Infocalypse Now
I mentioned copyright very briefly yesterday. Some of you may have been left wondering why. Have a look at Lawrence Lessig's site to get a feel for what's going on. What it boils down to is the us supreme court upholding corporate-motivated copyright extension. Right now copyright is essentially unlimited (approximately 2+ lifetimes).
Now, it may not be immediately clear why this is a bad thing. Shouldn't artists be able to protect their works and, thus, their livelihoods? Certainly. Forever? No.
Here's the kicker: most copyrights are held, not by individuals, but by corporations. Those corporations may at any time decide to stop publishing the works. Additionally, if they choose not to take steps to preserve the works long enough for them to enter the public domain, oh well. In either case they're gone. The end. Bits of culture disappear. Perhaps they would have anyway... but why work to increase entropy?
So. In response, here's what I plan to do. I am going to attempt to make high quality duplicates of every piece of media that crosses my doorstep. I will rip the CDs, OCR the books, and scan the art. I will make backups. I will attempt to help preserve those works I have purchased the right to enjoy. The more copies there are, the more chance one will survive.
Yes. This is probably piracy.
Additionally, I would urge those of you that publish content to do so under something similar to the licensing system proposed by the creative commons project.
I realize this is all a worst case scenario. Expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised, etc.
m4dd4wg has been kind enough to mail me the following article from the Times Online in reference to yesterday's rant: The United States of America has gone mad. I'm glad that other, more articulate people are having similar misgivings. Thanks!
I don't usually credit the song lyrics I use but I thought I might this time. The lyric below is from a Country Joe & the Fish song protesting the Vietnam war. I suppose it behooves me, in light of all this discussion, to be a bit more scrupulous about my quoting of lyrics. I'm looking in to it.
After reading the creative commons site I was still somewhat unclear as to where to put the licensing stuff so I slapped it everywhere. I apologize if it's intrusive. Hopefully when I redesign the site I can clean it up some. I don't know that anything I say here is worth sharing freely OR protecting but I may as well.
Interesting: A Tax-Cut That Would Sink the Economy. (From Eat the State! by way of Lying Media Bastards)
jwz has an amusing new entry up on his site. What I have to know is why do those of you that use liquid soap prefer it? In my mind it's like fresh-smelling, faintly acidic, motor oil.