I know I’ve always been an outspoken critic of copyright and generally regard it as an issue that is very close to my heart. As a person that believes in knowledge production as the epitome of human achievement, copyright understandably is an important subject of study for me and through my understanding I have come to the realisation that as copyright stands in many industries, primarily printing, music, and video, copyright has become over ripe in its understanding of the flow of information and has failed in its original goal of fostering the increase of knowledge. Copyright is now a system of protectionism for the powerful, mature industries backed by the MPAA, the RIAA, and the publishing houses. I am not saying this as a rant or call to arms, but there are obvious truths to the argument and it all comes down to the money trail. Artists sell the rights to their own music to the labels, writers sell their words and thoughts to publishers who turn around and sell the ideas for millions to movie studios, and Hollywood churns out movies based on idiotic romantic expectations and mindless special effects. Just look at the Academy Award for Best Picture this year - produced by independent international studios - even the establishment know their own creations are shit. Today the creators are okay with not owning their own creations.

Just look around at the anti-intellectualism of our societies. Less than half of Americans believe in evolution and a large proportion answer “don’t know” to almost every question. More people go to higher education than ever before and it is the academia that is pandering to the masses now and not the masses courting the intellects of our country. We claim as our right freedom and equality, but we commodify human life, information, education, and our values. Our society seeks to enforce a system of zero sum to all aspects of life when nothing is zero sum, everything has value and can’t be explained simply as gains and losses, winning and losing.

I argue against many like minded individuals that free trade is the answer. It is too easy to believe that capitalism is the problem, but we do not live in a capitalist society. We live in a society of consumerism and consumerism is not capitalism. The protectionism of agriculture, information, ideas, goods, and services is not free trade. The coercive lobbying by big business, military aid and arms, and government regulation is not free trade. The internet is free trade. The free flow of ideas through groups like ThePirateBay, Wikipedia, and blogs is free trade at its core. The unhampered exchange of information is the very ideal of free trade and the forces of entrenched academia that disparage Wikipedia and the MPAA and RIAA’s suit against ThePirateBay are an anti free trade action towards regulation and comomdification. People see capitalism as the root of the problem but I blame the subscribers to the system more than the system itself and the most influential subscribers are the entrenched industries and governments.

Similarly in the trial that just ended today (the verdict will be announced April 17 2009), TPB is being blamed by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry for copyright infringement; however, as Wired also fails to take notice, ThePirateBay is only a structure and a structure has no action on its own. That is like arguing that pencils are bad because they can be used to right hatespeech or knives are bad because they can stab people when they aren’t buttering toast. I argue that structures are not inherently bad or good, it is the subscribers of that structure that use it do its worst. As a country we blamed “the nazis” for 20 years and “the commies” for 60 years for all the ills of the world. We made no distinction between the people and the leadership as can be seen in the propaganda material of the governments involved. Even today we blame the Middle East for the oil crisis and do we not see that we attack structures when it is the people behind the structures that are really at fault. The people in the Middle East are not bloodthirsty savages and neither were the guys in the other trenches in World War I. They were manipulated by the wealthy leadership of their nations, by the power behind the structures. To attack thePirateBay is to attack the essence of the internet. It is an attack on forums and communities, an attack on YouTube and Wikipedia, on anyone that fights for the freedom to do what they want with their own material. Yes copyrighted material gets stolen everyday but look at the example of Marley and Me author John Grogan and tell me that the publishers are not worse.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with thePirateBay and PiratByran trial please read about it here.

Today’s inaugural address was a powerful and hopeful message in a dark time for America and although I am not an ardent believer in Obama’s vision of America, the speech was very well written, beautifully performed, thought provoking, and inspirational.

I’ve been watching and analyzing the similarities and differences between today’s address and the last address in a time of American depression, the end of Carter’s administration. At the time the American economy was in a downward spiral with extremely high inflation, interest rates on home loans above 20%, and Americans recoiling from the gas shortage and crisis that created rationing for the first time in American history outside of wartime. We tend to think today that America’s economy had generally smooth sailing after the recovery from the Great Depression and World War 2, but that was not so. America has always existed in states of boom and bust and the actions of Presidents do not show for 4 to 8 years after they begin their terms for us to see the affects of their policies.

It took six years for Reagan’s administration to pull the economy out of the downturn and into the bull market. It took six years for Bush to get us into a depression. Hopefully it will take less than six for Obama to right the economy again. We can only hope.

Both Obama and Reagan came into office in a period of economic difficulty and have the same challenges of recovering the economy, fighting a large and faceless enemy, and inspiring confidence in the overgrown American government system. It’s a huge and thankless task and it will be very interesting to see what will happen in the future and how Obama will be remembered.

Please watch the two inauguration speeches, that of Reagan in 1981 and that of Obama in 2009 Part 1 and Part 2. Forget what you think you know about these two men and take their messages at face value. Notice the similarities and differences between the speeches of which there are many on both sides. We can’t know what Obama will do, but treat Reagan’s speech as if it were given today. And reflect on these two men, their visions for the American government system, and your own views on what America should do.

GCBC is an independent documentary produced by Rosforth discussing the current issues and structures of the copyright concept. The film employs the internet as its primary form of advertisement and distribution and is available for free download on The Pirate Bay. After watching a rash of new independent documentaries, including Soulwax’s Part of the Weekend Never Dies, Justice’s A Cross the Universe, and 2007’s Helvetica, GCBC is yet another smash hit on the edge of cultural calamity that will most likely result in some new legislation in the next 4 years.

GCBC partly follows artist, Girl Talk, a leader in sample mixing and on the fine line of copyright infringement. It’s difficult to discern whether remixing samples construes plagiarism of the original artists’ materials considering the context, style, and overall meaning of the material is often completely different than the original. Girl Talk explains that remixing the most minimal of samples isn’t any different than an artist hearing a guitar riff and playing it a little different in his or her own song which has been going on for ages. In my graphic design experience, since I have not developed a solid personal style that guides all of my work, a lot of my creations are simply emulations of things I hear or see on the internet or in magazines, and strictly speaking my emulations probably infringe on copyright rules sometimes.

Copyright isn’t a new concept, but has grown and grown as the size of the government, the recording, the movie, and the publishing industries grew. Copyright during the period of the founding fathers was meant to protect the creator’s intentions and not interfere with production and distribution of the intent, and in a society of creative curious people such as America ideas were meant to be shared and distributed freely while strict copies were meant to be enforced against. For example, from the early 1800s the entire world took part in scientific and artistic events called the World Fair where all fields of science, music, art, and design were available for display not just by learned professionals and professors, but the entire public. During World Fairs information was exchanged, ideas from every corner of the globe, and technology from industries and public scientists flowed freely, all the while copyrights banned the duplication of any of the ideas without interfering with the flow of information. During World Fairs people and governments competed to show who was most advanced, but also realised that without sharing there would be few true breakthroughs. As late as World War 2, countries shared not just money, but great scientists to create technologies that were dreams fifty years before including medicines, food packaging, transportation systems, and atomic energy. Not surprisingly with the growth of governments and private industries the concept of the World Fair has disappeared and no longer do companies and governments freely exchange technological breakthroughs. In fact entrance to industry specific conventions is closely monitored with fears that outsiders will steal ideas. Competition led to greater creativity and with that greater creativity we have learned greater ways to shut each other out.

But there is one last hope: the internet. Today the World Fair is the internet and ideas of every kind continuously flow freely (and not so freely sometimes) from country to country, person to person. Copyright protects people blatantly copying your ideas and intentions, and recently protects even little scraps of your ideas and intentions. But artists know that without artists before them to emulate they wouldn’t be where they are now. Picasso ripped off every major artist before him before creating his own style and he was far from the originator of hist most famous style cubism. Musicians like Santogold wouldn’t be famous singers without the jazz singers of the 60s, soul singers of the 70s, hip-hop artists of the 80s, and garage bands of the 90s. Copyright is important but if we inspect who has been making the most noise about it and receiving the most benefit from how it has existed, we will see that the artists aren’t the loudest copyright advocates.

In fact most music contracts result in the musicians receiving only a tiny percentage of their actual sales with a huge chunk being taken by the labels and another large chunk being taken by the retailers. Production of music is almost nothing, bits of plastic and metal in cds or else if bought online bits of data with no physical costs except server space and infrastructure maintenance. What most people don’t realise is musicians with major labels don’t even own their own creations. Label deals result in the label owning the intellectual property created by the artists while the artists only ownership is a royalty, or piece of paper saying that they get a percentage of what the label makes on the label’s property in thanks to them for doing all the creative work. Isn’t it strange if someone steals an album that the artist doesn’t actually have something stolen from them but the label does.

Copyright is important and needs to exist, but in terms of art and ideas, it needs to be updated to accommodate the free flow of ideas known as the internet. GCBC brings up a few good points and ideas to rectify some of the problems with copyright law. Primarily, since distribution has flowed away from monopolistic forces such as record labels and movie studios that copyright and intellectual ownership should return back to the creators. The band Mindless Self Indulgence retains ownership of all its songs and licenses its music to labels instead of the other way around, and the band has embraced the internet as it’s primary source of distribution. Another more powerful alternative to piracy and electronic music transfer is distribution through vinyl. There’s a lot to be said about the sound and feel of vinyl and it’s been used extensively in the area of electronic music for years. Vinyl isn’t copyable and true fans of a band’s music will buy there vinyl as collector’s items even if they are willing to pirate the albums for free from the internet. The final solution is to embrace the idea of touring and live albums. As displayed in the Brazil section of GCBC, live albums are the important sales for artists and connect the artists with their fan base while album releases are simply forms of distribution to get the buzz out for new music. Linking live events with album sales creates an all important bond between an artist and the fans and also will cut out a lot of bands that truely lack talent in reality, mainly mainstream pop acts.