"Um — because they'd been reading John Locke?"

I shook my head. "That only pushes the question back a notch. Why did Locke think government should be limited? Miss Bennett?"

"Because people have natural rights."

"Of course, but why did he believe that there are such things as natural rights? Mr. Wickham, you take a stab at it."

"Sorry, Prof. Late night. Didn't finish the reading."

I turned to the student everyone called "the Rev." "How about you, Mr. Collins? Did you finish the reading, or were you carousing too?"

"I didn't — I mean — I think it has something to do with the fact that everyone is made by God."

"Yes. But what does it have to do with it?"

"I didn't get that part."

Predictably, Fitz Darcy chimed in. "I think I understand it."

"Go ahead, Mr. Darcy."

"It's right here in Section 6," he said. "Locke says God made us to serve His own purposes, not each other's purposes. So there are certain things He can do that it would be wrong for us to do."

"Things like what?" I asked.

"Like taking life," he said. "God can do that, because all life belongs to Him. But if I take life, I'm taking what isn't mine."

"So no other human is allowed to take my life."

"Right," he answered.

"Then with respect to other humans, I have a natural right to — "

"To life."

"Okay, that makes one natural right. According to Locke, do we have any others? Miss Lucas, go ahead."

"Property?"

"That's two. Mr. Bingham, have you thought of another?"

"Why doesn't he mention a right to privacy?"

"Should he have?"

"I sure would have."

"Give me an argument."

"How about yesterday?"

"You've lost me. What happened yesterday?"

"Dorm officials went on a search-and-destroy mission for pirated software. Music and games and stuff. Whatever they found, they wiped."

"Mmm. So?"

"Man! I lost gigabytes of stuff. My privacy and property rights were both violated."

Everyone laughed. Glancing around the room, I asked "Class, what would Locke say? Have Mr. Bingham's natural rights been violated?" A ruckus of voices called yes and no. "Arguments, people," I called out. "I'm not conducting a survey."

Elizabeth Bennett spoke up again. "The answer is no. In the first place, nobody's privacy was violated. Dorm officials searched only university computers, and they were all in common rooms."

Bingham retorted, "So what if I kept my software on a public computer? It was still my software."

"I wasn't finished," she said primly. "It wasn't your software anyway. You stole it."

"Mr. Bingham," I said, "I'm afraid she's got you. According to Locke, rights are valid only within the limits of the moral law. Nobody has a right to the proceeds of theft."

His eyes bugged out, but just then the bell rang. I called out, "For tomorrow, review Locke's first nine chapters and outline the reasoning of chapter five, on property. Dismissed." The room emptied — except for Bingham, who didn't move. But he must have moved eventually, because four hours later he turned up at my office door. I'd been expecting him.

"Can I talk with you?"

I waved him to a seat. "What's on your mind?"

"Why did you call me a thief this morning?"

"I don't think I called you anything," I said.

"You might as well have. You said in front of everybody that I'd committed theft."

"Isn't that exactly what you'd just confessed in front of everybody?"

"I didn't call it theft."

"You called it piracy. Is there a difference?"

He pushed a sheet of wrinkled notebook paper across the desk. "I wrote out the difference before I came. Just read it and tell me what's wrong with my reasoning."

I glanced at the sheet and set it aside. "Your handwriting is even worse than mine. Suppose you just tell me your reasoning."

"All right. Number one, thou shalt not steal. That's clear."

"Good start."

"What's not so clear," he said, "is the definition of stealing."

I raised an eyebrow.

He continued, "I say stealing is depriving someone of due payment for something he owns. That makes everything clear."

"Does it?"

"Yes, because if I was never going to buy the software in the first place, then the owner hasn't lost anything by my copying it. See? Copying hasn't deprived him of his payment, because he wasn't going to receive one anyway."

"Mmm-hmm. One thing puzzles me."

"What? I've thought this all out."

"It sounds like you're just saying, 'Whenever I don't want to pay for something, it's okay to take it without paying.'"

He hesitated. "Ye-e-es ..."

"By that criterion, no deliberate taking would count as theft."

"Wait a minute, that can't be what I mean."

I waited a minute.

"Maybe my definition needs sharpening," he conceded.

"When a knife is broken, you don't sharpen it. You get a new knife."

"What are you saying?"

"According to you, theft is depriving someone of due payment for something he owns. That puts the cart before the horse, because price doesn't become an issue unless there is a sale. The owner doesn't have to sell to you at all."

"So what do you say theft is?"

"Theft is taking a person's property against his rational will. It simply doesn't matter that if you hadn't stolen, you wouldn't have purchased either. The thing was his, and you took it without his consent."

"Say that again. Taking something from a person against what kind of will?"

"Against his rational will," I said. "Suppose you're drunk and you're threatening people with a gun. If wouldn't be theft to take the gun away from you, even without your consent, because at that point your will isn't rational."

"OK. Then I say that if a game or music owner refuses to let me copy, he's not being rational."

I smiled faintly. "Why not?"

"Because it doesn't harm anyone."

"I don't agree that whether you harm anyone is the sole criterion of moral wrong," I said. "But just for argument, suppose I did. You'd still be mistaken."

"Why?"

"Because piracy does cause harm."

He looked at me with disbelief. "Who could it harm?"

"In the first place, it harms the musician or game developer. Most people have to make a living. A person might make music or develop games just for the enjoyment of his friends, but if he takes the trouble of making his work available to you, he normally does so in the expectation that you'll give something in return."

"So?"

"You haven't done that."

"That's not my problem. I didn't ask him to take that trouble."

"In the second place, piracy harms all the other people who enjoy music and games. By forcing the musicians and game developers to find other ways to make a living, it reduces the number of new songs and games that can be enjoyed."

"That's only a problem if most people are like me, but most people are aren't. They're suckers. They could just copy, but instead they go on paying."

"You call them suckers, but aren't you sucking from their labors, like a parasite?"

"Look, Professor Theophilus, you may be my teacher, but it doesn't give you the right to insult me."

"I'm not trying to insult you. But there's something strange about your answers. It comes out more and more. Haven't you noticed?"

"What?"

"They don't actually show that piracy is harmless. What they show is that you don't care."

He wavered for a heartbeat, then seemed to rally. "So what if I don't? Are you going to flunk me or something?"

"Not if you do the work," I said. "It's just that I can save you some trouble."

"What do you mean?"

"The next time someone calls you a thief, don't bother to be offended. It's merely what you are."

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