18/02/2010 In Intellectual Property, Money, Web by William Aicher
If you’re a creator (artist, musician, author, etc.), publisher, copyright holder or anyone else who deals in intellectual property, there’s one basic rule about the Internet that you should pay attention to: People Are Probably Going to Steal Your Stuff Online.
It’s been over a decade since Napster first launched, and although there have been steps forward in policing of intellectual property, new distribution deals and other major changes to the Internet, the fact remains that people steal a lot of stuff online. Some may argue that sharing files or piracy isn’t stealing, but really, it is (of course with the exception fo file sharing of material that is approved for sharing). The simple fact is there are a lot more people online now, and it’s still easy to access unlicensed copies of copyright-protected material.
The point is to keep this truth in mind as you decide how you’re running your business. Until there’s some sort of serious crack down by the government, or people suddenly have a major change of heart, they’re going to be taking your stuff without your permission – not everyone, of course, but a lot of people.
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16/02/2010 In Intellectual Property, Money by William Aicher
If you’ve ever gotten into a conversation with me regarding politics, you probably know that I’m quite cautious when it comes to trusting the government to really work in the best interest of the people it represents. Today, however, I am happy to say that I’m quite impressed with the current administration’s approach to copyright and intellectual property protection.
This is because, on February 12, 2010, the Department of Justice announced a “New Intellectual Property Task Force as Part of Broad IP Enforcement Initiative.” (Read the press release)
As a firm supporter of intellectual property rights, this is great news – especially in our current economy. As it becomes more and more clear that the old economy based on the industrial revolution (read: factories) is dying, it’s becoming increasingly important for our citizens and government to understand that the biggest and most valuable export from the United States is not any physical product we create, but rather Intellectual Property. (more…)
15/02/2010 In Life, Technology by William Aicher
I’m addicted to my Roomba. In fact, I’m so addicted that I’m addicted to three Roombas (and one Scooba). They all have names. There’s Bob 2, Bob 3 and Sir Roberto the Fourth. (Bob 1 died, unfortunately). The Scooba is named Norbert.
If you don’t know what a Roomba is, the basic idea is this: it’s a robot that vacuums for you. (Scoobas mop). Yeah, it doesn’t take too much work to vacuum. But what a Roomba does is quite a bit more than that – it’s the things you don’t really think about when you think of vacuuming. Of course the actual “work” part of vacuuming is gone – but the additional benefits are where these little robots really shine.
Roombas are small in height, which means they go under all your furniture – no more moving the couch to clean up the cat hair that’s accumulated. They’ll go pretty much everywhere you need them to go, and they’ll do it for you pretty much as often as you want. (more…)
15/02/2010 In Life, Marketing, Web by William Aicher
It’s been about six months since I last updated this blog. That’s a long time – too long, if you’d ask pretty much anyone out there who’s telling you how to build your personal “brand.”
The thing is though, your personal “brand” needn’t be like everyone else. What’s really important is what you want to define yourself or your brand as.
I’ve been silent for a long time – not because I don’t have anything to say, but rather because I’ve been taking the time to embrace silence. Spending time updating a blog on a regular basis doesn’t really accomplish a lot for me, especially given the fact that life has limited time.
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27/08/2009 In Music by William Aicher
With the news about the recent decisions in both the Joel Tennenbaum case and the Jammie Thomas Rasset case, there has been a lot of uninformed complaining going on. The biggest error among the misinformed is this: they think people were fined for downloading music.
They weren’t.
In most articles you’ll read online, the act of downloading is the focus, like this one over at Gizmodo. I understand that a lot of people online like to steal music, and that they’re upset that some people got in trouble for it – but the fact is, they’re wrong about what the people got in trouble for. The people (Tennenbaum and Thomas-Rasset) got in trouble for downloading and distributing music. They were found to do so willingly, and while knowing that to do so was illegal. (more…)
11/08/2009 In Marketing, Web by William Aicher
In our current state of constant communication and sharing of information we take for granted the fact that we can say pretty much whatever, whenever we want. Because of this, it’s fairly easy for us to let our guard down now and say what we really feel – at least the moment we say it – without thinking too hard about who might be listening.
Sure, there’s a lot of talk about making sure that you’re Google-search-safe and “OMG what if my prospective employer looks me up on Facebook” – but for the most part we’re fairly secure of anonymity. Or maybe we’re just understanding of the fact that the world is changing, and that we all might have some warts and that that’s okay. (more…)
10/08/2009 In Life, Publishing, Technology, Web, Writing by William Aicher
In a recent post, I mentioned that I was working on a new novel. This is true, but what I didn’t mention is that I’m also working on a new piece of nonfiction. This work focuses primarily on the cost and value of creation, and the damages that are happening to the creative class due to some aspects of modern culture. In fact, a working subtitle for the book (at least as I’m writing it) is The Genocide of the Creative Class.
Here’s a snippet of the current work-in-progress.
For a lot of people, creation is their livelihood. For others, it’s where their livelihood should be. I may be modest at times, but I know I’m no Picasso. For people like him, there obviously was a motivation to create – but there was also a cost. In his lifetime, Picasso created an estimated 50,000 individual works. If nothing else, that’s a lot of paint, paper and time.
Still, the obvious question here is “What if Picasso had not been able to create as his profession?” Of course there is no way he’d have created 50,000 works – there simply isn’t enough time in one’s life to do something like that as a hobby. Or, if somehow he could have still produced as many works, it is highly unlikely he would have had the drive to do so, much less perfect his craft to the level which he did.
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