* <<F2R.0341>> "Free Culture"

Maybe it really is the way of the future, and it's just too much of a
paradigm-shift for my thirty-something dinosaur brain, but I just
cannot get on-board with so-called free culture.

The idea that intellectual property shouldn't exist, that the
non-physical products of work should be in the public domain simply
because ...why?  Because they are incorporeal and have no inherent
material cost?  Because they can be perfectly, limitlessly reproduced
in symbolic form?  Is this ~Art In The Age of Mechanical
Reproduction~ taken to its computer-age conclusion?

It seems utter bollocks to me.

My take on it is that "free culture" is a philosophy formed as a
reaction against the pathologically litigous behaviour of corporate
media publishers and a small number of petty and mean creators.  It's
a philosophy for soft-headed people with either a persecution complex
or a sense of entitlement.

I have my own objections to certain aspects of intellectual property
law: patents on discovered naturally-occurring gene sequences, for
example; patents on elementary algorithms, mathematical proofs, and
design concepts are further examples.  I'm also opposed to extremely
long copyright protections -- it's already 70 years beyond the life
of the author in the US, which itself is too long in my opinion, yet
legislation keeps getting pushed to extend it beyond 100 years past
the life of the author.  Companies whose entire business model is
built on the sale of intellectual property, of course, want copyright
to be eternal.  That is madness.

But the eradication of copyright and patents altogether is another
kind of madness.

Copyright can sometimes seem like its purpose is to enable the
exploitation of consumers by publishers, but its original purpose --
I'll go ahead and say ~its true purpose~ -- is to prevent the
exploitation of authors by publishers.  Can you have the one without
the other?  I think so, yes.  It requires continual refinement of the
laws, but I do think you can strike a balance between protection of
authors and protection of consumers.

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©2015 Adam C. Moore (LÆMEUR) <[email protected]>