* No, this is not hyperbole. People are now being charged with copyright infringement for singing songs in public. What will happen if/when it becomes possible to digitally record and transmit human sensory information? Suddenly, your experience of a live concert would be considered “protected material”, the act of sharing your memories an infringement of some IP owners copyright. In a media-saturated environment full of proprietary imagery, you wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without owing royalties to scores of coporations. Under current and/or pending draconian IP laws, you would literally lose control of the contents of your own brain. That is mind control, and it is only a matter of time before a combination of advancing technology and retrograde legislation makes such absurd-seeming scenarios a reality. If the laws do not change by then, the consequences will be explosive.

A few do publish under their own names and engage in critical, rational discourse in copyright: William Patry, the Copycense bloggers, a few others… but the rest of us (yourself included) have chosen to inject our tiny, anonymous voices into the meme pool, reasoning that over time, we’ll exert some influence while we reiterate our positions and refine the points we choose to draw attention to. Even if it has no effect, it at least helps to make it clear that there’s a wide range of points of view, not just the two extremes that each side (industry & consumer) likes to brand just “right” and “wrong”.