Two things.
- This: Does street art make people become bikies? (found via @Tarale)
- This: Lawrence Lessig – Getting the Network the World Needs at OFC/NFOEC 2009
Why is there this huge push to regulate culture? Graffiti causes you to become a bikie? Oh, so I must be a bikie? Having participated in many graffiti activities, and almost getting a second place in a Graffiti competition[1], I can most assuredly say, I am not a bikie! Okay, yes, I used to ride a motorbike, and a big mob of us used to go riding out around Alice Springs, but I’m not what anyone would call a bikie. Besides, the biking happened years before the graffiti. The thing that will make Graffiti artists criminals is the criminalisation of graffiti.
Here’s a thought: rather than fining, jailing, remanding, punishing them, let’s try educating them. I don’t mean educating them about the horrors of graffiti, I mean educating them about the artform. Let’s get them together with artists (some of whom have problems making enough to live on) and have them learn about composition and colour and all of the concepts that lead to pleasing artforms[2]. Let’s pay the artists, let’s get them working on all the ugly structures and bits of our community. Let’s start them on the shipping containers and trains. Think about how much more pleasing it would be to wait for a long train to pass if it was decorated with images and colour. Let’s get some retired/out of work engineers to train aspiring artists on safety around these behemoths. Let’s harness their creativity and need to make their mark to enhance our lives, not force them into a life of ‘crime’.
This video is both inspiring and depressing for similar reasons as above. Why ARE we criminalising our youth? Why is there this push to control everything, to maintain the status quo, to deny the evolution of culture? In some ways, I, too, believe in copyright, but I’m a copyright minimalist. I believe we should get back to the original purpose of copyright, as set forth in the Statute of Anne, which was to stop the commercial exploitation of a creative work without the permission of the creator and that it was a very limited time (initially around 14-21 years). My reading of the Statute of Anne is that it was done to protect creators from publishers. We really need to ensure that creators do get recognition and some financial reward for their works.
But what we have now, and what’s hinted at in Lessig’s talk, is that the publishers have slowly manipulated copyright, both the law and its application, to their benefit. Whenever we do anything creative, we have to hand over the copyright to publishers so the can ‘protect‘ our work. What they do is another word starting with P and that’s profit[3]. Why are publishers exploiting the creators so heavily? Why are they always saying they’ll protect our works, but not us? Can we please change the rules back?
Inspired?
That all sounds so depressing and it is. Criminalising our youth is depressing. The inspiration comes from our youth. The ways they are shaping what we know are inspiring. I love seeing how people (regardless of age) rethink the things they see things and that is central to what it is I love about my job. But it’s all becoming too hard. If we aren’t careful, learning will become a criminal act, because there isn’t an idea in the world that can’t be said to have its genesis somewhere else.
- We did win second prize, until they found out what FIGJAM stood for, then we were disqualified [↩]
- of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so I’ll say no more about that [↩]
- Question: Are publishers Ferengi bound by the Rules of Acquisition? [↩]