You gotta fight for your (copy)right to party!

There are a lot of copyright puns to be made when it comes to addressing the subject of intellectual property vs. the internet.

- It's time to (copy)right the ship!
- (copy)Right on!
- They'll read you the (copy)riot (pronounced without the uh) act!

I could go on and the puns could get worse but I think you might be better served by checking out a very thoughtful post written by Internet Celebrity Rafi Kam over at InternetsCelebrities.com where he brings up a lot of current issues regarding copywritten material, ownership and "stealing" information (and makes a good copyright pun himself).

How does copyright and free information affect you? Well, I will tell you how it affects me. Two days ago, The Internets Celebrities posted a video to youtube we shot at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors show of a Tribe Called Quest tribute performance. The video was pulled by Youtube who cited Viacom as the concerned entity being infringed upon.

That same day, I downloaded Radiohead's new album for free.

Then, I watched a podcast of the Brian Lehrer show at CUNY TV where he and a small panel spent 10 minutes dissecting and talking about the Internets Celebrities movie, Bodega - which his TV show had lifted from youtube without telling us. I found out Brian Lehrer was going to be looking at our video when my dad, listening to his show on NPR, heard him say he'd be looking at "a funny movie about Bronx Bodegas" on his CUNY show that evening.

So information is getting exchanged all over the place. What do we owe each other to take that information and use/read/enjoy/comment on/watch it? I'm not sure but I think the first step is chastising Viacom for just trying to shut down the conversation.

Meanwhile, the (copy)right move is reading Rafi's post.

He also wrote an excellent post about editing.