24.Oct.2005
Eric, you’re not the only one to find the Lessig’s presentation amazing. I’ve seen it again yesterday and got impressed as much as I did when watching it for the first time. I find two points particularly interesting in what Lessig says:
1) Mass-culture started it’s existence when copyright laws were invented. There would be no Britney Spears, no Hollywood, no Disney without all the strict laws to protect the artist’s intellectual property. The whole thing was made up to benefit the creators, but now we all know that it’s the distributors (production companies, resellers) that get the biggest piece of the cake. The artist is always on the end of the queue. It’s a paradox that a law/idea that was introduced to protect the individuality of the artist resulted in a massive de-individualization of art.
2) When hearing Lessig speaking it always strikes me how the idea of free culture (and free software) resembles existentialism. I find atheist-existentialism exceptionally inspiring myself, and I agree with the definition – “freedom is a constraint”. Freedom comes at the price of responsibility. You can’t be free without being responsible. The two are always tied together. Freedom limits freedom, and the freedom of others is an important constraint. Either my freedom will subdue yours, or yours will subdue mine. But you can’t be free without making others free.
Now if you think about GPL, you will see an analogy here. “You may use/modify this software freely BUT you have to guarantee that right to others (publish changes)”.
I’m far from being an RMS fanboy, but there is something about freedom that makes it useless if it’s not shared. Freedom is not a permanent state. It’s a temporary paradox, but still it’s worth fighting for.
Same thing applies to tolerance. A “popular” definition of tolerance goes in the lines of – “I accept everything you do, as long as you don’t violate my personal space”. In other words – “You can do anything you want, as long as you don’t limit/touch my freedom”. This definition is very comfortable to apply because it doesn’t require one to pay anything for his tolerance. It comes at no price. It’s cool and trendy. It’s about ignoring things one doesn’t like.
But the true tolerance _is_ about paying. It’s about accepting your freedom being limited, so that others can enjoy it too. Tolerance is not just “be cool and relax” (“Come as you are” hippie stuff). Tolerance is a pain in the ass.
Tolerance: I hate what you say yet will defend your right to say it.
Given that it’s sad that the guy who made gay parades illegal in Warsaw has just become the president of Poland.
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9 Comments
Can’t agree more. :)
-Richard
Hi,
First, i agree with you on big part but on 1) i am not toaly agree. Stop thinking that distributors take the big part and are bad guys. On music buisiness, there is a lot of marketing, seller, …. lot of people to make the product known. Else nobody hear madonna or britney. So all this people must be paid for this. And when you think to what earn a big star, why not spread a little the money to make more people live. I agree totaly that the idea come from the creator and he must be paid for that. But, if the idea is not spread nobody will buy it. So the people who work to spread this idea must be paid.
People, I am sorry to tell you that both Madonna (at least in her early days) and Britney are products of the music industry. Made by salesmen and will be destroyed by salesmen. They will be loved by the public if and only if the salesmen will want them to be loved by the public. This is how this industry works for them and most other performers. Yet, it is possible that the actual creators behind them ARE being payed respectively for their work (not that I think either Madonna or Britney has a cash problem). About creative performing artists… hmm.. I really don’t know. They are represented and use distributors, of course, but I cannot say anything about the share they get. Just some points to think about. Itai.
Oh, and by the way, what about some Diva news?
I would say copyright law was created to enable mass-culture and i wouldn’t say copyright was established to benefit the creators, that was just a side effect. Copyright was established because printing books was expensive. So that the society have the pleasure to get and read the great printed books there was a limitation of the creators+distributors. The copyright said, that only one creator+distributor can print and sell the book. So they could invest in the expensive job of printing books (buy machines and so on) and have the guarantee that nobody else will compete with them, so that they could get back the money they have invested and maybe earn some extra money too.
I would say the idea was a regulation of the industrie as an advantage for the society. Today copyright is more and more a regulation of the society as an advantage for the industrie (and sometimes for the creator).
Lech Kaczynski (new president of Poland) is a polish version of George Bush (with exception: Kaczynski has a professor title), but he is not a “bad guy” as most european newspapers describes him. Just very conservative. I think he trurly believes that the gay parade was something evil. Is it intollerance ? I don’t know.
PS: I voted for his opponent Donald Tusk.
Copyright was created to protect the creators. It was originally implemented to protect people like authors from printing companies that could (back then) just come along and copy the author’s work 10,000 times and make 10,000 times the money the author did. Ironically, the copyright law has been altered, manipulated and twisted to the benefit the big companies.
Copright law was also introduced to encourage the artist (artists being creators of any sort) to continue being creative, because it restricted companies with copying capabilities (as I mentioned in para. 1).
Cheers, and well composed Michael. Pascal Klein
Firstly, I hate to speak in English to Polish guy :) Especially, after some beers :)
Kaczyński is a bad guy because he want to rule for all cost. He was in many parties, he says what people want to hear. Look, that people with primary education have voted for him, most people with studies have voted for his oponent (less evil :/). I don’t like Tusk, but he is more liberalist. It is shame that I dindn’t vote - I was in other city.
Poland is NOT 3rd world, but sometimes I think, that people think that. We have great IT specialist (look at Diva and world championships!), but they don’t have oportunity In Poland. The chance in OS! I hope, that opendocumet (and etc) wil be standard in UE and my coutry (i really like Poland!) will have to use it.
To say some words about gay parade. Tolerance is not to like “others” but to have in mind, that they exist and do not fight with them. Tolerate != like. So you can don;t like gay and tolerate them. I don;t know what Kaczynski think, he says what most people want. I don’t like when homo adopts child - it is innatural. But bit that is not fair too.
PS. I don’t understand (here shoule be harder word) Frech people - most of our supermarkets is frech, Frech have 50% (or something about) of our Telecomunicate Company (not mobile - ordinar phones) and they don’t want Polish workers!
“Else nobody hear madonna or britney”…and what a tragedy that would be, eh?
The Internet is really, really good at word-of-mouth…make music good enough so your fans send links to all their friends, and you’ve got nothing to worry about. See this Wired article…lots of bands are doing well these days without the labels. Extremely well, in some cases.
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