I believe we could learn a thing or two from Japan, considering the tight grip, as you said, by “America’s content producers and distributors”. At least they owe something for people like us, for part of the advertising is via our own volition to, well, “blog” about a particular series we (as well as the blog readership, if they are included) think will sell.

Thanks for the credit! :)

I think as technologists it is a lot easier to spot these turbulent practices, may it be law or business. Furthermore, there’s a more pronounced line between content producers and technologists.

On the other hand it’s harder to draw the same parallel for the media industry. Or more specifically, those relevant arts that I run into: illustrators, comic artists, start-up musicians, what have you. Plus, I feel there’s just this enormous sense of momentum, a rock-solid appeal towards a Lockean perspective of intellectual property ownership within the industry itself. Too many people resign to their fate as things are the way they are. I believe that’s also because industry is not driven by the speedy change in technology in a “creative” way. Elvis Presley on LP is the same kind of content as Elvis Presley on mp3s, in other words.

That’s why I feel particularly drawn to the Comiket/doujinshi situation. It’s a living example of being sensible about the ownership of your IP in an ethical manner is a great thing for everybody. It breeds creators! And I think they’re just much more valuable to a society than mere creations.

Do apperciate the link on Henry Jenkins. People should be calling him Leeroy or something.

The whole doujinshi world is a part of the fan-created world, and there’s a lot of intellectual ferment surrounding that issue (as I’m sure you know).

Here’s a couple of websites that you might want to look at (not so much on this topic, but on the whole IP topic):

Ed Felten’s “Freedom to tinker” blog, which is about digital rights management from a technical person’s point of view: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/

Henry Jenkins’ fan-culture blog: http://www.henryjenkins.org/ (he’s an academic who has probably done the most to make the study of fan culture a respected discipline, to the extent it’s respected at all). I have to admit that most of Jenkins’ entries exceed my attention span for the topic he’s writing, but your mileage may vary.

I assume you know all about Lawrence Lessig and the Creative Commons stuff.

Speaking as someone who works in technology, it seems natural for Wired to be writing about this. The Digital Restrictions Management stuff is where the content cartels are attacking the future of technology, so it’s something technologists find themselves free-associating about alot.