Here’s another favourite Mimi and Eunice comic strip from the archives of Nina Paley!

I love this one because it touches on a very important part of the whole Copyright issue. Many proponents of Copyright argue that without it, no new cultural works would be created. This is wrong, and it should be obvious to everyone. But, of course, it’s not.

The thing is, artists have always created art. Without Copyright, artists would keep creating art. Do you actually think that if Copyright was taken away, writers would stop writing, painters would stop painting, and photographers would stop taking pictures?

Yes! It’s true, I am actually posting this sunday comic while it is still sunday.

Here’s another favourite Mimi and Eunice comic strip from the archives of Nina Paley!

This is pretty much what Watermarking and DRM are all about. You take a perfectly good product and make it less usable and less enjoyable for the people who actually paid for it. In other words, you punish your paying customers.

In case you didn’t know, pirate cake generally comes without the pee, thus tasting a lot better. So, is it any wonder that a lot of people prefer pirate cake?

Here’s another favourite Mimi and Eunice comic strip from the archives of Nina Paley!

Ever noticed how most corporations pushing for stricter legislation to “protect creators” never actually create anything themselves, except lawsuits?

Big media companies hate copying, not because it’s stealing (because it’s not), but because it is a form of competition. And competition is always bad when you are guarding a monopoly.

Here it is, though, another Mimi and Eunice strip from Nina Paley!

This is another favourite of mine, as it highlights a real problem with copyright legislation today. The fact that it is increasingly used as a tool for censorship.

I’ll be back tonight with a new Album of the Week!

But as promised, here is another Mimi and Eunice strip from Nina Paley!

I love this strip so much, because it illustrates how price and value are very different things. A lot of artists, musicians and writers worry that low prices, for instance on ebooks, de-value their work. This is simply not true.

There are other kinds of value than that which is measured in dollars. And the more a piece is shared and enjoyed, the more valuable it becomes. Sometimes even in dollars.

The monetary value of an ebook, or a song, is how much money it’s brought in since its publication, not the price of each copy. If an ebook is priced at $1,000 dollars but sells not a single copy, is it really worth anything compared to a $0.99 ebook that sells 10,000 copies?

Please come back tomorrow for the Album of the Week, where I recommend another album you can download and enjoy free of charge and add to its value by doing it!

Maybe patents used to be a good idea. But now, they really do more harm than good. I’ll be writing more on this subject in the future.