I have had a lot of fun the last couple of weeks. We have snipped, and cut, and pasted, and glued, and posted, and searched for our little banter war on the World of Warcraft forums.
This lead me to thinking about all the copyright discussions that we have been in full furor about lately. I have a really hard time imagining a world in which things like this are not considered fair use.
We must pay attention to what Congress tries to pass. Watch for the little bits of the now failed SOPA they try to tag on the end of spending bills. Let your congressman know, we will not bow to a legacy industry that refuses to evolve. We will support the artists/actors/bands/content creators that work with their fans, and not against them.
We all understand branding, and protecting the brand. We understand that counterfeit goods are bad news. We understand the need to make money. The legacy industries need to understand the difference between profiting off of your work, someone else trying to profit off your work, and fair use.
Too many times, people forget there is a future. There is a future in which we will have great, great, grandchildren that will be looking back through all of our things. It won't be boxes of letters and postcards like it was back in the day. It will be memes, animated gifs, forum posts, and blogs that will be the insight to "how things were back then".
Maybe some of them will look and say "What movie was THAT from". I know I felt that way the first time I heard "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Matchbox 20. A whole new generation of people will be exposed to content they may never have even heard of because it was locked in some gatekeeper's storage closet.
We must all continue to fight for Fair Use.
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