interim gripe: anti-piracy campaigns

After being away for a couple of weeks, and not posting much in the rush up to my departure and since my return, I've accumulated a fair bit of post-worthy material. But that's still on hold for the moment. Today's commentary is a complaint, inspired by the latest of a series of offensive emails I've gotten this year - all encouraging my support for a campaign to pressure the U.S. government into clamping down on music piracy.

I should make clear - the emails aren't threatening or abusive or overtly rude. What I find offensive is the self-righteousness of the music industry reps involved in this campaign, the attack on creative freedom that these kinds of campaigns entail, and the assumption that I (whoever/whatever they think I may be) am on their side. And I find particularly offensive the way in which these types of music industry people try to pass off as a moral and artistic crisis what for them is largely an issue of money and control.

Example, courtesy of the music division of one particular multinational corporation: "Our community has never matched the noise created by those on the 'copyleft' – we need to be louder than ever to drown out those who don’t care about our art, our jobs and the difference between right and wrong." I am definitely not part of this "our." And I'm repulsed by these kinds of attempts to demonize anyone who isn't.

I won't get into my philosophical stance on copyright and intellectual property (I'm suspicious of it though I support credit where credit is due), the commodification of creative work (I have problems with commodification in general but I'm all for people getting compensation for their work), and the free circulation and exchange of information and ideas (I generally support it), and how all these issues tie into the question of anti-piracy legislation. That would be a whole dissertation in itself (and a tempting one to write, though there are other people who are already embroiled in these kinds of projects). But even just looking at the practical side of things, I do not believe that "imploring Congress to pass aggressive laws to combat piracy" is an advisable or effective reaction to music downloading.

So instead of supporting this campaign, I would urge people to consider some of the more disturbing implications of anti-piracy legislation and its application (multinational corporations vs the individual artist and/or consumer, corporate ownership and control of creative resources, threats to creative and artistic freedom, and so on...). And I offer up, instead of the web address of the group sending me these emails, a link to a group that represents one of several alternative points of view.

Creative Commons Canada

Please feel free to reproduce my words (but try not to mispresent my point of view).

virtual musicians: bringing back musical personalities from the dead

From Wired... this is a little neat and a little creepy – re-creations of a dead musician's distinctive performance style through computer technology:

Virtual Musicians, Real Performances: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Music

My tech geek side likes the idea of re-performances, the possibilities for hearing things that should have been performed and recorded, and so on. But the cynic (and paranoiac) in me cringes at the use of dead musicians' style as a cheesy gimmick or advertising hook, and the idea of copyrighting and licensing a performance flavour is really distasteful. If you read the Wired story, you'll see I'm not alone here. On top of it all, the dystopian sf fan in me imagines musicians being kept semi-/digitally alive like Dixie Flatline in Neuromancer and feels a little ill at the prospect.

So how do we use this technological potential without turning it into another tool for corporate control over creativity? Or use it respectfully without turning dead artists into caricatures of themselves? Any ideas?

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side note: If you share your life with a pet or six, unless it's as long-lived as a tortoise, you're going to have to deal with animal mortality sooner or later – preferably later. I was hoping our next encounter with later was still a long ways away, but these things always loom sooner than you'd ever want.

If this blog is inspired, in part, by the seven cats I have shared my life with – four living with us now, two passed on, and one moved on to another family – this post is dedicated to one sick little cat who is very close to my heart. This AI stuff makes me wonder, would I hang onto him as a virtual kitty if I could? And I think no, that wouldn't be hanging on but starting a new relationship with a new different kind of cat, however closely he was related to the furry critter that was.

Canadian film : do zombies own their ideas? do zombies have ideas?

Okay, I've lured you in with a misleading title, but now that you're here...

Anyone see the new zombie film Pontypool yet? I very much want to check it out. Brain-infecting zombies rather than brain-eating zombies, I hear. I have a Bruce McDonald weakness anyway.

I also came across a CBC write up on a new documentary on copyright and intellectual property - RiP: A Remix Manifesto. According to Matt Hays, the re/inter viewer, the doc is a complex of illustrative narratives that challenge the logic of copyright law without completely throwing the idea of intellectual property out the window. But this is the part that really got me:

RiP achieves the documentary sublime when Gaylor successfully connects a series of copyright issues — from music downloading to AIDS medication patents to the patenting of a newly developed plant species (which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was A-OK). That puts the intellectual property debate into the realm of the chilling: corporations could actually claim ownership of an entire species.

Put this one on my 'gotta see' list.