EFF

Added a new link: the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I've heard about them by-the-by from their involvement in intellectual property cases, but I didn't check out the website until John told me about this article.

Lawrence Lessig pointed out a pretty valid problem in Free Culture, when, I think he was talking about Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid,a film that entirely re-appropriates old film noir footage into a new screwball comedy starring Steve Martin. Lessig pointed out how grossly unfair it is that a production company is capable of paying out the nose for all of these old licenses to create a transformative work, while Joe Shmoe would catch a lawsuit for the very same concept. The problem is primarily that this re-appropriation technique is an entirely new brand of creativity which now belongs only to the rich and the well-lawyered. Where cheap technology and the internet has "democratized" media production, stuffy copyrights keep it gentrified.

Free Culture came out a while ago and things have changed a little since then, but fair use is still so impossibly murky that the victor is often the powerful, not the just. A good example is the guy from Grand Rapids (Van der Beer? Van der something) who lost a lawsuit to JK Rowling for trying to publish a Harry Potter encyclopedia. To me that's a clear cut case of transformative work, and specifically with the Potter books it is not unprecedented. He lost anyway.

So that may defeat my next point when I say that despite all this, the best tool we have now for ownership in the new media landscape is to be well-informed about copyright and fair use. That's why Teaching Copyright is important. I think it's pretty cool.

Sorry I haven't been around much. I will continue to not be around much for the next several days. Settling in and starting a new life in DC is a full time job.