Didn't we have information before the digital age too? And no matter how many times I watched "The Sound of Music" on TV, I had no property rights in it. These arrogating geeks should read some Marx or Proudhon or others about the theory of property. What's mine is mine because I create it or possess it. Maybe the internet has to make a registry system like the PPSA?

It is odd. Getting ready this morning after posting it all I could think of were the wacky folk who lived down the street from everyone who had binders on evidence of the endtimes, who kept clippings of floods and earthquakes as happy/bitter proof of their superior knowledge of actual reality. I suppose it comes of growing up thinking wealth is selling off into the dot com boom and success is a high score in Super Mario.

There's some equivocation there. Is the computer a crate that you store your records in? A scrapbook that you paste other people's articles into? A sketchbook you draw on? There are some scanner licenses that claim to own whatever you scan in, which is ludicrious on the face of it; what if you're scanning in a book owned by somebody else? Record companies clearly want to sell limited-time licenses, rather than records.

So: what kind of technology are we actually talking about?

There's always been a popular misunderstanding of copyright; everything you create is automatically covered by copyright law, and that actually does cover changes in format. You take a book and turn it into a PDF, that's a change in format and counts as re-publication which must be approved by the author. Anything you use Word to write is still owned by you. And in this, the record companies have a point (but are clearly trying to have it both ways because they're greedy bastards).

We own goods that we buy - be they software or a hairbrush. What technology means is that we have to actually start reading the licensing agreements, because unlike a hairbrush it isn't a clear product-for-use.

Those are good comments. I do not acquire a license to a hairbrush in the sense that I only possess it for stated uses. That is how software applications work. Copyrighted data created by others is a third thing which sometimes, like the many photos I paste here, simply taken without permission and sometimes, like the CDs I buy, a license to use.

I once had the honour of meeting someone who actually had an ownership interest in fonts including certain very important ones. That was a real exercise in understanding the distinctions amongst ownership interest and a license for a purpose and use without consent.

Here is an update on the fonts he owned.

A confession. As I moved through the warehouse in which the millions of fonts were stored, I secretly coveted one of primal steel cut capital letters in Pabst Old Style.

I secretly coveted one of primal steel cut capital letters in Pabst Old Style.

Aha! Gotcha!<br>

What technology means is that we have to actually start reading the licensing agreements

I'm not sure if I'm on topic here: I don't think license agreements have anything to do with copyrights, but are imposed on us because software is easier to 'distribute' (this is also one of the main points against software patents [reminder to self: put my powerpoint presentation online that makes the case against software patents]).

Here's my question to copyrights experts: how can you copyright the binary mishmash of an executable program (literally the bits and bytes)? Or to any binary mishmash we have on computers?

As a drafter and reader of licenses professionally, I think it is just a matter of making sure you understand what you have got. Licenses are the main way you distribute copyrighted material without selling it. It is like the lease of a property without the right to plant onions. They usually restrict the creation of derivative creations (those relying on the first work).

In Canada, the question on copyright is simplish too - the text is copyrighted but its execution is not necessarily. So different browsers render the look and feel of instructions differently. The intended look and feel of a site, the icons and other graphics are a matter of visual art and protected but the functions are not. In the US those functions are patentable. I do not think they are in the same way in Canada and certainly not to anywhere near the same extent.