Creative vs Commons

With… Cory Doctorow, Melbourne Writers Festival Director Lisa Dempster and Peter Williams of the Deloitte Centre for the Edge. A main presentation, followed by a panel discussion, which I haven’t really covered here and got interesting just as it was ending.

Cory Doctorow’s three laws

If there’s a law that takes away your right to do things with something you’ve bought it’s not in your interests. But generally not in the interests of publishers to (?). These laws don’t prevent piracy, they are broken eventually technically. Libraries locked to a delivery platform are bad for customer but also creator. Often DRM is agreed to in distribution agreements and they can’t be changed. There are laws in place describing how media with locks should be handled international, Australia has these laws due to US free trade agreement.
Law two, obscurity is biggest problem for creatives, not piracy. Being well loved doesn’t mean you can make a living. There are a limited amount of methods to make money out of your creative / media output. There are now more intermediaries than there were before (if you follow one path) or more options in some regards. More media output than ever before. Go your own way, use new channels or a combination. Some old world contracts still have outdated clauses or horrible 360 contracts. However, more people succeeding on their own pushed up value of potential contracts. This is why they seek recompense in other ways such as Laws currently being considered that may reduce content out to allow for piratcy monitoring. Reducing the potential for creative output and exposure.
Third rule. Information doesn’t want to be free, but people do. A conceptual model that makes a device lie to you is a bad thing, i.e. Sony copy protect discs that hide files and make changes, hiding the fact it’s preventing you from doing things. Also, think about body computers like defribulators. This also applies to the internet, making swabs of it disappear at a whim. Three strikes rule. Bad as internet delivers a wide variety of benefits to people, cutting it off can stop all of these benefits.