Years ago, my sister and I were standing on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building, repairing a flat on my bike. The bike was upside-down on the pavement, several parts removed, tools spread around. My sister and I were examining the inner tube to try and find the puncture, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A man, as he was walking past us, bent down, took a wrench, and was about to walk away with it. Too stunned to say anything else, I just called out, “hey!” He turned around, looked at the tool in his hand, and put it back. He said, “I thought that was free to take.”

Even more years ago, my mother was about to step into a subway car when she felt something tugging at her shoulder. She turned around to see a man who held her wallet in his hand, which he had just removed from her handbag. My mom said, “this is mine,” took her wallet and left the man standing on the platform while the doors closed between them.

Quite recently, I was walking down the street whistling a tune that had just popped into my head, completely improvised. A man was walking next to me and smiled. A few weeks later I heard that tune on TV – it had become the jingle for a ridiculously famous ad campaign. Someone became rich. I made no money whatsoever.

Mine, yours, ownership, permission to use.

One of these three stories is invented.

Any relation to current issues around generative AI is purely incidental.