Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
> Brit violinist does a Radiohead
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Ms Little, 42, is giving the whole thing, entitled The Naked
> | Violin, away absolutely free
In the beginning, stories and music (and even stories *told* to music)
were free (and Free). This was the basis for human culture, our living
history, and an intrinsic part of our lives. At some point, some idiot
decided that reproducing such stories and music should be licensed and
commercially exploited, that a person had commercial rights to own the
knowledge that formed the words and the music, and those who reproduce
such knowledge without permission are "criminals". I have no idea what
bleak and miserable day that was, but it changed something fundamental
about humanity ... it relinquished control of our history and culture,
over to commercial vultures who sought (and still seek) to harvest our
culture for the sake of profit. Its a very sad day when the essence of
the human spirit is reduced to nothing more than a dollar bill. That's
a creed that many seem to live by, unfortunately, and indeed they seem
to worship it.
Well something wonderful is happening, in small steps, but is *really*
happening. People are starting to remember the value of culture beyond
the dollar bill. Its more than a fad now, its like a rolling stone (no
pun intended), and it's definitely gathering momentum. And ironically,
we can thank the likes of the RIAA for this sea-change, since it's the
violent force with which they aggressively pursued their greed, that's
made so many people re-evaluate their perspectives on culture, and see
those vultures for what they really are.
It gives me hope because if people can understand the value of culture
beyond mere money, then maybe they can break free of the cynical ideal
that demands everything be evaluated in terms of financial value. This
disease that seems to be raging out of control, spurred on by the same
commercial forces that poisoned our culture with this sick ideology in
the first place, is increasingly replacing our most basic human values
with a wholly irrational greed, that serves no greater purpose than to
feed the system that perpetuates it. But people are changing, even the
artists (the voices of our culture) are changing, people are beginning
to reject the "Intellectual Property" harvesters - setting the stories
and the music free again. The acceleration of greed seems to have also
accelerated the reaction against it. That's nature's balance.
If this can happen in an industry so deeply embroiled in commercialism
as the music industry, then the future of an industry (with an already
well established Free community) such as computer software, looks very
bright indeed. Google, Red Hat, and other SOA companies look set to do
rather well in the future, but vultures like Microsoft are doomed to a
well-deserved extinction, because they are so blinded by the financial
value of Intellectual Property that they spectacularly fail to see any
value at all in /culture/. If they stopped thinking like vultures, and
started thinking like human beings, then maybe they'd understand.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
| make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
| - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
15:02:58 up 19 days, 12:38, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
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