“If I have an idea and give the idea away it is not gone, but I still have it! This experience does not conform to the arithmetic of things.
Let us examine this experience from the point of view of exchange. If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange apples — then you have an apple and I have an apple. But if I have the idea that the apple is red and you have the idea that the apple is small and we exchange ideas, then you have two ideas and I have two ideas. It is quite obvious, therefore, that the laws governing thoughts or ideas are different from the laws governing things. If I have an idea and give it away, I still have it to give again, and if I give the idea away again and again, I still have the idea left.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Not So New Media

Why is it that a “new media” space like Second Life is worse for free culture than old media? Is “new” media a new way of communicating and building culture? Or just a chance for “amateurs” to pretend to be Old Media Moguls, Authors, Auteurs, and Artists?

Why does Wikipedia work? Is it so specific and focused that peeps “get it” and are willing to participate / contribute?

You’d think “Liberty” would be the root of “Lieberman”

What I don’t get about SOPA / PIPA is that it took ONE PHONE CALL from Senator Lieberman’s office to create the financial blockade that eventually killed Wikileaks. Here were have not fake media like the NY Times or Wall Street Journal, but real investigative journalism and they were killed. In fact they were killed by those their information was about… kinda the equivalent of the accused murdering the witness…

Given that… how could we go even further down the authoritarian road of censorship, prior restraint, self-censorship, and an overall climate of fear with SOPA / PIPA. Didn’t destroying one of our few real news sources teach us anything?

Oh wait, Senator Lieberman is a co-sponsor of PIPA. Well, there you go.

Sweden Recognizes File-Sharing as a Religion

phenotypical:

Media_http5mshcdncomw_belml

The Church of Kopimism, a religion whose central tenet is the free sharing of information, has been formally recognized by the Swedish government. Kopimists believe all information sharing is “holy” and that the value of information multiplies when it’s shared. They hold CTRL+C and CTRL+V, keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting, to be sacred symbols of their religion.

anthillconglomerate:

1. Creativity and Innovation always builds upon the Past

2. The Past always tries to control the Creativity that builds upon it.

3. Free Societies enable the future by limiting the past.

4. Ours is less and less a free society.

These four tenets are significant for AHC. 

  • Reblogged from

thejujubag:

Nina Paley’s “Minute Meme” which illustrates “how all creative work builds on what came before.”

Photographed and animated by Nina Paley. Music by Todd Michaelsen Photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. More information at

http://questioncopyright.org/minute_memes/all_creative_work_is_derivative