Earlier today, Jesse Brown (this week’s guest blogger on Boing Boing and host of the TVO podcast Search Engine) posted the first of his blogs: All publicly funded content should be in the public domain. In the article he says:

In Canada, movies are supported by Telefilm, TV by the Canadian Television Fund, books and art by The Canada Council for the Arts, and so on. But most of this stuff isn’t distributed very well or for very long, and you can only get your hands on a fraction of it.

So I want to put forth one more contrarian position: I think that any publicly funded content should (within, say, 5 years of its creation) be released to the public domain.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.  The truth, in fact, is that I am of two minds on the subject.

First and foremost, as a consumer of copyrighted materials (ie: reading books, watching tv shows, watching movies, listening to music), I am a firm believer that our copyright system needs a major overhaul, with looser copyright restrictions, and a thriving Public Domain (which we don’t have; when was the last time a copyrighted work fell into the Public Domain?).

To state that all government funded content should be in the public domain is a pretty bold statement, however.  All publicly funded content?  I don’t know about in other countries, but in Canada, that’s a pretty broad cross section.  Because there aren’t many aspects of the arts (which creates the content) that aren’t publicly funded.  Almost every TV show, movie,  and play are funded with government money.  Novels are written, magazines are published, music is composed.  There is not one aspect of the arts that government funding does not touch.  Does that mean that all this “content” should be in the public domain?

Maybe.  How many TV and Radio shows created by CBC have been relegated to the vaults, never to be seen again?  Why not put these shows out into the public domain so that everyone can enjoy them? How many plays are written, given a few weeks to run in a theatre, and then never seen again?  Why not make publicly funded work available in the public domain after 5 years (or maybe even, in the case of television, 5 years after the show goes off the air).

What do you think?

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I was going to write a long post about my Toronto Fan Expo experience, but then I saw this video. It does a far better job at capturing the fan expo experience than my blog post would have.

[via Next Gen Player]

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Taken during a brief interlude in a Keystone meeting.

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Last night, over Twitter, a friend asked “What would happen if arts went on strike? What do you think?” The question is asked in reference to the cuts to arts funding that have been enacted in BC by the Liberal Government there, and the subsequent “ArtsStrike” rally that was held in Vancouver.

I didn’t think that this was the kind of question that could accurately be answered in 140 characters, so I thought I’d take it here.

So, what would happen if “the arts” went on strike?  The cynic in me says that very few people would notice.  As much as I like to believe that the arts are an important part of Canadian culture, I don’t think that most people feel the same.  They might go to a play once in a while, but the arts probably don’t impact them on a daily basis.  Because the arts don’t perceptibly impact them every day, an arts strike would fly under their radar.  Additionally,  if they did notice, it would be because a politician (say for example…Stephen Harper), would use this as another opportunity to point out the pampered artists and score points with people who read the Sun.

Since most people don’t regularly go to the theatre, or to see a dance performance, or to the opera, or to an art gallery, an arts strike won’t impact them.  They will still have TV, and radio,  and movies.

The only way an arts strike could work, is if all aspects of the arts were to strike.  Yes, no theatre, dance, opera or art galleries.  But to be effective, all scripted TV shows need to go off the air too.  And no movies.  No bands playing live shows, or heard on the radio.  But there needs to be more.  It’s all well and good for Canadian TV shows and Canadian movies and Canadian music to go off the air, but there would need to be an effort from across the border.  There would need to be an agreement, that the Canadian border was an arts picket line.  No American TV shows, no American movies,  no American music would be played on the airwaves entering Canada.  In this way, the strike would impact every Canadian.

This however, is not really something that could be implemented.

The problem is one of perception.  There is a perception that the arts are for the elite.  Being something “for the elite” then, it follows that people who are not of the “elite” do not relate to the arts.  Before an arts strike could be effective, it would be necessary to change its perception.

Perhaps that is the more necessary activity, then.  Not a strike against arts funding cuts, but rather a fight against apathy; a fight against the perception that the arts are something only for the rich or the elite.  A change in the way that the arts are perceived.  This would be the more valuable result, and would, with the support of the “ordinary people” to use Harper’s phrase, perhaps government funding would be assured, or even better: would no longer be needed, as enough people would be engaged with the arts to make the funding obsolete.

That’s my nickel’s worth.

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