And now it's time for news-I-would-be-interested-in: news for people who can't be bothered to find their own news to be interested in or just plain look this stuff up for themselves and seriously guys quit mooching off of my thing, that's my thing. Now, apparently, with bonus commentary. Though really, you should get your own commentary, too.
Today is the official ceremony for this year's Hugo Awards at Chicon 7. Watch it live here at 8 PM Central time, I guess. Remember, we're rooting for Nancy Fulda's Movement in Best Short Story category, Writing Excuses Season 6 in Best Related Works category, and, although Writing Excuses's very own Howard Tayler is nominated for Best Graphic Story with his Schlock Mercenary: Force Multiplication, I'm gonna have to say sorry here and say Ursula Vernon's Digger, because Schlock- unlike Digger- can always be nominated another year, and seriously, Digger. It's, uh, it's a great comic, you guys. Feel free to root for whatever other nominees in whatever other categories you want, but if you don't agree with me on that one, YOU'RE NO FRIEND OF MINE. Ahem. We're only "rooting" for these guys because it'd be kind of impossible to vote for them when the winners have already been decided. If we could vote for them, we would. Remember, this is just a reminder that this is going on today.
In politics, the RNC in Tampa Bay. You probably knew about that one. Thus, I don't have much to say on that, except for one thing. Those screens on stage in the background behind the podium: a masterstroke of graphic design. Seriously, gorgeous. Also behind the podium: guest speakers and such. A necessary evil, I suppose, for without that there would be no reason to have those screens in the first place.
In television, did you catch Doctor Who last night? Of course you did. You-- no? Oh, okay then. Daleks. Daleks Daleks. The Doctor Daleks Daleks Daleks, so Amy Daleks Daleks Daleks Daleks while Daleks. Meanwhile, Daleks Daleks Rory Daleks Daleks Daleks. Oh, and you'll never see the twist ending coming, in which DALEKS! (Sorry, it's just so hard to come up original humor given the popularity of the subject matter.)
And finally, in tech and business news, Samsung is now claiming that Apple's litigation are an underhanded effort to monopolize the market for themselves. Right or wrong on this (WWSJD?), that whole conflict does raise a good point about the very nature of the free market. Samsung, of course, does not think that they've stolen any patents like Apple claims, and in fact thinks that Apple are the ones stealing from Samsung with some of their wireless technology. Either way all of this infringing upon patents and copyrights is a good thing for the consumer, right? Of course right. Free market competition and all that. In this case, REALLY free market competition. (Stealing's bad.) That's what patents and copyrights are in place to do: restrict the free market. It's a free-for-all free market, when companies or othersuch entities deliberately ignoring copyrights and patents, which may or may not be going on here (I'm going with it's some kind of parallel developmental evolution.)
There's been a war going on lately around creator rights. As (something of?) a creator myself, I know this: there's this line between protecting creators' rights and restricting creativity itself. Shakespeare kind-of-borrowed a lot of his stories, but, you know, he was Shakespeare, so he made them awesome. Was he thus justified in this? Well, yeah, because copyright law as we know it didn't exist back then. You can see some of the benefit there. Shakespeare deserves some credit. He was the one we know as the man who wrote those plays and poems. Creator recognition. A lot of Shakespeare's plays were hard to track down, which is why we've got "folio" and "quarto" and such editions. To avoid theft of their own work, troupes would split the scripts up, making it so that the only reliable way to steal someone else's play was to be there standing in the audience jotting the lines down as the actors said them. And, um... I guess I was going somewhere with that. Huh. I guess it was, as long as the creator is recognized as the creator. Yeah. That's it. Copyright laws ensure this. Still, there's another side to this.
A lot of the renewed interest in creator rights comes from rapid dissemination through new media. The internet makes things easier to steal. I do not condone stealing. But this is different from intellectual property damage and patent infringing. The original artist is still recognized. Illegally downloading music only serves --well, not "only," but you know what I mean-- only serves to have people actually listen to it, which makes them more likely to buy the album later if they want to support their artists. The artist still gets the credit for being the creator of a particular song, even when that song is downloaded illegally (except for those sites that seem to think that all parody songs are done by "Weird Al" Yankovic? I mean, what's up with that?)
Compare that to an artist stealing another artist's song. Both artists are still using the song, doing two different versions of the same basic tune. This is bad for the poor sap who wrote it in the first place, as now he does not get full credit for a song that is rightfully his (in this scenario, the artist is a he. I guess I assume that because my mind was primed by the idea of illegally downloading music, I immediately thought of rap and hip-hop whose artists are almost invariably male?) It is, however, good for music as a whole. See? True free market capitalism is just a form of socialism. I just blew your mind. As well as my own.
I don't even know what "cows" model that would use. "You have two cows. Your neighbor illegally clones one and everyone gets milk"? I guess there'd be further competition between you and your neighbor as you still have your own cows who make their own milk, and there'd be some kind of price war until you both realize that together you have a monopoly on milk supply and jack up the prices between you two-- unless someone else comes along and clones another cow which causes you both to need to lower the prices again! See, it still works. Only now, you're not being recognized for all of the milk that would and should be rightfully yours. And that really stinks, doesn't it? That's why we've got individual creator rights.
Take it too far the other way, and no one gets milk, yeah? "You have two cows. The neighbor gets a couple of goats and you sue them for intellectual property damage." There has to be some level of building off of previous works. Advancing the public discussion. For example, I myself am blatantly using ideas other people have on the matter. Still, these ideas are open to have, and I'm at least (kind of?) citing my resources by telling you that they're not entirely my own. So, uh, happy mediums are good.
...yeesh, the whole post could have been on that subject alone. I guess that was just the political punditry that all good (?) news has, or something. But, seriously, that takes up more than half of the post. Couldn't I have posted that section tomorrow? I certainly wouldn't be stuck for a post then. But, who knows, maybe the case will have advanced by that point. They don't call it the "news" for nothing.
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