Yes, stickers.

I don’t mean to be too flippant — or political — but that’s what caused last week’s internet blackout. Pundits claim that Google and others were protesting philosophical differences between the New Economy and the Old Economy about the relevance of copyright in the digital world. But it really comes down to stickers.

I’m perfectly serious.

The Old Economy generation grew up on crayons. They drew shabby stick figures that looked nothing like whatever images they were copying, and it was so damaging to their self esteem that they vowed to raise their children differently. And they did.

Their New Economy kids grew up covering a page with stickers and bracing themselves for the heaps of praise extolling their creativity, thus giving us a generation who have been taught that rearranging somebody else’s work makes that work their own.

Hence last week’s battle over anti-piracy legislation which is currently pending in Congress.

I’m not just picking on stickers because I’m anti-sticker. Even though I am anti-sticker.

There is no corner of my house that is not littered with stickers. They slip in through books trying to make stories “interactive,’ grocery store clerks currying favor with kids in line, doctors’ offices rewarding bravery during a shot, story ladies at the bookstore offering an incentive to come back.

Stickers have become an entitlement for kids, where it’s not about having stickers, it’s about getting them. After the getting, they’re disposable. Meaning that I am constantly peeling them off the floor, the wall, the rug, my socks and shoes and the seat of my pants.

Which brings us to the internet. The internet is one big sticker book. It has kajillions of images that people feel entitled to.

Oh, clipping web images started out innocuously, the digital equivalent of snipping a cartoon out of a magazine and tacking it to your cubicle. But soon the Stickers mentality kicked in. People began republishing other people’s work as if it were their own.

The sticker principle even showed up in Stickers Generation music in the form of “sampling.” (To you Old School types, that’s playing someone else’s record and talking over it.) And it’s not only digital technology that reinforces this principle.

Just look at those newfangled coloring books where kids can swipe the entire page with a single marker pen to produce every color in the picture, all neatly within the lines. And then they turn to you with big bright faces and say, “Do you like my picture?”

What do I say in return? “No! It’s not your picture, you intellectual property pirate!” Even to my Old Economy ears, that sounds harsh. So I struggle for words that are supportive but noncommittal. In other words, I look the other way.

Which means that I can’t totally demonize this modern disregard for copyright. I have to accept some responsibility for when my kids’ generation grows up believing that switching on the TV by themselves merits them their names in the show’s credits.

If there are any TV shows when they grow up. Even the reality TV shows by then will be no more than a camera pointed at some random group of people watching mash-ups of old reruns. Who will be able to afford to create new content?

And it’s all because of—

Wait! That’s it! STICKERS!

You know, like on NASCAR racers! All we need are sponsors for web content and to cover every image or video or MP3 with stickers.

There. No more fights in Congress. No more web blackouts. Just more stickers. Which should make everyone happy.

Except me. Because I just know I’ll be picking them out of my socks every night.