Julianna Yau’s blog

OLPC News reports on the G1G1 shipping situation.

People are starting to report that they’re receiving their XO laptops (mostly in Illinois, near the distribution centre).

What’s disturbing is the reports indicate no signature has been required for the deliveries, and often no doorbells are rung. I wonder whether that’s FedEx being irresponsible or OLPC not being careful enough about the handling requirements. I hope the Canadian distributor requires a signature, because I’d hate for the laptop to get yoinked by a passerby. Maybe I’ll “luck out” and need to pay duty on it.

There is already one report of an XO laptop being stolen in transit and another of someone being charged by PayPal for the order but OLPC not having any record of the order.

I was responding to some of the comments on my review of the copyright panel discussion on TVO, and got onto a thought tangent that I decided to develop into a full post instead.

My understanding is that, under current copyright law, when I sell one of my sculptures I am only selling the sculpture–not the right to reproduce it or images of it (unless I have also licenced the buyer to make such reproductions). Naturally, I’m not going to sue my patrons if my sculptures end up in an album of family pictures, but would want to strike a licensing deal if they wanted to use images of the sculpture to help promote their business.

Luckily for me, the distribution of images of my sculptures doesn’t (in my mind) negatively impact the sale of my sculptures, because anyone who wants to own the sculpture will not be satisfied by a picture of it. In fact, the distribution of pictures of my sculptures may possibly increase interest in my work and the chance of a sale.

However, the duplication of the sculpture into another sculpture would be something that I would be concerned about because it would have high potential for decreasing my sales (and also infringes my moral rights… but that’s a whole other topic) and influencing the value of my work (because all my work is unique; I am not in the practise of creating series or limited editions of my sculptures).

How does this translate to creative works which can be faithfully recreated digitally? Not merely music, but literature, software, movies and various forms of visual art (e.g. photography) can be digitally reproduced almost perfectly. We have seen for music that recorded songs can be rethought to be not the product but the advertising, and the live concerts to be the products. We have also seen for software that the software can be rethought to be not the product, and have the product be consulting and support for software.

But what about movies and visual art? Do we saturate movies with product placement? Do we rely solely on governmental and corporate sponsorship for visual art? Do we simply levy the heck out of everything to pay the creators? I’d like to hear any suggestions. Honestly. :)

Digital Copyright Canada reviews last week’s Parliamentary activities.