My name is Michael and I am from St. Joseph. I dislike copyright…
BUT upon further investigation I have found a handful of exceptions that justify the controlling of ideas. I don’t think intellectual “property” is the best umbrella term for these exceptions, but for the sake of simplicity I will refer to them as such for this discussion. Also, I have found ways in which the common understanding of the public domain does not exactly align with what I was trying to articulate in my videos last year. For this reason I will be moving all my future work away from immediate dedication to the public domain and to a different form of open licensing agreement, beginning with this video.
A common myth among creatives, corporations, and capitalists alike is that a product shared is a sale lost. As in, if you let someone borrow something, you have taken a potential sale away. This is a hot debate whether the product is physical or digital in nature. The logic is if one consumer shares their movie, CD, video game, book, etc. that directly equates to one lost sale. Therefore, every instance of a shared item of any kind is a sale that has been lost. This belief is infinitely more prevalent among digital media due to the ease of which digital products are shared. A contemporary example of this is Netflix attempting to crack down on account sharing. A hilarious and somewhat morbid historical example was during the golden age of file-sharing platforms like Limewire when music companies would track down any individual they could find and slap them with tens of thousands of dollars in lawsuits.
Now before you get pedantic, the laws governing the concept known as “Intellectual Property” DO exist. They are very real. I mean, as real as immaterial laws governing a fictitious concept can be. And I will respect the laws as they stand as much as I am willing. I’m not interested in any Disney, Warner Brothers, or Nintendo cooperate hitmen being sent to my door OK? OK.