I have this thing about "intellectual property." It's a dicey kind of concept for me, especially since I've made a living as a writer, producer and designer. On the one hand I get that you don't want someone just blatantly stealing your work while you languish in poverty. On the other I think that we live in a unique time in history where a concept like intellectual property could even exist.

Our culture is really the first to have this concept (as far as we know, anyway... maybe Atlantis had copyrights and trademarks?). The idea of owning a...well...idea...is fairly new. And frankly it's completely at odds with how our society treats information. How can I, as a writer, expect to put my words in front of millions of people and then disallow them from spreading those concepts and ideas to others?

Communication is all about taking an idea, making it your own and conveying it (sometimes slightly altered) to another human being. Trust me, I didn't think of that all on my own... I took it from what I learned during my undergrad work. I've also taken it from the various books and articles I've read, television shows and movies I've watched, and the music and radio broadcasts I've listened to. Ideas come in from all over, get filtered in the Kevin Mind, then get spewed out as the pant-load you're reading now. It's a natural and beautiful process.

That being said, how can I say that I "own" the ideas? I mean, sure, I put my own spin on things. I use observations from other aspects of my life to color and shape an idea. But ultimately aren't I just reshaping clay that someone else has handed me? I didn't create it whole from the ether, I just molded it.

Orson Scott Card wrote about a super virus in his book "Speaker for the Dead." It's a virus that actually behaves much like a sentient life form. It learns, adapts, and communicates. It reshapes the world around it, making it fit with its own "ideas." In many ways, that's what communication is - a virus. When I say something to you it has an effect and it may persuade you to say something to someone else with equal effect. The idea, once innocuous and innocent, is now raging in a disease vector from one host to another until it may very well sweep over the whole world.

Have you ever thought of some clever turn of phrase, said it out loud, and then some time later heard it on a television show or read it in an article? Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe it really did spread outward from you and take over the world.

By the way, that idea was also borrowed from Mr. Card, straight out of his book "Ender's Game." See how neatly that worked out?

So how does this come back full circle to the whole "intellectual property" thing? It's funny... we writers depend so much on people paying to read our ideas, but the truth is all we really crave is for our work to be out there. We're crying out for people to read us. We want to share what we have to say with the whole world! So in truth we walk this fine line - on one side we know we have to make a living so we support this idea of intellectual property. On the other we just want to be heard, loved, appreciated and so we're willing to "give away the milk for free." Moo.

My own opinion is that you can't really own an idea. You can write a book. You can get it published and sold and make money from it. But in the end you can't keep people from "stealing" what's in it. In the end, it all belongs to the world.

The same goes for art, film, television... anything that started in the mind and ended up in front of millions. We claim ownership of it, but ultimately it's not ours to hold on to.

Now that the Internet has made worldwide, instant communication possible we're starting to see the threads of intellectual property come unraveled. Music is being pirated at an unprecedented rate, as are movies and television shows. Books can be transferred electronically from one person to another with nary a dime going to the author or publisher. Photos and artwork are essentially free for the taking by anyone with a computer. And what's the recourse of the property holder? Sue them all? No one ever became a popular novelist, musician or artist by suing their audience.

You could pull your work from the Web and only deal in "brick and mortar" establishments. But then you risk alienating yourself from the world wide audience. You risk never being anything more than "local."

No, the fact is that there's a change coming in regard to intellectual property. We invented this unwieldy chimera that can't sustain itself. So something new will have to take it's place. Some new idea will have to emerge and become the way the world thinks. Those who are truly brilliant and ambitious should start working on it now, because whoever comes up with the solution is going to redefine the world as we know it. And maybe money won't be the reward. But hey, money isn't everything. Right?

J. Kevin Tumlinson is the Editor for ViewOnline Magazine. He is a writer and producer living in Houston, TX. He owns the intellectual property rights to "Bite me, moron."