4string, I can't think of anything objectionable about expecting the law to protect your property.
I'm glad we're in complete and utter agreement on that one.
I was just talking about the damage it'd do to bend the legal system to protect one's business model against irrelevance caused by changing technology. A business model is not property. It deserves no protection. If the situation changes, and your business refuses to adapt, welcome to history's junk heap. That's free enterprise.
The recording and movie industries have been pushing this envelope awfully hard in the name of protectionism for their business model.
Personally, I find it deeply distressing how little the arts are valued right now. I admire Lessig for his thought (I've even emailed him saying so), but I think he's wrong. If we want to keep art alive we need to create a livable habitat for it. Not one of reused intellectual property but one where genuine creativity has value.
I can't claim to have read Lessig's entire body of work, but at the least the book
Free Culture is a passionate defense of keeping creativity and culture free. Free in the "libre" sense, not free in the "gratis" sense that illegal music downloaders rely on.
Nowhere in his work do I see a defense of derivative (you used the word "reused" ) culture to the exclusion of fully original culture. He does mention (rightfully, I think) that a large amount of culture that we find strikingly timely and original is in fact derivative in some sense. (Many of Walt Disney's wonderous works having their seed in classic faerie tales, etc. as an example) You have to protect it all, I suppose is an important take-away.
The happy medium is a nice idea, but much like the balance of nature and unicorns (utter b.s.), only a nice idea. Some what's his face (Radiohead frontman, I think) tried selling a quadruple album for about five bucks, even offering seven songs as free downloads, and it was pirated anyway. It would seem that to those who aspire to a world free of intellectual property rights (for philosophical reasons, or convenience), there is no half way point to meet them at.
I read
a comic book that is released in 6 page installments weekly for free on its website. They make their money off of merchandising and trade paperbacks collecting the story into unified, high-quality print volumes. The book is written by Warren Ellis. He mentioned a while back that he's found the book on pirate comic torrents lately.
He wondered if the pirates even knew that the book was released weekly on the website entirely for free, or if they were scanning the paper version and offering their pirate friends a reduced-quality version months late. He seemed amused at the possibility. I am too. People getting inferior product as a result of a reflexive "steal!" impulse would be funny.
Sorry if this comes across as a rant, I didn't mean it as such.
Nahh. These issues are important to our culture, and the issue of who controls it in the future.
). I feel no obligation however, to pay "again" for albums I have owned several times over on now obsolete formats. As long as there is data transfer, people will always make copies of music and share it, regardless of whether it is right or wrong. There will be new formats and new types of encryption to secure it, and then there will simply be new people to hack it and make it available for free. The industry is really at the mercy of those who believe paying for music is the only conscionable choice.
