Some random thoughts while watching Stark's fascinating talk from Quinnipiac University on March 25th, 2010:
* I remember back in 1998 when the "Steamboat Willie" copyright case was in the news, and everyone was wondering how Disney was going to react ... Here's a good summary from the LA Times.
* People shouldn't be surprised that the internet has changed the rules; copyright law as it stands now "doesn't necessarily make sense in an age where the ability to copy a file verbatim... has virtually no cost" (these laws were created in an age of physical goods, not digital).
* It's good to hear Stark remind people that peer to peer file sharing is not inherently illegal; many indie bands and other small-time businesses upload their material to these sites with the hopes of drawing in new fans and getting their message out to a world-wide audience.
* I like the term "digital restrictions management" ... http://defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm
* As Cory Doctorow says, DRM does not work!
* "Free culture" does not just mean that you don't have to pay for anything ... "Free" in this case means "free expression" and "free speech"; it is "the idea that the ability to access, share and re-rip culture is a good thing for society, and that such a culture requires an environment of technological freedom and free expression to go along with it" (an "open source culture").
* The meaning of "net neutrality" has sadly been muddled along party lines by our political leaders, but it basically means that "everybody should be able to access all parts of the internet equally" (in my opinion, the upholding of net neutrality via government regulation is not a perfect solution, more like the "lesser of two evils") ...
* "In a free culture, people would have the right to share and re-rip culture, and cultural production would not be dependent upon exclusive rights, but this doesn't necessarily mean that people creating culture would not be able to make a living; people often assume that if one makes culture available, there would be no models for survival, but in fact [in] many cases making one's work available to share and access and rework can actually benefit the creator rather than detracting" ... For example, the aforementioned Cory Doctorow has all of his novels available for free on his website without DRM, and yet his books still consistently reach the number one spot on bestseller lists for science ficition (he builds up such positive goodwill with his fanbase - through book signings and other social interactions - that they're willing to still support him financially and buy his books even though they are available for free).
* "Transformative works" like Pogo's "Alice in Wonderland" remix are not hurting big companies like Disney and their ability to make money ... No one is going to watch that 3-minute video and think "Well, I don't have to buy that Alice In Wonderland Blu Ray now, I just watched the movie for free!" (it has become a dramatically different work).
* If we didn't have "fair use" laws, then we wouldn't have VCRs, DVDs, Blu Ray players, DVRs, etc. etc.
* "Fair use is an incredibly important doctrine in the digital age, and something along the lines of DRM as discussed can inhibit making it fair use" ... I personally believe that a fan of a TV show, who is using a 10-second clip from a copyrighted DVD in a YouTube video to help express their love for said show, is totally different from someone ripping an entire season of the same show from a Blu Ray disc and uploading the whole she-bang to BitTorrent (one can actually gain new viewers for the property and thus help the copyright holder, while the other can obviously stunt sales of legal copies and end up hurting the copyright holder).
* Ideals like the democratization of culture ("where anyone can participate") and "citizen media" have many benefits ... as well as some drawbacks (for example, Wikipedia is a good starting resource, but I wouldn't necessarily consider it the definitive source for factual information)
* There is no knowledge that is not power (a rallying cry for librarians!) ...
* The bottom line is that societal norms are changing and copyright law needs to change with them ... Some might call this "legitimizing piracy", but the fact remains that we are playing by a different set of rules now ("In many cases, these exceptions and these laws are out of step with reality").
* Quinnipiac provided a helpful list of some of the site discussed during Stark's talk via their website.
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