Has anyone noticed the rate at which intellectual copyright is increasing? People seem hung up on the idea that as soon as the world figures out how special they are they (the world) will be willing to pay for the specialness. Our consumer society has taught us that everything is for sale...and everything has a price.
The current price of intellectual copyright is that we can not collaborate. If i have an idea that is based off of your, my idea is useless unless i get permission to use your idea first. If can not afford to pay for the use of your idea, my idea is unusable. The world might have less poverty, less crime, or more comforts, but because someone can make money off the initial idea, none of this will ever happen.
My frustration is not that people desire to be recognised for their ideas. My frustration comes from our greed. The need to make money off of every thing, no matter how small or great.
Even i am not immune to this shameless market. (You'll notice i have Google ads on my sidebar.) In the event that the Internet suddenly finds me massively appealing, i should be set to make a windfall...until that time, I'll make three cents a year.
The problem with this is that i have cheapened what i have to say. I have lessened our ability to communicate freely. Thus, in protest of this selfish market, i will be removing the Google ads tomorrow. (I'll leave them up for the day so that you can say goodbye)
2 comments:
two words Kris,
creative commons.
which I already think you know about :)
but is worth telling people about.
creativecommons.com
one of the major problems as I see it is that copyright is opt out rather than opt in. That is, every single thing you write or draw etc... is copyrighted by default. There is no register of copyright, which means if you want to use something it can be next to impossible to find out who holds the copyright.
Copyright would be much more respectable if it required people to pay a nominal fee to add their work to a copyright register for a period of, say 5 years.
If they don't care enough to pay a few dollars, or to renew the copyright, how can they claim royalties etc???
But, I'm paraphrasing Lawrence Lesig now....
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