Reading the past week's court decision saying that the time-honored "right of first sale" does not apply to digital music, I am reminded of a story my imaginary nanny used to tell me:
Once upon a time, there was a big, beautiful orchard filled with lovely magical fruit trees. The magic of these trees was that, once planted, they always bore fruit. If you plucked an apple, pear or lingonberry -- that's how magical these trees were; they grew lingonberries -- the fruit would immediately grow back, as juicy and full as ever.
Some people argued that such magical trees should be available to everyone, because how could it hurt anyone for everyone to have as much fruit as they could eat? Others pointed out that someone had to plant the trees, and if someone contributed the time and space to plant a tree, that person had the right to decide what happened to the fruit.
Eventually, the King appointed two advisers to look after the magical orchard and make sure that the fruit was distributed in a fair and just way. These advisers were known as the Royal Infinite Apricot Adviser, and the Magisterial Perpetual Apple Adviser. They had not, themselves, actually planted any trees or contributed any land to the orchard, but they were regular contributors to the King's coffers, and everyone that mattered agreed that they were the best choice to oversee the distribution of the fruit. ("Everyone that mattered" included the King and the advisers in question.)
At first, the advisers were content to charge people for fruit and pass on the profits to those who planted the trees. Well, some of the profits. Sometimes. After expenses were subtracted. And there were a lot of expenses, such as tracking down the blackguards who stole fruit without paying. If they didn't do that, then the people who planted the trees wouldn't get the money -- at least, the money the advisers weren't spending to make sure they got the money they weren't actually getting. Because expenses.
However, over time, the blackguards got better and better and stealing fruit, and some of them had started "seeding," which is what they called passing around the seeds so that anyone could grow their own tree and share the fruit. This, of course, was illegal, but aside from occasionally dragging a peasant with juice on his chin before the King and declaring him almost definitely probably a blackguard or at least similar to a blackguard in many important ways, there wasn't much they could do about it. There were too many blackguards and no way to stop the growing of forbidden fruit.
So the Royal Infinite Apricot Adviser and the Magisterial Perpetual Apple Adviser were sad, because while they had plenty of people lining up to pay for their fruit, there were also a lot of people NOT lining up to pay for their fruit.
"It's too bad," said the Royal Adviser, "that the blackguards don't queue up as nicely as our customers do."
"I agree," said the Magisterial Adviser. "Contrariwise, it's also too bad our nicely queued customers aren't doing anything wrong, or we could prosecute them instead of the blackguards."
The Advisers looked at each other.
"Well," said the Royal Adviser. "They ARE right there."
"Yes," said the Magisterial Adviser. "And we don't know for CERTAIN that they're not doing anything wrong."
"Right. Just because they're paying for the fruit doesn't mean that they're not also NOT paying for OTHER fruit."
"True! In fact, think of all the fruit they're NOT buying! How can we be sure they're not eating everything they don't buy!"
"Why, we're losing millions of bushels of fruit a year to people who aren't buying it and may or may not actually be eating it!"
So the Advisers agreed that they would do everything they could to make sure their law-abiding, money-spending customers weren't dirty shifty sneaky blackguards.
"All right," the Royal Adviser announced to them. "From now on you can only eat your lawfully-purchased fruit with our special, and quite reasonably-priced, fruit utensils."
"Why?" said one of the customers. "I bought the fruit, why can't I eat it with whatever I want?"
"That sounds like blackguard talk," said the Royal Adviser. The customer paid for his fruit utensils and left.
"And we're going to remove the seeds," said the Magisterial Adviser, chopping out the core of a pear along with about half of the fruit itself. "That way you won't plant the seeds and get free fruit."
"If I wanted free fruit," explained the next customer, "I would sneak into the orchard along with the blackguards."
"Oh, WOULD you?" said the Magisterial Adviser through a mouthful of pear.
The customer paid, took his half-pear and left speedily.
"And you can't sell your fruit, even if you don't want to eat it anymore," said both the advisers to the next customer.
"Why not?" asked the customer. "Isn't it my fruit now?"
The Advisers laughed. "Oh, no," they explained. "It's our fruit, you're just buying the right to eat it. Only blackguards actually possess the fruit they take. You don't want to be a blackguard, do you?"
The customer gave this some serious thought, then saw that the Advisers did not intend it as a serious option, so she handed over her coin and departed.
And so it continued. The Advisers continued to restrict their customers while the blackguards came and went from the orchard, largely unmolested. When the Advisers sold lots of fruit, they told the King their anti-blackguard measures were responsible. When they sold only a little fruit, they blamed the blackguards and demanded stricter rules be enacted against the customers in line.
And everyone lived happily ever after.
Well, everyone that mattered.
[Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a storyteller, a tale-teller and a bank teller.]
