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Aaron Starkey
English 395
Micro-essay #1

"The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and
inversely as the productiveness, of the labor incorporated in it." - Marx, Capital Vol 1 (From Chapter 1 "Commodities")

To pay the bills and tuition, I am employed as a web applications developer, in other words, I design extremely complex and interactive web sites for businesses. Part of my labor-time is spent programming in HTML and other Internet languages which can be easily viewed, copied and used by whoever views the web site and wishes to abduct my code or graphics. I might spend 10 hours of labor-time producing a site that someone can steal the code in seconds and implement on their web site within minutes. This is the very nature of the world wide web. Most of the content on the Internet is generated by examining and using (read that as STEALING) other peoples "code" or labor.

Unlike a text which can be copyrighted and protected, the Internet holds to specific protective law. So, what I spend my labor-time developing can be easily taken by anyone over and over and used by anyone. Since people steal my code to use one would assume that it is a commodity. At the same time, anyone can steal the code, making it's production quantity limitless. What then is the value of what I produce if, upon the release of the commodity that I develop with my labor it loses all value?