Via Tim Bray:

http://www.learnoutloud.com/content/blog/archives/2006/11/the_top_10_argu.html

Hmm... how do you feel about the CopyBot program in SecondLife?

As long as there were speaker wires on stereo systems, most musicians knew innately the music was being copied. It was inferior quality and they didn't care much. Labels cared. When it was mp3s, musicians cared but not much because mp3s are still inferior quality. With the advent of broadband, musicians care but they know that anything digitally encrypted can be cracked because most of them live in a world of pirated software.

So now it comes down to contracts, what you sign up for, and how broad your grasp of the potentials of technology are. While all of the rants about DRM are going on in the technology pundit circles, musicians are continuing to produce music. On the other hand, with the graphics artists are faced with this, they use their knowledge of web browsers to disable the Save Target As and ensure that a print screen is all the pirate gets. When their wonderful Linden Dollar gig was busted by technology, they were up in arms that their shekels weren't being protected by some kind of police force. The software industry has a huge and well funded lobbying mafia to protect them from piracy.

But musicians? When the cops finally came, they protected the labels.

Sorry lads, but you and Tim Bray and the rest of the 'information wants to be free as long as it isn't our software or graphics' can go *f* yourselves. You are up against a billion dollar industry, not the musicians. They are just meat.

Me? I found a way to protect mine. Give it away so it's value will go to zero because no one steals anything that has no value. Meanwhile, I spend my days exploring a new emerging art form that combines the music, the poetry, the graphics and the software in ways that defy theft because a thief has to be pretty clever and determined, and even then, broadband isn't enough.

Complexity is nature's DRM and my apple pie. I don't want to be famous. I want to be where the view is spectacular and the art is something no one has seen before. I want the view of the Pacific Ocean that the American Indians had before the Europeans 'discovered' it. No amount of piracy can take that because once outside my heart and mind, it has no value.

If you want to grapple with the managers over stuff, have at. It's just stuff. Ask the SecondLife digeterati how ecstatic they are this week compared to a month ago. As someone who played virtual reality concerts ten years ago when it really was fresh and is still building my own musical 3D worlds without paying Rosedale rent because I use open standards and my own chops, I'm a lot happier because it is all still working even ten years after beginning. The view is still fresh and uncrowded.

It's what I need. Money comes next.

cheers,

len

@len,

> Hmm... how do you feel about the CopyBot program in SecondLife?

My feelings: If SecondLife wants to represent a *truly* second life -- one that mimics a world much like the one we live our First Life in -- then they better get used to the idea that to be a real world, you have to deal with *real world* problems.

Like theft.

Would be nice if we could make it impossible to steal in our first life world, but we can't, nor can they (meaning Linden), so just deal with it and move on.

Haven't read the rest of your post, but will do so now and respond accordingly.

Thanks, Len!

@len,

Please see my comments above -- LOTS of good stuff to learn from in here!

Thanks!