YouTube/Google battle another step towards thinking "after piracy"?

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It was a happy morning to wake up and find out I was not the onlyone destined to have an aggravating first day back to work. Seemslike the legal teams and front offices of these two web gorillas willbe pretty testy today too.

Though this fight may serve to amuse - and perhaps ultimatelyannoy - many of us, big battles like this are inevitable asintellectual property ownership in a digital age gets redefined or reasserted. Thedays of the music dark ages when we swapped and shared "mixes"made in our basements on cassette decks are long past.

Now we put together (or more commonly search out) torrent files ofour favorite tunes/shows/programs assembled by people we'll nevermeet but whose nicknames we are familiar with.

And as the technology changes so must the rules change... or be strictly reaffirmed.

Those wanting to know more about file-sharing arguments fromthe anarchists' side should take a look at the StealThis Film II homepage. Heck, in the spirit of digital sharing youcan even download their movie of the same name for free.

While you may not find their arguments legitimizing digitalsharing/piracy more than flimsy window-dressing for an illegalactivity, you may just understand or even agree with their larger concern as described in the following paragraph -

Because waves of repression continue to come: lawsuits arestill levied against innocent people; arrests are still made onflimsy pretexts, in order to terrify and confuse; harsh laws arestill enacted against filesharing, taking their place in the gradualerosion of our privacy and the bolstering of the surveillance state.All of this is intended to destroy or delay inexorable changes inwhat it means to create and exchange our creations. If STEAL THISFILM II proves at all useful in bringing new people into the leaguesof those now prepared to think 'after intellectual property', thinkcreatively about the future of distribution, production andcreativity, we have achieved our main goal.