I actually have the direction of I want to take for the dissertation. Last year i’ve read a few books about things that interest me.

On one side there is the copyright issue and how the changes in the last few years could hurt innovation as Lawrence Lessig proposes in his books. In the same vein there is also the issue with the new media and how the consumption of media as a whole have changed dramatically.

Expanding a bit on the last idea is also what can be called a sort of economic model “the long tail” which I find quite interesting. Especially because the internet has made it very easy to “see” but is not neccesarily a new concept.

Mixed in all these subjects I found radiohead’s last week announcement about the release of their latest album “In Rainbows” to be extremely interesting, and a potential source of inspiration for a dissertation . The announcement has caused a lot of reactions from all the corners of the music industry (just a few here). Just yesterday I was discussing with a friend and one of the questions I proposed was about what kind of licensing this disc will have when you buy it online (which I already duly did) , especially because there is no record company involved. A quick check to the faqs and conditions of the sale said nothing about the license (like the ones you find on most cd’s you buy) so I’ll wait until tomorrow when I will get on the email the code and the url to download the album to see if it says anything especific.

I think I would like to study this radical idea, or maybe use it as an example at some point of the dissertation. Obviously there are considerations, since not any band could neccesarily pull this off succesfully since not any band has such a loyal fanbase as Radiohead’s .

Well… hopefully my disseration will take me somewhere into that direction, I still don’t know what to question. I have another alternative which is to take these discussions and localize it somewhere more especific, like my home country, or maybe even England.

That’s for now. Im sure this time tomorrow I’ll be a bit more clear about this whole thing.

-j

ps. As I was about to click the publish button for this post, I got an email about In Rainbows, it specifies that the download will consist on 10 DRM-free MP3 tracks at 160kbps. I should get the code/url tomorrow morning it says. sweeeeeet

The past week the subject of the week was about copyright, or the ownership of ideas

At first I thought it was going to be about how should we handle copyrighted material in case we wanted to deal with that. But then I noticed it wasn’t precisely about that. It was more about setting up a critical view of the issue of copyright. Not critical meaning to critize it but critical to understand it and analyze it.

While checking the list of recommended reading, the key reading was in a book called Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. I checked what was it about and decided to buy a copy of it. Is possible to argue that I need to do more reading on the subject and I agree, but that read lead to a totally new point of view about copyrights and its pro’s and con’s and the considerations we should have about this issue. This point of view I’ve never had before.

Before coming to the UK, I was doing some work in production of videos, and we faced the issue of copyright with some sort of fear and ignorance. In general we tried to avoid the issue. In one of the projects, as it was going to be publicly broadcast we decided against using the music we choose in the first place, which lead to us making the music ourselves. We were not musicians and the piece was quite simple. But it worked the project was for the Red Cross which meant the payment was just enough and hiring a composer was simply going to be too expensive. We took the risk and I think it paid off somehow. The only thought of triying to clear the piece of music we wanted to use was a project waaaay bigger than our small red cross video promotion project as a whole.
The second example was a corporate video that was never going to be publicly shown, only within the company… and the issue this time is that they wanted to use an specific song from a recording artist. And the truth was, we had no idea how to handle the issue. We were young people with no money for lawyers asking questions about something that no one reaaally knows about. Was it fair use? (I think it was) no one was going to make money *because* of the song, it was there only to complement the images. At the end we leave it up to the company to decide and they used the song. Were they really going to get sued by it? I don’t think so, but still that cloud of uncertainty was very unconfortable.

After reading the book I understand everything a bit more. Or better said, I understand that it wasn’t much because I was a 22 yr old triying to make a project with some honest work. But because the whole copyright issue today is quite messed up and complicated. I wasn’t aware that copyrights were implemented in the first place not only to protect the author but also to promote creativity, and that at the same time it was limited to promote more creativity. Which sounds a bit odd, but seems to work.

It was interesting. Lessig suggest more balanced copyright laws. In his view we are going to a extreme where excessive control will harm the production of new works in a wide range of media types. But of course.. it makes me wonder how is it possible to change that trend? Unfortunately is pretty similar to the feeling I get about the political situation back home (but that’s another story)… It looks like an extremely tough challenge. . . but it looks possible. Which is something after all.

The author of the book is current chair of the Creative Commons project which uses copyright laws to give power to the authors/creators to decide how they want their work to be distributed and copied without having to pay shit loads of money in lawyers. Is not a free for all actitude, but a honest take on how authors can decide to reserve some rights instead of the usual All Rights Reserved.

-j