thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

As someone who spends much time exploring concepts and project ideas for clients I am keenly interested in copyright and intellectual property protection.

Some type of new roadmap is needed for copyright so that we can preserve hard won rights but not stifle the new developments flowing from the digital melting pot.

At the same time many of us have little sympathy for record companies who are still struggling with the challenges of digital distribution. However anyone who creates original content wants to be able to license it in some way and getting to a balance point is difficult.

With digital mixing capabilities available to almost everyone with a computer and a little free time it is no wonder we have ended up with often bizzare but funny new combinations of subject matter like babies dancing to Prince songs as noted by McConnell & Huba

“The age of the citizen marketer does not mean blind obedience. Fan sites banded together to form a protest site: PrinceFansUnited.com, or PFU. Yes, Prince fans formed a site to protest Prince. Strange, certainly. But they argue, correctly, that the Prince-inspired content they create is within the laws regarding freedom of speech and fair use. They want Prince to reconsider his position. If not, they say, they’ll defend their position in court.

If that wasn’t enough, things took a turn for the weirder on Nov. 8 when Prince sent the protesters a song called “PFUnk”. In it, Prince calls fans “punks” and “turncoats.” Sample lyric: “The only reason u say my name Is 2 get ur 15 secs of fame.” (Lyrics here). Either way, there’s a lot of FU going on.

To top all of that off like a purple cherry, the objects of his derision say “PFUnk” is one of Prince’s best songs in years”

Note: That new Prince song appears to have been taken down off the official site but should be able to be tracked down. A copy is still over here. The PFU site also notes

“We are working towards a position where mutually-acceptable guidelines can be agreed upon for unofficial fan sites”

I listened to it a few times and it is impossible to say whether Prince is wanting to protect copyright or just stir the controversy for other purposes. Also I suspect that thousands of listeners have local copies as well.

On a related note; Russell Brown writes that the music companies have largely abandoned DRM because of Apple’s success in controlling the market rather than technical reasons.

“But it wasn’t consumer problems that turned the majors: it was more the fact that DRM – which they had hoped would allow them to control their markets – had in fact become a tool for others to manipulate markets in ways that stripped the record companies of power…Jobs was dictating terms to the industry. And DRM gave him the power.”

So it looks like we are heading for a time when digital content will be free of DRM but there still needs to be a way to use that as a platform for the new.

Creative Commons is now 5 years old and perhaps this is one model that might work.

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”

There is a new video over at TED on Lawrence Lessig and how the law is strangling creativity. Some of the examples on that video will date very fast but you can fast forward. Noric Dilanchian suggests that the creative commons concept is somewhat oversold but offers a more definitive view on what is involved especially for Australia.

To get an idea of how fast some of this area has changed there is an earlier piece of musical history on the amen break beat called “Can I Get An Amen?, 2004″ a 17min+ performance piece by Nate Harrison

It has now had close to 1m views on Yoh Tube at this location. The video explains the history of a 6 second drum loop called the amen break which is an extremely recognizable from many of the times it has been sampled by other music producers.

New Zealand and Creative Commons is the place to go to keep up with local developments. Each country seems to have interpreted the concept differently depending on local laws and that is how it should be.

Both the Lessig arguments and the Harrison music history make the case for being able to build on earlier works to create new combinations.

Creative commons may not be the full answer but it does provide some form of roadmap that can be tweaked to local conditions.

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January is usually one long blaze of Summer sunshine and strawberries and as much swimming as can be managed. Holidays are probably the best time of the year physically for many of us as we make the most of daylight saving and family.

And then we try to tune back into the work mode which can be a struggle.

It can take a few days to reconnect with the work vibe and the mental demands of our usual work patterns. Fairly soon, the pendulum of exercise and sun swings back to days of mild chair wrestling while we slowly tip from too much exercise to way too much sitting , if you are anything like me.

I was watching the Ken Robinson TED presentation on “Do schools kill creativity? again recently and I really liked his word picture of professors at the annual conference dance.

He tells the story much better but to paraphrase..Professors are the epitome of academic education but they can’t dance.

Somehow we have targeted so much of our learning from the waist up that legs are what we use to get to meetings when there is clearly more fun available.

I was reminded of this story when Jamie Wheal wrote this in a recent ChangeThis manifesto called Free Your Ass and Your Mind Will Follow: Embodied Leadership

“Between commutes, office time and T.V., we spend up to 90% of our daysfolded into seats. Our great evolutionary accomplishment was walking on two feet, not slumping on two cheeks.

But, in today’s vaunted information society, we seem to have forgotten entirely that these heads of ours rest on bodies that make all of that nifty thinking possible.”

Stands to reason we need to work on our mid/body connection much more than we usually do. Jamie continues

“Devoting ever-increasing effort to the next Big Idea, while ignoring our actual physical ability to process it, is like running an Intel Itanium Dual Core processor while still on dial up—it works, but not early as well as it’s supposed to.

So the first step in pursuing Embodied Leadership must focus on strengthening our weakest links—the hardware of our body-brain connection, and the software of our mental models and maps.”

and later

“It is the thesis of this essay that in order to propel growth into those upper reaches and rewire ourselves for the challenges ahead, we need to train all aspects of ourselves, including the physical and cognitive.”

It is a thesis well worth reading and freely available on ChangeThis for download. Jamie has much more to say, for example about Getting Things Done and other approaches. He then goes on to suggest some tools that may help. Finally

Thirty-odd years ago, master of Funk music George Clinton and his band Parliament beseeched us all with the refrain “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow.”

In that ostrich feather and glitter world, it seemed a self evident truth that expanding your consciousness would inexorably lead to joyful self expression.

Today, we might do well to consider the opposite. If we are to truly free ourselves, perhaps it is as useful to begin with our asses (and the rest of our bodies), with the intention of freeing our Minds.

Where else to look.?

In Auckland – MindWarriors offers a training programme called Jolt.

“Mind Warriors is dedicated to improving the quality of life for people around the world by unleashing the power of their mind.

Mind Warriors mantra is to provide simple and effective systems that create positive changes in people’s lives.

Mind Warriors have tested their Mind/Body Integration research and theories in corporates, schools and community organisations over the last 8 years with much success.”

The leaders behind this programme are Steve Hill and Wade Jackson who have a long and successful track record with Improv Solutions which “design and deliver experiential training sessions specialising in Organisational Creativity and Storytelling”.

For those readers in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland, Christchurch and Toronto there is also the Resilience Institute. To quote from their site “Resilience is the ability to remain fully engaged in our life and work – energised, positive, focused, and committed – regardless of what we encounter”.

Happy New Year everyone and do enjoy your work – but don’t neglect those mind/ body connections. I also reckon that more fishing / gardening / swimming might also help ease me back into the work zone!

Footnote 1: a great summer post by Graham Reid over here.

Footnote 2: from Total Immersion Swimming

“In his influential book, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee wrote that 10 minutes of practice with mind and body fully integrated was worth more than 10 hours of going through the motions. It’s well known that most humans operate at only a tiny fraction of their true potential and that the key to realizing more of that potential is mental, not physical.”

Must go swimming again today!