Let’s be realistic here: copyright is dead. At least, it’s dead in the sense of “the right to make copies.” Once a piece of media is digitized — be it textual, visual, audible, or interactive — copying it costs exactly zero dollars (or -45,000 euros at the current exchange rate). Because of this, the perception of art not as a product but as information is rapidly reentering the collective human psyche after about 100 years of technical difficulties.
So this means artists who hope to make a living will now have to rethink their business models, because basing your livelihood on the assumption that all people will pay you for the privilege of merely experiencing your work is on par with [wikipedia]Young Earth creationism[/wikipedia] in la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you factor. But never fear, artistic community, because a ton of niche nerd fandoms have come to terms with that assumption since the heyday of [wikipedia]Usenet[/wikipedia] (because many of them probably had a hand in inventing it). They all operate with similar conventions, but because everything is better with cartoon purple foxes, the example I will explain is the furry subculture.
Continue reading ‘Furries and the Art of Surviving in a Post-Copyright World’
Google Goes After Cyanogen For Making Their Customers Happier
About a month ago, I installed a wonderful thing on my G1 called CyanogenMOD. Named after its developer, a man who goes by the pseudonym Cyanogen, CyanogenMOD takes the free and open source Android operating system included with the G1 and makes it run faster, look better, and save storage space. After installing it, my G1 barely ever felt sluggish, all of the space-hogging applications could be stored on my spacious 8 GB memory card, and the interface improvements made it so much more of a joy to use. I’m now happily using all of the Google services that make Google their money much more often than I had before, and my phone would be too sluggish for me to make Google money nearly as much if I had to go back. The 30,000+ people who have also downloaded and installed CyanogenMOD probably agree.
So, naturally, Google is showing Cyanogen their thanks for increasing the Google-use of 30,000 people by sending him a Cease and Desist letter. Wait, what?
Well, apparently some of Google’s applications aren’t open source, such as the Android Market (which allows you to give Google money indirectly by buying apps from developers, who then give a portion of their money to Google). Sure, you can easily download and install these apps yourself from the freely available developer repository, but Cyanogen had the audacity to save 30,000 end users the trouble of doing all that just so they could continue using Google’s products and making them money. That constitutes “distribution,” which only licensed developers who
sent in $25 and the filled-out form from the back of the comic bookwork for Open Handset Alliance members can do. Never mind that there aren’t any alternatives to many of these applications, and they’re kind of essential for a lot of Android’s usefulness.Admittedly, under the current Jurassic-era copyright law, Google has the legal right to do this. Cyanogen does not have the resources to license their software, thus he does not have the license to distribute it. But considering that Android, as a whole, is a free and open source operating system, and that Google has nothing to lose from CyanogenMOD and much to gain, this is a real dick move by the “Don’t Be Evil” company.