Intellectual Property and Cartoons

Preparing a session on intellectual property, and am amazed at how utterly different Japan is from the U.S. in it's approach. I suppose it's a cultural quirk that makes piracy shameful but doujinshi acceptable, even encouraged. Speculating if we could be like them is futile, but clearly something has to give somewhere. The current copyright environment is toxic; all sides are guilty, and everyone loses. Companies harass the creative and legitimate, consumers make like thieves and drive businesses into oblivion.

Information isn't free, but people want it to be. Yet if it's free, who will bother to make it, or make it good? And when culture is bound and protected from change or use, it becomes a sterile artifact. How ridiculous that the remixing and recycling of culture ends with the Great Depression. Death + 70 years, the current time of copyright protection, is far beyond the original idea and intent of the law. But then, consumers sure aren't invited to the White House for secret meetings. (here) Not many deep-pocket lobbyists for less copyright.

The issue is complex and murky. What is clear is that our present is unworkable, and our future unsustainable.