This elegant image is the victim of less-than-elegant copyright protections. Good thing we can snag it under fair use. Credit: Bohnchang Koo, "In the Beginning #12"
It's Not the Economy, Stupid
People don’t like me bumming out on the economy. Obviously, condo developers trying to cover their asses, er, losses, by
obscene homogenous visions of the City Different don’t like it, but lately I’ve also been harassed by local business advocates who feel Santa Fe is in better shape than most places and on the right track for a bright economic future. They would rather, as usual, see “positive” news.
I don’t disagree.
Between an empowered Economic Development Department, aggressive moves on affordable housing, a living wage, the Santa Fe Alliance, the Locals Care program, good leadership at the Chamber of Commerce and public space projects like the Railyard Park and the River and Rail Trails, the best of Santa Fe are doing their best to push this city, kicking and screaming all the way, toward success, equity, diversity and sustainability.
But at the moment, Americans as a whole strike me as frightened, greedy and possessed with a bloated sense of entitlement that grows as rapidly as any sci-fi biological zombie disease. So, one sometimes worries that the noble-minded hard workers with a positive outlook will be overrun, and possibly devoured, by the small-minded and delusional among us.
Now that may be a strong reaction to the cement truck that nearly beheaded me and crushed my bicycle the other day while I was pedaling down Agua Fria Street, but what is it with Americans in their cars (and impossibly large trucks) getting pissed off when some kind of non-internal-combustion device is on the road? It’s a bizarre entitlement. I don’t mind cars and trucks close to me—there’s no need to go 15 feet around the side of me—but sideswiping toward a bicycle just because you’re a grumpy cement truck driver is plain old poor behavior. I got my revenge, though, when the truck was rerouted at the closed San Ysidro river crossing and I just pedaled on through.
Bicyclists have their own entitlement problems, though. My eyes now glaze over whenever people start yammering about how dangerous Guadalupe Street is for cyclists in the aftermath of its long winter of road work. The new road construction elements, including the curbing and medians, are alarmingly ugly. The blockage of left turns from Agua Fria Street onto Guadalupe Street creates more problems than it solves.
But dangerous?
As far as I can tell, the road is narrower and therefore the traffic is going slower. But then I’ve never understood bicyclists who need to follow the letter of the bizarre vehicle code and sit out in the middle of a lane full of cars. Don’t be fooled, people, bicycles are for curb-hopping, rule-breaking, sidewalk-riding, arroyo-crossing, alley-racing, wrong-way, urban-shortcut, freestyle transit. I guess you can sit in the middle of the lane in commuter lycra if you really want to, but you’re almost as offensive as angry cement truck drivers at that point. Cut loose.
Copy That
But fear-based restraint is the order of the day. And when art galleries start operating like Homeland Security or—worse—the recording industry, I begin to worry that the soul of this country is as black and withered as a crumpled US dollar bill.
The latest move in the mindless and greedy support of a broken and pro-corporate copyright system is a tiny bit of code that prevents people from saving images from Web sites onto their hard drives. If you try to save an image from a Web site that uses this code, a pop-up box declares, “Please respect the property rights of the artists by NOT copying or otherwise using their work without permission” and the control-click command fails to initiate a download.
Top work. It’s very similar to the copy protection the recording industry uses to prevent the illegal distribution of MP3s: annoying for the 2.5 seconds it takes to crack it.
As far as images of artists’ work go, not being able to download them from the Internet is likely to stop, for example, Web site editors and bloggers who are trying to promote the work, but not likely to do much to prevent malicious misuses by…well, by who?
What? Someone is going to copy an Internet-sized jpeg file of Bohnchang Koo’s work from Verve Gallery and make illicit T-shirts or coffee mugs? Is it going to fall into the hands of Taiwanese counterfeiters and be sold in the alleyways of New York City? Will replicas be cranked out by the dozens in some Beijing fine art factory? Will Sinaloan clothing manufacturers make it the next radical cowboy shirt design? Will it be used by the terrorists?
Puh-leeese.
If criminals want to detonate a bomb or fly an airplane into a building or copy record albums or profit off an artist’s work without compensation, they’re going to do it. And all the Homeland Security, copy protection software and stupid Internet tricks on earth won’t stop them. And if some kid wants to use a copyrighted image on the cover of his term paper or make it into a stencil or a silkscreen, let’s not panic, OK?
There are two worlds before us. One is a world of meme-patterned, viral ideas and images that becomes a living force of creative expression and perpetual interchange. The other world is one of fear, greed, entitlement and copious amounts of soul-crushing litigation.
Don’t get uptight about copyright, especially now when the media fixation on money, wealth and inflation is paralyzing the nation. Hop a curb on that metaphorical bicycle. Break the rules. If you see a big cement truck coming, just ride through the river, laughing all the way.
