What do you think about Copyright?

Copyright has in many ways lost it's power - not because ownership of original work is any different than ever it was but because it is so cheap now days to make perfect copies of copies of copies and so on ad infinitum. This applies to photographs, written work, music, video and the list grows daily.

Once the send button is pushed the first time then control is gone. (just ask those celebreties who have made questionable videos) but the same power of the internet to spread information is also a power against palaigerism (most universitiy assignments can be easily checked by popping a few phrases into google)

So the question becomes - do we spend our energy (and the frustration of our consumers) trying to foil copyists and/or tie them up in courts or do we release our work onto any/every mediaat such a low price that copying isn't worth the trouble or even for free so that every copy is a legitimate copy and then use our fame to make money.

As Bill gates said (trying to get the message through to an unheeding TELSTRA) "You make a lot more money by charging many people a little than by charging a few people a lot".

The electronic storage of material of all types (eg family history or the latest news) has a problem and that is the problem of it's inherent temporary nature - we have all experienced going back to a favourite site only to find it no longer there - perhaps the wide dissemination of material (such as wikileaks insurance downloads) may mean that someone somewhere will still have a copy when all the others have gone (or been silenced). We have already seen this with the preservation of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 on video after all official and unnoficial copies were destroyed by the communist regime (in a crackdown against 'pornography' tens of thousands of homes were raided and videos confiscated) but enough survived to allow the world to know what went on.