Copyright

I have been blogging for about 5 years now, and I've seen alot of change. In the early days - media and embedded content was open and it really was alot of fun to excerpt the work and include it here. But if you look back through my work from 2005, you'll find alot of fragmented links in this blog,- the result of an aggressive copyright enforcement campaign waged on 'behalf' of the artist by companies that ferret out content and then - thanks to the complicity of the Google corporation, remove it at almost at random. These companies have little basis for this action - they don't really know how many or how few are viewing the work here. They make up the numbers, and hire expensive legal teams to threaten anyone that disagrees with them.

Fortunately for us, they haven't really changed the game. But why are they wasting so much time deleting stuff from youtube? Because of what they think they own. And their basis is copyright.

According to these companies they are comfortable - passing off their attempt to loot cash from other people's effort - by a severe restriction of expression and our ability to excerpt and understand works of art. They operate like this, because to be honest - their focal point hasn't been the artist, or the art - but rather the installation of a series of profitable artistic sequences that can be easily controlled. They are ecstatic about the recent developments regarding facebook, and its ability to allow them to monitor each and every conversation between each and every one of their users. They loved the concept of twitter - that helped make everyone in the world less able to understand the world around them, by shortening their expression into 140 characters or less. They were threatened by the blogs.

Blogging new content was anathemic to the major media corporations. They have massive numbers of people on staff who were all geared to help you 'understand' what was going on around you. It is a testament to their ability in this regard - that a team of four people and a website were able to publish more relevant, incisive and significant reporting in the past year than they were in the past twenty years. It is a testament to the nobel committee's skill that Julian Assange has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize - but the condition he was addressing was there largely because the new content, and 'pajama clad blogger' had been suppressed over the past four years before. Does anyone remember the election of 2004? A major news media entertainment company released an entire story based on forged documents and a few bloggers in Atlanta found out and posted it online.

News media entertainment, and for that matter - most media entertainment companies - have seen their playing field change beneath them. What does it mean, for them, to enforce copyright.

For them, it means that they will mine a new source of revenue based on essentially free distribution of their 'copyrighted' material. It really is about money, for them.

But for us, who are out here in the blogosphere - their recent incursions into our space have meant little. I am free to write this article, critical of their effort - without restriction. You are free to copy it as long as you cite that it came from me. Some of my work here, is not free to copy. Contact me if you want to copy it.

But if you excerpt it on your website I'm not going to delete it out from underneath you because the essence of copyright law was never about restricting the artist or keeping us from understanding new work.

The only real way you can miss so much reporting or significant works of art over the past decade - was if you were suppressing it. A media entertainment company weaves into their offering - advertising, product placement and corporate revenue. Their goal is to meet and shape public demand - in a market where the marketing dollar per capita - is the highest its ever been. But they want to make sure that the demand is constant. If there is a chance for a sequel, they'll take it. They're not interested in what. They're interested in how much.

To them, you are just an eyeball. Their vision of how things work on the internet is deeply flawed. New sites will defeat them. Every person in the world, should have their own site. Why does an artist need a recording company , if all it takes to publish their song is the click of a mouse? This is the twenty first century. Copyright - if left unchecked - will consume all creative effort . This simple observation should be enough for you to get the point:if by copyright law - a media company could remove memories from your mind - would they?

Pretend, for the sake of argument. That the answer is no. That they spend 20 million dollars to make a movie that isn't really a great work of art - but more a work designed for mass appeal and mass consumption. Now, think about this: suppose they could erase it, and you would pay to see it all over again. Would they?

To me, you are a reader. You are someone who could understand. You are someone who can help. And I love you. I always have. Always will. You're not just someone that consumes my work. You are someone that is a living entity and anything I do is given to become a part of our shared experience. I own my own work, and I can publish it. But I want you to know that it's your ability to change, and grow - and to create your own content, and your own site - that is what I treasure most. Everyone on the planet should have their own website.

The fact that they don't, yet. Is something we can all work on. Don't let a single site aggregate you and don't let people control what you want to do with your video edit or your copies of music or art. Play with them. Understand them.

Peace.