The Unknown Studio

A user who calls himself Ryan Ramage, a local software developer (oh, and I don’t mean to imply this isn’t his name. But these are the internets, after all), made some excellent comments today on michaelgeist.ca about copyright as it relates to innovation and creativity. Maybe not the kind of comment that blows you out of the water, but still: he gets it. A surprising amount of other people do not.

Time for me to chime in.

I work in Edmonton as a software developer. I have consulted for many various business and government entities. I have seen first hand how the “open source” movement has fostered and allowed innovation for the products I deliver to these entities. In this “remix” mindset, productivity for everyone in my industry has improved drastically over the last few years. I have contributed to and developed open source software myself. There are personal benefits. I have used my work on these projects on my resume, to gain experience, and network with others.

I feel that as our society closes itself off around the copyright issue, we loose this innovation capacity. This mindset of sharing, remixing, building on others’ work is key to furthering our industry and heritage. When we lock down with copyright, we claim we are doing it to promote competition, but instead it stifles it. I have also seen in my industry many bullying cases where the “big guys” can easily close down other amazingly innovative ideas because they have the lawyers and money, all using copyright and DMCA-style takedown notices.

For a magazine to equate this cause as left, or communist or pop-Trotskyite is insane. This fosters competition. It builds industry. I have seen more innovative bands (music) outside the big labels than I have inside. These are the ones that want others to hear their music, and art, and what they do for the real reason. They get compensated for what they are doing but not as much as what they have done.

Everyone builds on what others have done. As the cost of making digital copies approaches zero, we should hail this time in history as a triumph. We are not thieves, we are champions. Champions of a new way of thinking. Build and share digital works and recognize the author. The author builds this portfolio and gets compensated for new work because people/business want to use the industry leaders, not the industry protectionists.

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Wellington Grey has an excellent slide show on what DMCA does (from boing boing). If IP and copyright issues interest you in even the smallest way, click on the image below.

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Michael Geist is stepping up and asking the tough questions on copyright. Since Jim Prentice is unwilling to be interviewed by the CBC before the Canadian DMCA bill is introduced, Michael has crafted his own questions he wants to put to the minister.

Snippet from Michael’s blog:

7.   The Conservative Party of Canada pledged to “eliminate the levy on blank recording materials” in its 2005 policy declaration.  Why has that pledge been abandoned?  Similarly, the 2005 policy declaration stated that “the Conservative Party believes that reasonable access to copyright works is a critical necessity for learning and teaching for Canadian students and teachers, and that access to copyrighted materials enriches life long learning and is an essential component of an innovative economy.”  Why has the party abandoned this position with copyright reform that will make it more difficult for teachers and students to access copyright materials?

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Wired has an excellent article on the state of the music industry, as viewed through the eyes of Universal Music’s CEO Doug Morris.

A snippet:

Easy profits ended up blinding the industry to the threat of MP3s. Throughout the ’90s, a handful of insiders warned of the need to get out in front of digital music, but for the most part they were ignored. The big corporations that had snapped up record labels in the ’80s and ’90s continued to focus on short-term financial results, even as it become [sic] amply clear that the advantages of CDs — control, convenience, durability, flexibility — were even more pronounced with digital files. “There’s this mentality of always needing to make the numbers for the next quarter,” says Ted Cohen, a former exec at EMI and Warner Bros., now managing partner at the consulting firm TAG Strategic. “It kept me up at night. Some of us could see that something needed to be done, but no one wanted to do anything that wouldn’t maximize profit for that quarter.”

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The Canadian House of Commons is set to roll out new copyright legislation that essentially panders to American lobbyists’ demands that Canada do something about its alleged couterfeiting and IP theft problem. Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa, and one of my favourte intellectual property bloggers, tells you what you can do to make sure the Canadian Government listens to its citizens and doesn’t serve the interests of the US.

A snippet from Michael’s post:

The unfortunate reality is that there is nothing can be done about what the bill will look like when it is introduced – Industry Minister Jim Prentice has simply decided discard consumer, education, research, and privacy interests, ignore his own party’s policy platform, and the cave into U.S. pressure.  Once the bill is introduced, however, Canadians can send a message to their MPs, the Ministers, and others, calling for a fair copyright bill that addresses Canadian concerns (those in Calgary can do so in person on December 8th as Prentice hosts an open house).

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