Guerrero: I once fell for the fantasy of uploading ourselves. It’s a dangerous myth to believe in, since it means we might be doing more than we intend. But it’s a fantasy we can live. There’s nothing on the Internet that makes us truly unique, because we’re all like them: human beings who want to be famous enough to reach the top of Google. It’s not worth sacrificing everything to be in the spotlight — and not worth losing our privacy to do so.
I can imagine that some people, when they first learned about this interview with Guerrero — they heard something weird. If the only reason for Guerrero’s interview was to show people what it’s like to be a man on the Internet, they might think that he did something illegal. What illegal, you ask? By that logic, Guerrero, should be arrested for stealing someone else’s idea. He is, after all, stealing someone’s personal life. He isn’t taking something — he’s taking something away from someone.
It’s not illegal to take what is ours, even if we’re doing so in violation of that “first principle” of copyright law:
The first principle of copyright law is that only the creator of a creative work can copyright it. When he writes a novel, no one can copyright it any more than he may copyright his own face. The law treats the content, not the form of the content. A book may appear in different editions according to where the book is sold and who buys it. It may appear in different languages according to the people who speak that language. A website may appear in multiple languages, in different ways according to the country that visitors to that website are coming from. Copyright law recognizes this.
By taking what is ours, taking what is ours, Guerrero is taking something that belongs to someone else. He is stealing from those who have given him the privilege of being who he is. He has the right to do this because he is the first to see what his ideas could be, like no one else. Because of
