What is digital appropriation? More fundamentally, what is appropriation? It is the unauthorized taking of something by someone and reuse of it in a different context. It is not the same as theft or stealing. But what’s the difference? The rule of scarcity certainly plays a part. The notion that if someone steals a car, the original owner no longer has the car. It is a rivalrous object. Whereas if a song is appropriated, a sample reused in another context, the original song is still intact and as available as before the appropriation took place. It is non-rivalrous. Taking, copying and reusing the song does not affect the availability of the ‘original’. There are decisions that must be made and taken into consideration when something is being appropriated. The word ‘repurposing’ is integrally linked with appropriation. The intimation is that by appropriating an object, the appropriator is making an ethical decision to put the object where they believe it rightfully belongs.
Perhaps the most well know example of appropriation is the story of Robin Hood, who would ‘steal from the rich to give to the poor.’ A moral judgment that is certainly open to debate. Robin appropriated money from the those that he felt came into possession of it through corruption, injustice, under-handedness and repurposed it by putting it into the hands of the ‘poor’ who had no way of coming into possession of the money themselves and who Robin felt were oppressed and taken advantage of by the rich. Certainly an objective observer could look at the situation and see that it was not fair – unequal – the rich were far better placed than the poor. But it is questionable whether Robin’s actions can be justified or considered right or wrong. Morally, from his perspective, he felt that a greater wrong than his appropriation and repurposing of the money was being instigated by the rich on the poor through their own appropriation via taxes of any measly money the poor may have had. So in a sense, he was merely returning the money to its rightful owners. The rich stole from the poor first, so Robin was simply returning the money to where it should have been in the first place. From this perspective, his apparently illegal actions appear justified, if bordering on vigilantism and clearly the lesser of two evils.
Money is an interesting one. Can money be owned? If you are in possession of €50, do you own it? It is utterly useless unless you can exchange it for something else. It is meta in this sense – it sits on top of fundamental ‘properties’. Music is similar. Music cannot be owned. It is useless unless someone listens to it. An mp3 file never listened to is utterly valueless, although we may say that it has the potential to be listened to. There is a lot more that needs to be said on appropriation.