Copy to the Left, Copy to the Right - Lecture 9 Post-Op

Copyright lecture! WAHOO!

An interesting overview of the history of copyright and more recent permutations of it in copyleft and CC licensing. A more indepth look into the current situation by looking at the most discussed and talked about example of conflict over copyright in the digital domain, that of the area of music. The whole mp3/mp3 play thing is what gets me the most, how you can create an mp3 player when you know that a good 95% of mp3s out there are illegal! You know that there's a likely chance that 95% of the mp3s going on that player are going to be 'illegal'. It seems to be proven somewhat that the online distribution of files has actually helped sales rather then hindered sales, and that its the industry corps and groups such as the RIAA's fault for putting off looking at the internet as a legitamite distribution method.

Personally I think its a great method of getting low quality preview versions of songs online straight from bands. This seems to be scaring the big corporations and intermediaries as they see it as a way for bands to get more money, at the expense of the middlemen. What does 'illegal' distributed music help the most? getting people to see live gigs (which supposedly go mostly to the band) and to buy music over the internet from bands websites and at live venues. Take the Decemberists for example, they put a fairly good copy of a music clip called 16 military wives on the net, and over p2p distribution methods, as well as prob traditional mtv style avenues. This is great, I mean, only a very few people would disagree with more money getting into the hands of the creators and owners of the music, instead of spread out to so many other people.

This, ontop of the concept I have and shared by many otheres that creativity (for example MUSIC) should be SHARED, not SOLD. Oh well, thats a discussion for later on.

Back on topic, the Creative Commons licencing is a really good idea, I'll have to look more into it. That and the GPL or whatever it was called. Really interesting directions for dealing with the issue of copyright in a digital environment, dealing with copyright in ANY environment actually.