Cybernation

just give it away for free?”

“No. I’m saying that they are making huge profits, so why shouldn’t they be willing to cut some slack to sick people who will die because they can’t afford it? Doesn’t the end of saving lives justify the means here?”

Howard said, “But if you extend that logic, there might not be any profits. If they have to give away their stuff for free to everybody who can’t afford it, they go bust, and then no new cures are developed. Nobody gets a haircut if the barbershop is out of business.”

“You’re twisting what I’m saying.”

“No, I’m telling you that in our world, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody somewhere always pays for it, that’s how it works. Yes, maybe some rich company could afford to make less profit to benefit others, but when you start drawing that line for them, you’re forcing people into communism. That’s a bad system.”

Tyrone, sprawled on the bed and unable to escape, crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t understand.”

“So educate me.”

Tyrone scooted up a little. Like his mother, he had to use his hands to talk, so the tight body language went away. He said, “All right. Look at CyberNation. They are offering international citizenship. You join up, pay them, and you get connected to the world. You can get a college degree, find any information that’s available, and they’ll even offer you a kind of social security. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except that it’s a castle in the sky, son. You can’t live on-line. No matter how many hours of the day you’re plugged in, you still have to have a physical location somewhere. You can roam the planet in virtual reality, but your butt will be in a chair in Washington or Texas or Sierra Leone.”

“So?”

“So, as a citizen of a geographic location — a country — you have to obey the rules and regulations of that place.”

“But CyberNation is going to cover that—”

“They can’t. They gonna pay your taxes for you? Keep up the roads and schools and national defense? Lookit, what if CyberNation decides to issue driver’s licenses to its ‘citizens.’ That mean you don’t have to get one from the state?”

“The U.S. recognizes licenses from other countries,” Tyrone countered. “If you come here from France or somewhere, you can drive, as long as you have insurance and your license is valid at home. Jeez, Dad, every state gives out licenses, but you can drive in every other state with it. It’s called reciprocity.”

“But that’s temporary, son. If you are passing through Arizona and you’re licensed in Mississippi, that’s fine, but if you move to Arizona, you have thirty days to change your paperwork. That’s how it works most places.”

“Yes, but—”

“No ‘but’ about it. You live in a place, you have to toe whatever line that place calls for. But skip all the citizenship stuff for a minute. Let’s get into the ‘universal access to knowledge’ business. Let me ask you something. You see anything wrong with recording a movie you like to watch off the cable without buying the commercial DVD of it?”

“No, I don’t see anything wrong with that. You do it all the time.”

“Right. But I’m paying for it. I pay the cable bill, and if I set up the HD to record a program I want to watch later, or because I won’t be there when it comes on, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if I take that pay-per-view program, run off a copy, and sell it to somebody else, is that right?”

“Why not? You buy a book, a knife, a frying pan, it’s yours, you can do anything you want with it. You can sell it to somebody. That’s legal.”

“One that I paid for, yes. But let’s say I run off fifty copies of a novel, or a DVD movie, and sell them at a discount, then what I’m doing is depriving the cable or satellite company of potential revenue. Fifty people who might have paid for it won’t. Not to mention I’m getting a profit off of something I had no hand in creating.”

“But what if you give them away? You aren’t making any profit.”

“Same difference. I’m not earning money, but I’m in essence stealing from the people who paid to produce it, because those fifty copies come out of the company’s profit.”

“But what if the people you sell them to wouldn’t have bought it at full price?”

“You’re saying it’s okay to shoplift if you don’t have the cash to buy something?”

“No, I’m not saying that. But listen. Here’s an example: There’s this piece of music I got from the web. It’s a parody thing. Somebody took the words to a hot rock song, and put them to the music of a TV sitcom. It’s really funny. But the rock stars didn’t think so, so they sued them. You can’t buy the song anywhere. So if I download it, who do I hurt? Nobody makes any money on it, it isn’t available commercially.”

Howard nodded. “I can see that. Parody is a valid argument and protected under our laws. But the rock stars could argue that the words are their property so it shouldn’t be available without their approval. They own ’em, they can sell the song or let it sit on a shelf until it turns to dust.”

“That’s not right. What if somebody bought a famous work of art, a Picasso, or the Mona Lisa or something, then they took it out into the yard and slashed it up, set it on fire? Could they do that?”

“Legally, yes. It would be theirs, they could do that. Morally? I wouldn’t want to be them on Judgment Day standing in front of God trying to explain why they’d destroyed one of the world’s treasures.”

“That’s my point, Dad. Something can be legal but not moral. Didn’t Jesus say if you had two shirts and your neighbor didn’t have any, you should give him one?”

“Not exactly, but close enough. The thing is, while we follow Jesus’s teachings, not everybody does. Laws have to be based on moral and ethical principles, but they have to cover all the people. And at the heart of western civilization is the concept of private property. And that includes intellectual property, too. You take a man’s living when you steal his songs or books or secret formulas. Most laws are moral by society’s standards.”

“Like laws that allowed… slavery?”

Howard stared at him. “You gonna throw that up into my face? You’re not any darker than I am, son.”

“Sorry. But slavery was legal for a long time. That didn’t make it right.”

“No, it didn’t. And those laws were changed.”

“And it took them, what, two hundred and fifty years to get around to it? We’ve got laws now that will be changed, too. This is the information age, Dad. Old concepts will have to make way for the new ones. The cat is out of the bag, and it isn’t gonna go back in.”

Howard smiled at the memory of his conversation with his son. He was coming along pretty well, Tyrone was. He wasn’t always right, but he did know how to think, and that was important. He had some good points—

Somebody said, “Penny for your thoughts, General, sir.”

He looked up, saw Julio standing there.

“Maybe a nickel, you grinning like that.”

“Just remembering a conversation with Tyrone.”

“He’s doing better, I take it?”

“Not a whole lot since you saw him yesterday, but overall, yes.”

“Good. You here to work?”

“I am. Let’s go into the office and you can catch me up.”

“Well, I can try. I can’t work miracles, sir. Hard to teach an old dog much of anything.”

“If you learned how to change a diaper, Lieutenant, anything is possible.”

They grinned.

* * *

Jay Gridley stared at his computer console. He should be working. He should be climbing all over the web like a million baby spiders, running down every lead, trying to find the bad guys who’d been screwing things up. But instead, here he was mired waist-deep in inertia, unable to get moving.

Thinking about getting married.

It still seemed like the thing to do, to get married. He loved Saji. He wanted to be with her.