Porntifications

Posted by mikezillion at November 8th, 2007

According to an article in Forbes, Sumner Redstone, the Chairman of Viacom believes that copyright protection is the incentive which drives the creation of content. To me, that seems backwards.

I would say that copyright drives the production of much mediocre market-driven content (including a lot of pornography) but is actually a disincentive to true creative content creation.

If someone has something to say, and wants to get it said, any limitation on how many people are exposed to it will just frustrate the creative process. This is unlike child protection legislation, which filters an audience by the appropriateness of the message for the viewer. A creative artist wants everyone in the appropriate target audience to see. It is the folks who market the expression as a product who benefit from copyright protection.

On the other hand, if someone has nothing to say, but wants money for saying something people enjoy hearing, copyright is a true friend.

Perhaps this has implications for the writers strike?

Posted by mikezillion at November 8th, 2007

I was watching this documentary about how advertising targets the hidden desires of the masses. It occurred to me that pornography essentially gives away what advertising and PR (and maybe religion) only suggests in order to gain and hold an audience. Propaganda is mass persuasion based on individual hidden desires. According to the emerging theories of attention economy, pornography would be an obvious threat to any influencer seeking power.