So suddenly, so abruptly, it pounces on me. A jingle in the mall. A wish list on display. Not so subtle reminders of a season of warmth and love. For those who celebrate it anyway.
But for me, it’s always the same old dilemma. A season that means naught to me, but drowns me in an ambiance of envy that I can nary escape. I don’t want to celebrate it because I can’t.
So, quietly, it gnaws at me, eating me away, until spring comes and melts the icy white snow that is Christmas.
and every year I ask myself, who will remember, and who will I remember?Â
I’m impressed with whoever who came up with the concept, shot and edited it. It’s so brilliantly difficult to pull it off that I’m amazed it is even entertaining, in a very very cringeworthy way.
On the bright side, they tried.
But next time, try not put in so many big and multi-syllable words. It hurts the flow, yo.
Having spent the better part of the last 24 hours reading up on intellectual property and copyright law, I’m feeling rather heady right now. As part of the preparations for my Media Law & Ethics exam, we’re told to prepare a vision of the world’s copyright law 50 years from now. Since I think best with my thoughts written down, I’m going to do precisely that. Pen a rant in as logical a way as possible that my current mess of ideas will allow me.
To project as far as 50 years into the future, a firm grounding in current law and practices is of importance. However, while I may throw up some of the legal jargon every now and then, I believe it is more pertinent to discuss the principles behind the law. I believe that as important as the letter of the law is, it is the spirit of the law that is even more important. After all, crudely put, common law is the interpretation of statutes, which are in turn legislations based on the constitution, which ultimately were the worded principles on which a nation was founded. At least in a romanticised setting. Regardless, the idea is that the law is set in place to protect the common man, and a not-so-commonly agreed set of rights and principles.
But enough preamble. What then, is intellectual property and its basic principles? What is copyright all about? While I may use the term intellectual property in general, I will tend to focus more on copyrights as they are closer to home, and the question in my exam paper.
(I’ve broken the rants into different sections as they’re really long, and I’m taking a much longer time to write them than I first expected.)
Law, as it is, is simply a bunch of words written onto paper, inorganic text created by organic man. The beauty of the law is that it is not perfectly enforceable. It was not meant to be. The spirit of the law is perfect, but the letter of the law is not, should not.
I shudder to think the day that every petty criminal can be caught and prosecuted, no matter how small or how innocent the crime. There should always some wiggle room for us to make mistakes, learn from them, and move on. It is human nature that governs our behaviour in the end, not the law.
Finally, after such a long tirade and background, what is my vision 50 years henceforth?
Essentially, it boils down to whether legislation becomes stricter, more lax, or remains as is. And a consequence of that will be the technologies that develop to supplement it. Those who received the Odex letter will know the potential horrors when enforcement technology catches up with the law.
Thus far, I don’t suppose my thoughts on the matter have been all that positive. But I also don’t think that my thoughts on the matter resonate much with the average user. After all, since we have one of the highest rates of piracy per sq feet (according to Odex), most of us have a callous disregard for copyrights, or at least the enforcement aspect of it. But if you’re looking for legal freebies, I might throw up a few here. Copyright isn’t always about illegal copying.
For the tech savvy, the free software and open source movement is not an unfamiliar territory. I’m not a close follower, but I’d say it has come quite a far bit from when it first started. Back when I first heard about it, all I knew was about a couple of hardcore geeks who used Linux. They were classified as way out.
