All revolutionaries were criminals, all prophets madmen, in the eyes of the statesquoist as they floated on the decadence of their own opulence. Che is counted in, so are the innumerable burned on stakes, stones to exile, drwoned to altar of the ever-remembered, buried in the undisclosed destinies of spiritual pilgrimage.

And we see a revolution in the making, or so may I opine. The debate on the legality of downloading music is a point of intervention for those who seek a world freed from the capitalisation of human history. The legality claims that downloading is a criminal activity. The assumption here is that the material (concept, idea, the artistic product) is a result of individual talent. However, this line fail to notice the role of tradition in individual talent. To be precise, what is yours is yours but also not yours, as you call into service the results of centuries of human effort that went to it.

Think of a short story for example. The short story, in the first place, is of course a result of individual talent. However, a story has other inheritances too. The story writer’s mother, for example, would have rocked the writer in her childhood, feeding her stories for her imagination, the man in the street would have unwittingly played out his life that is worth narrating, the government of the era would have put all satirist in shame in their policies polished in unabberred insanity. Above all else, who does the language belong to, and most importantly, is a person’s identity deductible from her milieu? What exactly of ours is ours, what belong to the miles of human treading?

Copyrighting invests all rights in the creator or the marketor, or whoever possess the right. Thus it cordons of the rest of the humanity from appropriating it. True, the artist has spend his time, energy on this product, he has sublimated his pleasures, evoked his nostalgia, lived his pain for this one product. True, this was not the product of a capricious moment of everyday life. She deserves its rewards. But is copyrighting the option?

Copyrighting, and stringent actions on its violation, can ensure that no penny of the royalty is lost, and the artist is compensated for the eerie hours, the delirious afternoons, the sleepless nights. But downloading can help too, if it is done with a political conscience. It can pressurize the corporate giants to bring down their pricing. It helps the art to reach beyond those who can afford. And it ineviatble makes the artist more popular. And, ultimately, it makes illegal downloading a thing of the past.

Revolutionaries have already started the movement. Copyleft is a movement which differentiates itself from open sourcing and copyrighting. While the open source idea is to allow free access (”free” as in “freedom”, not as in “free beer”), the danger lies in someone improving it and then copyrighting it. On the other hand, copylefting a product means that it comes with a condition that no improvement of it shall ever be copyrighted, but will always be available free to engage with.

However, the revolutionaries are still in minority, as most prefer clandestine pirating than a political option. The other end of the spectrum are the artists’ fans clubs which have taken on themselves the onus of rooting out all piracy.