Julianna Yau’s blog

Counterfeit Chic has a great post on the intellectual property status of Spiderman’s suit.

So the holidays are over, everyone’s back to work and many are back to pouring their opinions, manifestos, recommendations and responses to copyright on the internet.

The Creators’ Copyright Coalition released their platform on copyright, and there were some immediate responses I noticed, plus a few more trickling in afterwards (on p2pNet, Canadian Magazines, plus the oodles of comments on the more active blogs, such as Michael Geist’s and John Degen’s).

To be honest, I usually stop reading the comments by about the third one, because everyone seems more interested in trying to be heard than trying to fix the problem. I wonder how many of us even have a good handle on what the problem is anymore.

It feels like everyone is working so hard at making sure they don’t get screwed somewhere down the line because they didn’t throw in their 2 cents (or more) that we’re collectively reacting and fortifying… and doing little else which is actually productive.

One of the horrible things about the internet is that shouting matches can go on indefinitely. On a well-moderated discussion forum (regardless of the technology used), these shouting matches can often be either tamed or extinguished altogether. From what I’ve seen, the shouting matches which take place in the blogosphere (both within comments of a blog post and between separate blogs) will go on until only one person had the endurance to have the last word.

I, too, have fallen victim to the mentality of “when attacked (or perceived to be attacked), retaliate”. But because I have little patience for conversations which lead nowhere (or in circles), I usually abandon those conversations quickly.

The internet has great potential for sparking and hosting discussion, but I fear it shall be a long time before the novelty of being our own publisher wears off and we finally take the time to do something productive with all of the discussion.