The Pirate’s Dilemma tells the story of how youth culture drives innovation and is changing the way the world works. It offers understanding and insight for a time when piracy is just another business model, the remix is our most powerful marketing tool and anyone with a computer is capable of reaching more people than a multi-national corporation.
I'm persuaded by this argument, mostly because I'm easily persuaded by flashy videos that paint the big companies as villains and pirate anti-heroes as hip, awesome people with tech savvy--I think I've seen that movie.
But there is more there, the companies aren't villains, they're just stupid. There's nothing bad, they just don't know what to do. Companies appear to be not helping themselves, either, especially when you have buffoonery such as Ford saying it owns pictures you took of their cars. (Resolved: CafePress' error).
As the slideshow points out (I haven't read the book), sometimes lawsuits are the way to go. But there are a lot of pirates in the world. Can they sue everyone?
What happens when the third world starts computing? When they start using this technology through the lens of their culture?
There are companies that offer stop-gap fixes to the piracy problem (see: MediaDefender, and then Hacking into MediaDefender via Digg), but they are not winning.
Industries that insist on suing and harming their customers will fall, as others have before, now they just make a louder noise.
How does this relate, then, back to authorship? Do I own my remixes & mashups? Even the use of the word "my" there is kind of suspect.
I assembled this Christmas card last year.
I used photos from all over the Internet. The one of Vlad there is an old painting. The tree is from some fake Christmas tree dealer (don't even remember). The guy? I think that's something I cropped out of a video game. I'm not even sure any more. The font is something default in Windows, I think.So, who made that thing? Is it piracy?
