Michael Dolan Dot Com

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Anderson and Lessig: Free culture and the long tail

Met up with Luis Villa at the NYPL event last night covering the long tail and free culture. I wasn’t taking notes and without trying to post a summary from memory I’ll point you to Luis for a great recap of the event.

There was great irony in the “blockbuster best selling author” arguing “the end of the blockbuster” - but the long tail does allow for “blockbusters within smaller segments” so I can concede a minor argument in his favor.

My 1min takeaway from last night and everything I’ve read on the subjects is that there are many interconnecting, correlating threads in the long tail discussion and that’s what makes it so difficult, yet interesting to dissect. I was actually surprised at some of the good Q&A questions - and as always got a nice laugh at some of Lessig’s realisms.

Someone brought up YouTube’s “billion dollar valuation” claim… an attorney might argue YouTube is a “billion dollar liability” but I think it’s a great example of the intersection of growing personal, public use of “property” without personal claims/ramifications of IP law. It’s odd b/c a company wouldn’t put someone’s video with an artist’s music up on the web, but individuals don’t seem to mind doing it with their own mashed up media. How do IP owners police that behavior - better yet, should it be policed at all? And so with that we’re back to “The Commons”… :)

It was an interesting event - nothing really “new” - but a great rehash of timeless arguments nonetheless.