Why does copy protection exist? What is been protected against whom? The spontaneous answers to these simple questions refer to the prevailing forms of thinking in commodity society: The “intellectual property” just has to be protected against theft, just like everybody locks their door in order to prevent the television set from be carried away by “TV pirates.”

Aside from the fact that locking the door isn't common everywhere in the world, the analogy to the material world is inadequate too. The analogy is created arbitrarily; it is an ideological form. The digital copy does not affect the original; it does not take anything away, but adds something to the world. In many Asian societies, a copy is something noble to strive for. The copyist imitates the master; she wants to perfect the imitation, and then to surpass the master to become a master herself. This understanding of accumulating human knowledge is completely lacking in Western societies. On the other hand, the Western ideological form of a “pirate copy” is simply incomprehensible in many Asian countries. But also in the West, the everyday reasoning of the “smartphone generation” can hardly comprehend that somebody should lose something if a private copy is made for personal pleasure.

The ideology of “intellectual property” and “pirate copies” had become fragile in the West and has never been completely established elsewhere. Is it possible to trace back this ideology to the political/economic constitution of bourgeois society? This will be tried below. In order to start, we first have to determine the meaning of what is called a “copy.” This will be done by a conceptual logical-historical reconstruction of its emergence in capitalism. The goal is not to give a historical account, but to develop a conceptual mapping of consecutive logical steps of development. Afterward the gained concepts of copying are investigated in respect of their economic form, which then makes it possible to clarify the concept and meaning of “copy protection.”

Let us start with the copy. What is a copy? A copy is the result of a reproduction, the realization of something conceived, or the replication of something already produced. The English language makes this ambiguity obvious: “copy” does not only mean “duplicate,” but also “instance.”