On 23 June 2011 08:47, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Such works belong to our global knowledge.
You
can't copyright knowledge. The usual term used there is culture.
Clearly, you can copyright knowledge, for a time. True, you can't
copyright facts or scientific laws (yet)-- but some forms of knowledge
absolutely get copyrighted, and they're lobbying for even greater
powers over what people can read, write, and share. In the past, for
example, some entities have even claimed 'copyright' to try to limit
distribution of knowledge of the specific 'special whole numbers--
since those numbers were the ones they picked as "keys" when setting
up their content encryption system.
Thats not copyright but a weird case of IP law that isn't very well
classified at the moment.
To bring things full circle, I think what we,
collectively, are
asserting is that culture is, in fact, a very essential type of
educational knowledge.
Not within any useful definition of knowledge. Knowing how to build a
Dinosaur costume is knowledge. Barney & Friends is merely an
unfortunate application of that knowledge.
There are two big myths I wish I could debunk: One
is "The Myth of
Non-Educational Knowledge"-- all information is educational, but
some sets of information are certainly more educational than others;
it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy.
The secomd myth is what I'd call 'The Myth of the Superiority of High
Culture"-- basically the idea that operas and classical music are
somehow a 'more important' culture to document than, say, anime or
jazz. In practice, 'high culture' usually means 'the culture of the
most affluent'. All culture, whether scientific, encyclopedic, high
art, low art, pop culture, kitsch, criminal, idiosyncratic, or even
literally hunter-gather tribal culture-- all cultures are important to
document so we can understand our fellow humans.
Science is not a culture it is a method.
Ultimately knowledge can be protected at all it is covered by patent
not copyright.
--
geni