So I got a new tattoo four days ago and I am happy to present it here today! It’s the command key symbol from the apple keyboard and is also, more interestingly, St. Hannes Cross and The Bowen Knot. The tattoo artist was Fran Hartnett who also done one of my other tattoos and he did a great job.

I watched this very good film last night about copyright and it’s future throughout the world. It’s called “Good Copy, Bad Copy” and is made in Denmark.
It pretty much sums up my feeling on copyright, in that the laws need to be changed. The internet has changed everything in regards to how we receive our information, on how we are entertained and on how we do business. I am not against copyright. I feel that artists should be fairly paid for their work and copyright has historically been the way in which this is done. However things have changed and people are now been classed as criminals in the eyes of the law. The tools to get all the free music and films and tv shows we want, quickly easily and if we want, for free , exist inside the internet. But it is against the law not to pay for it. But, the laws are different all around the world and yet the internet exists all around the world. What’s wrong in one country is not necessarily wrong in another country. The teenage generation of today have already come of age at a time where they take the internet for granted. They have experienced first hand that all the information you could possibly want is available at the touch of your fingertips. It’s what you want,
when you want it. They see the traditional broadcast means that is television as static and stagnant. Those of us who are used to the internet would not like to see any censorship or regionalisation of it. We would not and should not accept any government or commercial censoring of the internet. Especially not now that we know what it can do.

So we should not weaken the technology or restrict it. We should let it evolve and adapt the law to suit it. A very good suggestion which is mentioned in this documentary is that we should be a fee to our ISPs which pays for our downloading of anything. That way it makes it as easy to pay for what we want as it is to get what we want. We can download all the music or video we want when we want and then decide what we like and what we don’t like. We could rate what we like as an obligation and that way the fees that are collected by ISP can be divided out fairly between those who’s work we liked! Think about it. This really could work.

Anyway, I suggest you watch this film and pass it around. It is free and distribution freely as this is something that needs to be shared. Today I have heard about a move by the industry here in Ireland against 23 filesharers. Have a look at the story here It is something which should be handled very carefully. We should not accept people being made examples of, just to satisfy the need for the media industries to show they have the power. But they don’t have control. DRM was not and is not the answer. The law needs to be looked at before more innocent people get in trouble for downloading. It needs to be rewritten to cater for our advancement into the information age.

Go get the film here. It’s available to view online or you can download the torrent.