Today I watched the fourth and last part of Everything is a Remix. It is a brilliant video series which explains the problems of intellectual property and much more. It is very well made and effective in communicating its message. The fourth part explains how the rules of intellectual property no longer protect the inventions of artists and inventors, but harm the common good. With that statement made, the fourth part ends, without any suggestions on how we could solve the problem. Maybe the creator of the series, Kirby Ferguson, didn’t have a desire to comment on solutions.
Recently we have witnessed the death of SOPA and ACTA being the subject of much criticism. I have already written a post about it on my Dutch weblog. I observed in that post that there are politicians who are willing to take action against these corporate attacks on the public domain. But even then, it seems we are merely defending ourselves and stopping the attack, but we don’t counterattack. While stricter intellectual property legislation may have been averted for now, it is still possible for film studios to cash in for eternity on films under their copyright, even if they are more than half a century old.
But we do have the power to make change happen with our vote. We have the Pirate Parties for example. I have not studied the political program of the Dutch Pirate Party, but if my own party the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy continues to tread on privacy and other parties don’t do enough I might be tempted to vote for them in protest.
By the way, a much longer documentary film on intellectual property I’d recommend is RiP!: A Remix Manifesto which can be watched here.