财产的边界：当数字气味无法被锁在瓶子里
Paul Graham 以日本古代法官 Ooka 审理的“香味盗窃案”为引子，类比当今唱片业和电影业对文件共享的指控。他认为财产的定义并非一成不变，而是取决于社会和技术条件是否“可行”——即在不扭曲社会的前提下能否有效执行。互联网让数据像气味一样自由流动，版权方却试图通过法律手段强制维持旧有商业模式，类似于在地球上要求所有人继续通过管道呼吸。Graham 批评 RIAA/MPAA 的诉讼和立法游说行为，并指出财产定义的变化主要由技术进步驱动，且加速变化中。他呼吁社会保持灵活应对，避免被既得利益者拖住后腿。文章本质是产权哲学思考，技术含量低，不涉及工程实践。
March 2012
As a child I read a book of stories about a famous judge in eighteenth century Japan called Ooka Tadasuke. One of the cases he decided was brought by the owner of a food shop. A poor student who could afford only rice was eating his rice while enjoying the delicious cooking smells coming from the food shop. The owner wanted the student to pay for the smells he was enjoying.
2012年3月
小时候我读过一本关于18世纪日本著名法官大冈忠相的故事集。他审理的一个案子是一家食品店老板起诉的。一个穷学生只买得起米饭，他一边吃饭一边享受着从食品店飘来的美味烹饪气味。老板要求这位学生为他所享受的气味付费。
The student was stealing his smells!
This story often comes to mind when I hear the RIAA and MPAA accusing people of stealing music and movies.
It sounds ridiculous to us to treat smells as property. But I can imagine scenarios in which one could charge for smells. Imagine we were living on a moon base where we had to buy air by the liter. I could imagine air suppliers adding scents at an extra charge.
The reason it seems ridiculous to us to treat smells as property is that it wouldn't work to. It would work on a moon base, though.
那个学生偷了他的气味！
每当我听到RIAA和MPAA指控人们偷窃音乐和电影时，我常想起这个故事。
对我们来说，把气味当作财产听起来很荒谬。但我想象得出可以为气味收费的场景。假设我们生活在月球基地上，必须按升购买空气。我可以想象空气供应商额外加价提供香味。
之所以把气味视为财产很荒谬，是因为实际上不可行。但在月球基地上却是可行的。
What counts as property depends on what works to treat as property. And that not only can change, but has changed. Humans may always (for some definition of human and always) have treated small items carried on one's person as property. But hunter gatherers didn't treat land, for example, as property in the way we do.
[1] If you want to learn more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The Old Way.
什么算作财产，取决于什么可以被当作财产来运作。这不仅会改变，而且已经改变。人类（在某种定义下）可能一直把随身携带的小件物品视为财产。但例如狩猎采集者并不像我们这样把土地视为财产。
[1] 如果你想了解更多关于狩猎采集者的信息，我强烈推荐伊丽莎白·马歇尔·托马斯的《无害之人》和《旧路》。
The reason so many people think of property as having a single unchanging definition is that its definition changes very slowly.
[2] But we are in the midst of such a change now. The record labels and movie studios used to distribute what they made like air shipped through tubes on a moon base. But with the arrival of networks, it's as if we've moved to a planet with a breathable atmosphere. Data moves like smells now. And through a combination of wishful thinking and short-term greed, the labels and studios have put themselves in the position of the food shop owner, accusing us all of stealing their smells.
这么多人认为财产有单一不变的定义，是因为其定义变化非常缓慢。
[2] 但我们现在正处于这样一个变化之中。唱片公司和电影公司过去分发它们制作的内容，就像在月球基地上通过管道输送空气一样。但随着网络的出现，仿佛我们搬到了一个有可呼吸大气层的星球。数据现在像气味一样流动。由于一厢情愿和短期贪婪，唱片公司和电影公司把自己摆在了食品店老板的位置，指责我们所有人偷了他们的气味。
(The reason I say short-term greed is that the underlying problem with the labels and studios is that the people who run them are driven by bonuses rather than equity. If they were driven by equity they'd be looking for ways to take advantage of technological change instead of fighting it. But building new things takes too long. Their bonuses depend on this year's revenues, and the best way to increase those is to extract more money from stuff they do already.)
（我之所以说是短期贪婪，是因为唱片公司和电影公司的根本问题在于，经营它们的人受奖金而非股权驱动。如果受股权驱动，他们就会寻找利用技术变革的方法，而不是与之对抗。但创造新事物耗时太长。他们的奖金取决于今年的收入，而增加收入的最好方法就是从他们已经拥有的东西中榨取更多钱。）
So what does this mean? Should people not be able to charge for content? There's not a single yes or no answer to that question. People should be able to charge for content when it works to charge for content.
But by "works" I mean something more subtle than "when they can get away with it." I mean when people can charge for content without warping society in order to do it. After all, the companies selling smells on the moon base could continue to sell them on the Earth, if they lobbied successfully for laws requiring us all to continue to breathe through tubes down here too, even though we no longer needed to.
那么这意味着什么？人们不应该能够为内容收费吗？这个问题没有简单的对错答案。当为内容收费可行时，人们就应该能够收费。
但我说的“可行”比“当他们能逃脱惩罚”更微妙。我指的是当人们可以为内容收费而不扭曲社会时。毕竟，在月球基地上卖气味的公司也可以在地球上继续卖，如果他们成功游说通过法律，要求我们所有人都继续通过管子呼吸，即使我们不再需要这样做。
The crazy legal measures that the labels and studios have been taking have a lot of that flavor. Newspapers and magazines are just as screwed, but they are at least declining gracefully. The RIAA and MPAA would make us breathe through tubes if they could.
Ultimately it comes down to common sense. When you're abusing the legal system by trying to use mass lawsuits against randomly chosen people as a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence you're using a definition of property that doesn't work.
唱片公司和电影公司采取的疯狂法律措施颇有那种味道。报纸和杂志同样处境艰难，但它们至少是在优雅地衰落。如果可能，RIAA和MPAA会让我们继续通过管子呼吸。
归根结底，这关乎常识。当你滥用法律体系，试图用大规模诉讼随机起诉他人作为惩戒典型，或者游说通过一旦实施就会破坏互联网的法律时，这本身就是证据，证明你在使用一个行不通的财产定义。
This is where it's helpful to have working democracies and multiple sovereign countries. If the world had a single, autocratic government, the labels and studios could buy laws making the definition of property be whatever they wanted. But fortunately there are still some countries that are not copyright colonies of the US, and even in the US, politicians still seem to be afraid of actual voters, in sufficient numbers.
[3] As far as I know, the term "copyright colony" was first used by Myles Peterson.
这就是为什么有运作良好的民主国家和多个主权国家是有帮助的。如果世界有一个单一的专制政府，唱片公司和电影公司就可以收买立法，让财产定义变成他们想要的任何东西。但幸运的是，仍然有一些国家不是美国的版权殖民地，即使在美国，政客们似乎仍然害怕足够多的实际选民。
[3] 据我所知，“版权殖民地”一词最早由迈尔斯·彼得森使用。
The people running the US may not like it when voters or other countries refuse to bend to their will, but ultimately it's in all our interest that there's not a single point of attack for people trying to warp the law to serve their own purposes. Private property is an extremely useful idea — arguably one of our greatest inventions. So far, each new definition of it has brought us increasing material wealth.
[4] It seems reasonable to suppose the newest one will too. It would be a disaster if we all had to keep running an obsolete version just because a few powerful people were too lazy to upgrade.
[4] The state of technology isn't simply a function of the definition of property. They each constrain the other. But that being so, you can't mess with the definition of property without affecting (and probably harming) the state of technology. The history of the USSR offers a vivid illustration of that.
当选民或其他国家拒绝屈从于他们的意志时，美国的掌权者可能不喜欢，但最终没有单一的攻击点让那些试图扭曲法律为己所用的人得逞，这符合我们所有人的利益。私有财产是一个极其有用的概念——可以说我们最伟大的发明之一。到目前为止，它的每一个新定义都为我们带来了日益增长的物质财富。
[4] 有理由推断，最新的定义也将如此。如果我们所有人都因为少数有权有势的人懒得升级而被迫运行一个过时的版本，那将是一场灾难。
[4] 技术状态并不仅仅是财产定义的一个函数。它们相互制约。但既然如此，你就不能在不影响（很可能损害）技术状态的情况下篡改财产定义。苏联的历史为此提供了生动的例证。
Thanks to Sam Altman and Geoff Ralston for reading drafts of this.
感谢Sam Altman和Geoff Ralston审阅本文草稿。