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Of all the ways to try to motivate people to rally against this disastrous law, spinning it as "EU wants to ban memes" might have been the worst. It makes peopl

Of all the ways to try to motivate people to rally against this disastrous law, spinning it as "EU wants to ban memes" might have been the worst. It makes people think it's about something trivial and frivolous.

fixermark 8y ago
Counterpoint: memes are probably the most common constructs of complicated copyright pedigree that people encounter in their day-to-day lives. It's analogous to the government banning ice cream.
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bwjsin 8y ago
My gut reaction to “they are going to ban memes” is “thank God”
s-shellfish 8y ago
So use the word "art" or "math" instead. Both are the free flows of ideas, data, information - that build off of one another. Art with a capital A stops being created when there is total ownership belonging to a singular entity. You can't create something from nothing. You can drive yourself crazy trying to do so, but in some variation, every new thing that is created is intrinsically connected to every existing thing, down to the tiniest, most insignificant detail. What amount of complexity between the observation, the thought process, the effort involved in creation, the final product - is required to deem something truly 'new'? The problem with art or with ideas is that they are fundamentally dependent on the existence of everything they share similarity with, fundamentally dependent on everything they are not to exist independently - every aspect that distinguishes each unique existence from all that came previously. Art itself is successful when it can distinguish itself as something fundamentally radical, fundamentally novel - enough to provoke a dramatic paradigm shift. The world of 'high art' will tell you that this requires a tremendous amount of time to understand 'impact'. It may be trivial and frivolous to say it is about memes, but there's a very specific, targeted effect being attempted with the usage of such a word. It's the attempt to demonstrate the irony, which is absolutely transcendent and multi layered to the point of being lost on us entirely. Memes were created as tools to be used to communicate emotion when text wasn't cutting it - for many folks. Now they share the same status as material product? Will a meme one day be framed next to a painting by Picasso? The art world has a long history of being aware of this phenomena: from the painting, to the daguerreotype, camera lucida, the photographic negative, video and television, digital media, and many others. What is Art, what are aesthetics, what is Idea with a capital I, what makes it new, what differentiates it from a copy, what in art is owned? Art influences culture, culture influences art. They are intertwined. Memes and copyright, it's neither trivial nor frivolous, but we can at least be aware - human existence certainly has a profound sense of humor.

fixermark 8y ago

Counterpoint: memes are probably the most common constructs of complicated copyright pedigree that people encounter in their day-to-day lives. It's analogous to the government banning ice cream.

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bwjsin 8y ago

My gut reaction to “they are going to ban memes” is “thank God”

s-shellfish 8y ago

So use the word "art" or "math" instead. Both are the free flows of ideas, data, information - that build off of one another. Art with a capital A stops being created when there is total ownership belonging to a singular entity. You can't create something from nothing. You can drive yourself crazy trying to do so, but in some variation, every new thing that is created is intrinsically connected to every existing thing, down to the tiniest, most insignificant detail. What amount of complexity between the observation, the thought process, the effort involved in creation, the final product - is required to deem something truly 'new'? The problem with art or with ideas is that they are fundamentally dependent on the existence of everything they share similarity with, fundamentally dependent on everything they are not to exist independently - every aspect that distinguishes each unique existence from all that came previously. Art itself is successful when it can distinguish itself as something fundamentally radical, fundamentally novel - enough to provoke a dramatic paradigm shift. The world of 'high art' will tell you that this requires a tremendous amount of time to understand 'impact'. It may be trivial and frivolous to say it is about memes, but there's a very specific, targeted effect being attempted with the usage of such a word. It's the attempt to demonstrate the irony, which is absolutely transcendent and multi layered to the point of being lost on us entirely. Memes were created as tools to be used to communicate emotion when text wasn't cutting it - for many folks. Now they share the same status as material product? Will a meme one day be framed next to a painting by Picasso? The art world has a long history of being aware of this phenomena: from the painting, to the daguerreotype, camera lucida, the photographic negative, video and television, digital media, and many others. What is Art, what are aesthetics, what is Idea with a capital I, what makes it new, what differentiates it from a copy, what in art is owned? Art influences culture, culture influences art. They are intertwined. Memes and copyright, it's neither trivial nor frivolous, but we can at least be aware - human existence certainly has a profound sense of humor.