I had to connect two things together earlier today.
Found via Brooksoid, the oatmeal comic about trying to watch game of thrones. And Torrentfreak’s A Responsible Citizen Not Only Shares Culture, But Destroys The Copyright Industries.
…sharing became a matter of being responsible as a citizen. Sharing culture was not only a good deed in humankind, it was also taking civil responsibility for preservation of our common heritage, a responsibility that neither the industry nor governments took on themselves to fulfill.
Framerate show is a good show for this type of thing, shame its very American centric.
I find the grey area which a responsible citizen inhabits, very interested. So many interests and so much money and time is spent on protecting a system which is impossible to protect. This is certainly why things like Creative Commons and micropayment systems like Flattr gives me such joy…
Funny enough…
Me and Simon were walking home the other day talking about the patent nightmare (as you do) and Simon said,
“We could be on Mars by now but instead we’re wasting effort stopping people stealing Coldplay records!“
Although Simon was slightly confusing or at least mixing up the patent problem with the copyright problem, that sentence alone is pretty elegant and sums up a lot of thinking I’ve had over the years.
The next day, I pursued him to mention it and it got re-tweeted by people like myself. He then came back with this…
Everything and anything that prevents the progress of our species in the pursuit of profit.
Ant Miller followed up with…
@cubicgarden @si_lumb can I have that on a t-shirt please…
You can just imagine a brand of Tshirts with Copyright and Patent reform slogans… (remember when Google and Patent reform was hot on peoples lips).
This also drives me to once again have a UK version of Framerate… the issues are different enough. Cristiano Betta and myself have talked about a techgrumps for films, tv and media for a long while, maybe the tipping point is nearing?
So how about it people?
