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As we recently noted in our The Sky Is Rising study, all of the evidence shows that we're living in a time of true abundance in terms of the content world. All of the data shows this. It's really incontrovertible. And yet, we keep hearing from certain folks -- often legacy entertainment industry interests -- that somehow the content creation world is at risk. That's pretty difficult to square with reality. In fact, I think it could be argued that if the industry gets its way with some of its legal proposals that would put this amazing age of creativity at much greater risk than anything the industry is complaining about.
It seems that plenty of others are recognizing this as well. Tom sent over a great blog post by Terry Border of Bent Objects, explaining why this is the most creative time in history... and why we shouldn't take that for granted. And, of course, a big reason for such an explosion of creativity is because of the internet, and the ability to not just create, promote and distribute works, but the ability to communicate.
Think about the art of writing for a minute. Think about creative, or biographical, or whatever kind of writing. Before blogging, how many people wrote any more than it took to fill the space of postcard? If it wasn't their profession, I'd say very few. Now, it seems like everyone has had a blog at one time or another. And now "micro-blogging" is in style thanks to Twitter. Not as many words you say? Right, but it's a different skill that people are learning. Very concise wording. Do people want to post boring tweets? Of course not. People spend quite a few minutes of their day trying to write interesting, humorous, or informative Tweets and Facebook updates. Small bits of creativity for sure, but add them up on a weekly basis, and it's quite a bit.
I think of all the craftspersons who have learned from each other on-line. Popular knitting blogs for instance have taken that old past-time of grandma's and made it mainstream. Before Etsy and the like, where would a person sell the scarves and hats that they made besides the occasional craft fair? I mean, a family only needs so many scarves, and then the knitting needles were put away. Communities on the web not only serve as a place to share work and ideas, but that also serve as shops to sell your product worldwide, creating a reason to make more, and to try new, crazy ideas. Kind of incredible.
That's just a small clip from his longer post, which goes into much more detail. It's worth a read, and definitely pay attention to his conclusion:
My contention is that these days we live in right now will be looked back on with longing, especially with various governments trying to push through laws to control the internet. If that happens, these will be the good old days, so don't take them for granted. Look around and enjoy. I think this is an incredible time to make things, and I hope it stays around for a while.
Couldn't have said it better myself. And this is part of the reason why so many people are so worried about things like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and TPP. We don't want this amazing era to go away. We just want it to get better and better.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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As Hollywood struggles to come up for breath and understand the nature of what hit them last month in the SOPA/PIPA debate, it appears they're still thinking that part of this is an "education" issue -- and if they could just tell young people how evil file sharing is that everything would be good. A whole bunch of folks have been passing on variations on the news that Paramount Pictures (owned by Viacom -- one of the major backers of SOPA/PIPA) wants to go talk to college kids. A bunch of universities received:
"an overnight fedex letter from Paramount expressing the extent to which they are ‘humbled’ and ‘surprised’ by the extent of the public reaction to SOPA/PIPA and asking to come to campus to talk to faculty and students about “content theft, its challenges, and possible ways to address it."
Paramount specifically asks to give a "formal presentation followed by an open discussion period or to participate in a class session." First of all, actually having open discussions would be a good first step, because that's been lacking in this whole debate. But, I'm not sure starting off that conversation by referring to copyright infringement as "content theft" is the best way to kick things off. I know that the industry has chosen "content theft" as its moral panic phrase of the year, after they realized that the people they'd unfairly branded as "pirates" had taken back that phrase and turned it to their own advantage.
Why not hold a truly open discussion in which everyone can participate and talk about ideas as to the true nature of the problem? That discussion is happening every day out there on the "wild west" of the internet, if only the folk at the studios actually wanted to join in. Perhaps if they did so, they wouldn't be so terrified of the internet.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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One of the more interesting things over the past few months is just how mainstream copyright issues have suddenly become. This point has been driven home with the news that Ruben Bolling's famous Tom the Dancing Bug comic has taken on the excessiveness of both copyright extension and enforcement with his God-man character doing tremendous damage just to enforce the copyright on a work that should be in the public domain:
You can check out some of the comments that people have left under the comic as well. It's really a pretty good description of this debate in many ways. The supporters of these bills don't seem to want to listen. They don't even acknowledge that there might be collateral damage or that copyright has been expanded and stretched in ways that are absolutely ridiculous. You bring up any of that... and they're ready to dash off about some other problem.
Either way, very cool to see Bolling take on this issue, and see the issue getting more and more mainstream attention.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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