David Weinberger:

[F]or one moment, I’d like you to perform an exercise in selective attention. Forget every other consideration even though they’re fair and important considerations and see if you can acknowledge that a world in which everyone has free access to every work of creativity in the world is a better world. Imagine your children could listen to any song ever created anywhere. What a blessing that would be!
…We publish stuff that gets its meaning and its reality by being read, viewed or heard. An unpublished novel is about as meaningful and real as an imaginary novel. It needs its readers to be. But readers aren’t passive consumers. We reimagine the book, we complete the vision of the book. Readers appropriate works, make them their own. Listeners and viewers, too. In making a work public, artists enter into partnership with their audience. The work succeeds insofar as the audience makes it their own, takes it up, understands it within their own unpredictable circumstances. It leaves the artist’s hands and enters our lives. And that’s not a betrayal of the work. That’s its success. It succeeds insofar as we hum it, quote it, appropriate it so thoroughly that we no longer remember where the phrase came from. That’s artistic success, although it’s a branding failure.

Via Boing Boing
Related: Cory Doctorow’s recent anti-DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) speech to Microsoft is now available in a PDF file:

In this transcript of a speech he gave at Microsoft’s campus, Cory explains why DRM doesn’t work, why DRM is bad for society, bad for business, bad for artists, and a bad move for Microsoft.

Related 2: I recently emailed Dave Black, General Manager of the UW’s excellent WSUM radio station, complementing him on their “Student Section” sports talk show. I liked the fact that these student broadcasters, unlike many in the local sports media, are not ‘homers” with respect to UW Football. I also urged him to post their shows online in a iPod friendly mp3 format. Note his comments on the restrictions that the Hollywood paid for DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) places on their ability to share locally produced shows. The right solution? Cut deals with local artists/clubs and route around the outage.
Dave Replied:

Thanks, Jim,
What a pleasure to hear your kind words. Glad you enjoy the show, it is one of my favorites.
I have forwarded your email to our sports director, Joe Haas. He will take it up with our webmaster to see how feasible. As you may or may not know, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes archiving on a site difficult when it includes any musical content (e.g., the songs they play during the breaks). We will do the best we can under the circumstances.
All the best and please keep listening,
Dave Black
General Manager
WSUM-FM 91.7
University of Wisconsin-Madison
602 State St #205
Madison, WI 53703
608-262-9542 (no sales calls, please)
gm at wsum.wisc.edu
http://wsum.wisc.edu
visit our alumni organization at http://www.wsumfriends.org/

Yet another example of the “best law money can buy approach” is before the Senate: the Leahy/Hatch sponsored Induce Act. I recently emailed Senator Kohl to express my opposition to this bill. His reply was not great. Let him know what you think. Russ Feingold and Tim Michels should also know what you think.