As I write this I’m sitting in the Benedum computer lab. There’s an obnoxious and rather… As I write this I’m sitting in the Benedum computer lab. There’s an obnoxious and rather condescending poster asking if I’m listening to “Jailhouse Rock.” The sign goes on to inform me that I could be “sharing illegal files without even knowing it.”

I wouldn’t want to share illegal files. Not by accident, at least. Anyone who’s ever contemplated trying to make a living through any form of creative output runs into the copyright issue sooner or later.

I write a book. I sell the book. I make enough money to quit my job, move into a smaller apartment and sleep soundly knowing I’ve contributed something to mankind’s intellectual development – probably more of a stumbling step to let him know how well things had been going, but a contribution nonetheless. Problem is, if anyone who wants to can read my book without paying for it, then I have to keep working my other job, and I really don’t like my other job.

I have to work a job one way or another so that I can buy food, clothes, fingernail clippers and other people’s copyrighted material. I’d much rather write a book than disembowel a fish, so I want some money for my words.

I want to be paid money for my words and I don’t want to pay money for anyone else’s words, music, movies or any combination of them. I don’t want to pay for anything if I can help it, and thanks to the Internet and ever increasing bandwidth, I don’t have to.

Not many people want to pay for their music, movies, books, clothes or food. That shared sentiment has finally found a meeting ground. Apparently computer files, helpless and innocent as dandelions, are being unceremoniously snatched from the earth, copied by a cyber criminal, robbed of their unique message and thrown back to the ground, left to drown in the knowledge that there’s another version, possibly incomplete or corrupt, out there somewhere.

As horrible a fate as that is for those poor files, it’s the creators of the information contained in the files who get upset. Well, perhaps not the creators so much as the owners.

I’ve never really doubted man’s right to own land. But I do question his right to own an idea, no matter how responsible he is for the particulars of its articulation. Once it’s been expressed, it’s ours. The idea’s originator may understand it more completely than any other, he may be the only man on earth who understands it at all, but if it is owned by anyone, it’s owned equally by all of us.

Distasteful as I find the notion of a college student being busted for having any quantity of media on his hard drive attained through whatever non-violent fashion he chooses,particularly if he’s being gracious enough to share it with others, the core problem is far deeper than a societal failure to tolerate all such impoverished, would-be patrons of the arts.

The Internet may be the last frontier on which we can win a war for freedom. If the government were to, I don’t know, start a war that nearly half the country disagreed with,there’d be next to nothing those millions of people could do but wait around for the next election and probably lose again.

Thanks to the Internet, massive media conglomerates consider 19-year-olds threats to their economic hegemony. Not only can information the U.S. Government doesn’t want us to know about reach people, but we can keep it from them.

The beauty of it is that the Internet is just a way for people to connect. It allows for those who would have been divided by distance, age, language or fate to unite under one cause and do it all in their underwear, assisted by nothing but Mountain Dew and some nifty software.

So, thanks for the poster. If I ever share illegal files, I’ll make sure I’m doing it on purpose.

E-mail Zak Sharif at [email protected] if you have anything you’d like to share with him.