in the article, “Now I can get our work out there much faster to a much broader audience than ever before.” Enforcing strict copyright and sharing rules would certainly cripple the online system.

She clearly understands that the value of their work is based on their ability to draw high quality and quantity audiences. More than that, the goal for these artists is to create art that is so unique where copyright almost becomes irrelevant. This concept, that art can become so unique that can help “protect itself,” was another “a-ha” moment.

             ~Judy Shapiro, Advertising Age.

And a final thought on online property rights, comes from Adam Ostrow of Mashable. In his article Piracy: The Mother of Legal Music Downloads? he points out that piracy may have actually helped pave the way for the current generation of online music services. In a study by BI Norwegian School of Management, they found that those “who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs that those who don’t.” A perfect example of the “Try before you buy” theory? Perhaps someone has to pirate it, in order for someone to figure out a way to give people what they want and still get their fair share. Think Napster, listed by Stan Schroeder in his Mashable article, Death by Lawyer: 10 Cool Sites We Miss. Now we have iTunes and other digital download services that all users to get their music fix legally.

As in life, moderation is key. Taking anything to the extremes is usually a bad thing. So with a little give and take (and some copyright infringement and piracy too), this whole digital ownership will naturally work itself out. And hopefully the beauty of the Internet will not be lost in the process.