Who owns culture kicked my ass
A good while ago (Ok, a pathetic while ago) a reader passed on a link to Who Owns Culture. I downloaded it, but enough things came up that I just got around to watching it earlier tonight, along with the last Doctor Who. In the off-chance that you're as lame as I am and haven't seen it, go get it bittorrent or just stream it, because hot buttered jesus is it cool (Both were pretty good, but I'm speaking specifically of the talk).
It's a talk with Lawrence Lessig of Creative Commons fame, and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame, on how legal issues are clashing with (and perhaps potentially strangling) budding artistic expression in the digital world. It's moderated by Steven Johnson, who wrote Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, which, as it turns out, I'm halfway through in meatspace and am enjoying immensely.
Just having these types of conversations, in this context, is so incredibly necessary and the people who put it together should be commended. The audience questions sucked, but seeing David Byrne in the audience made up for it. I enjoyed it so much, I went and checked out the talk's original website at the NYC Public Library, only to see that they're doing an entire series of these talks, which all look extremely interesting, but ended up leaving empty-handed.
It would appear someone at Wilco took it upon themselves to record a video and put it up, but it's not done for all of them. Such a bummer. The amount of work and coordination to put them together should -- at the very least -- be rewarded by more people being able to enjoy and walk around with it in their brains. That aside, the NYC Public Library officially kicks ass for trying to put these things together.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJune 30, 2005, at 03:15 AM
Comments (7)
Posted by: Diggory Laycock at June 30, 2005 09:36 AM
Gah - did the last Dr Who annoy you as much as me? Bad Wolf my arse. What a disappointment...
Posted by: Jay Contonio at June 30, 2005 10:36 AM
What is this Dr. Who I keep reading about? Link?
Posted by: Oliver at June 30, 2005 11:52 AM
Jay, http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/
I'm 56 minutes into this video and find it extremely interesting.
Posted by: Michael May at June 30, 2005 01:56 PM
Noo! the last Doctor Who was great!
Posted by: ffyona at June 30, 2005 05:34 PM
hullo there mr drunkenbatman, i recently happened upon a curious thing that i feel you maybe able to shed some light upon.
i found a link to a site called blogshares.com through which, i think, people buy shares in other people's blogs. according to this site, you own 80% of my blog, angelic fruitcake.
is that right? if so how did that happen and what does that even mean?
if that's wrong and i'm misled then i'm terribly sorry for wasting your time and confusing you etc.
toodles xxx
Posted by: cabbey at July 1, 2005 09:17 PM
I'm part way into a book that actually has some relevance to this topic, if you found that talk interesting, you may find this interesting as well:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0471683345
I've read recently that the NYPL issues some public domain e-books in a proprietary DRMed formats. It makes them less cool…