This fascinating, thought-provoking essay discusses an important question: Should there be a balance between the rights and responsibilities of digital content producers and the rights and responsibilities of digital content consumers?

In the old world of predigital copyrights, the producer had few responsibilities. He was, perhaps, liable if he recorded an acoustic combination that ripped the customer’s stereo speakers apart (or, perhaps, that was art). He was, perhaps, liable for describing revolutionary ideas, anarchy, or terrorism (or, perhaps, that was free speech). These were legal judgment calls, addressed on a case-by-case basis, sometimes according to the government’s political orientation, and sometimes according to consumer product liability theories.

Today, however, there are formidable digital copyright items (software) that routinely come bundled with seemingly obligatory licenses, absolving producers of countless forms of heretofore hard-fought forms of liability. Should government really grant software privileges of copyright, when these same software items remove themselves from responsibilities well accepted for other manufactured goods? Simply stated, there seems to be a need to consider digital products on a cyclic continuum from classical first instantiation of artistic endeavor, continuing to performance or reproduction of the original works, then to digital pseudo-active contents, further to manufactured goods and/or standardized services, then to specialized services, and eventually to the items of artisan craftsmanship; this cycle ultimately comes full circle and repeats.