SOCAN Tries To Keep Its Copyright Consultation Submission Offline And Secret, But Fails

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Free Culture, Music, Technology | Tagged , , , , , | Permalink
December 8, 2009 7:25 pm

This post originally appeared on Techdirt.

We were just talking about how SOCAN, the Canadian copyright collection society, was going after gymnastics clubs for kids using music in their practice routines. Now they’re getting some well-deserved attention for other antics. Michael Geist explains how SOCAN tried to keep its submission to the government copyright consultation secret. The organization apparently requested that its submission not be posted online, even though that was part of the consultation process. The government made it available anyways, but only by email upon request. Of course, it’s now available online elsewhere [PDF].

SOCAN’s recommendations aren’t surprising. They call for a making available right (article 22 of the submission), a broadening of the private copying levy (article 30), anti-circumvention provisions (55-56), notice-and-takedown (59), copyright term extension (60), and no further exceptions to copyright (34, 48). But rather than outright declaring war on consumers, they copy the language (poorly) of those seeking more effective copyright reform. For example, they claim that the “rights of users and creators” are already “balanced” because “the Copyright Board of Canada provides a fair mechanism to set the royalty” (45) — someone had better tell the gymnastic clubs! Another great example: They want to expand the private copying tax levy to digital audio players so that it’s “technologically neutral.” (11) No word on when they’ll want it to apply to hard drives in general. SOCAN also repeats the ridiculous argument from the Toronto copyright townhall that “unwarranted” fair dealing provisions would mean asking creators to “work for nothing:”

Copyright amendments must not set up unwarranted exemptions, or otherwise limit the copyright royalties paid… If you deprive SOCAN’s members of copyright royalties, you are basically asking over 35,000 Canadian individuals to take risks and work for nothing. That’s not realistic, and it’s not fair. (34-35)

It’s just laughable to suggest that more flexible fair dealing (i.e., something like the American concept of fair use) would mean artists not getting paid. Do artists “work for nothing” in the U.S.? Though, it should be no surprise from an organization that claims that, if you use a Creative Commons license, you “won’t get paid” and your work may become devalued. To a collection society, getting paid can only mean royalties, and the value of music can only mean… well, royalties.

Best of all, they seem nervous about Industry Minister Tony Clement, who’s given some indication that he wants to craft forward thinking policies. SOCAN recommends that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage have sole responsibility for copyright reform (article 66). The Heritage committee is involved in the process, but as Geist points out, this recommendation betrays some discomfort with Clement and the Industry Committee, since the Copyright Act clearly grants the Minister of Industry responsibility for copyright. So, first, we get a laundry list of maximalist demands using the language of “balanced” copyright reform, then a suggestion to ignore the Copyright Act and exclude the ministry they’re not comfortable with (you know, the one focusing on the economic concerns) from having any responsibility in reform? No wonder they wanted to keep the submission secret.

Read the comments on Techdirt.

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Free Software Paves The Way For Open Source

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Free Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
November 18, 2009 9:38 am

At the end of September, Matt Asay wrote a provocative post: Free software is dead. Long live open source. He argued that, while “free software advocates provided the early backbone,” that “ideological” approach has given way to the more realistic “pragmatism” of open source and that “we’re all the better for it.”

A month later, he wrote a post arguing that open clouds are more important than open phones. Astoundingly, he points to Bradley Kuhn’s post on the lack of a truly free mobile operating system as evidence that software freedom types are focused on the wrong things. Except… as Bradley points out in the comments:

Matt, I find it troubling that you would fail to mention that I’ve historically written and spoken *much* more about software freedom in the “Cloud” than I have about freedom in mobile space. In fact, I and my colleagues at autonomo.us were well along looking at the issue of “Freedom 2.0″ long before we started dealing with the freedom issues in the mobile phone space.

Indeed, for my part, my blog post you quote is exactly the first time I’ve talked publicly about software freedom on mobile phone platforms. Meanwhile, if you had done any research, you’d have found me speaking and writing about freedom in the Cloud going back to at least November 2007 (and even further if you consider the work I did with Henry Poole and Eben Moglen on the AGPLv1 in early 2002).

Matt Asay, caught up in open source pragmatism, is way behind the free software crowd. How can you mention an “open cloud” without talking about autonomo.us? And projects like Identi.ca/StatusNet and Libre.fm? This is the future of free networked services. Once again, free software advocates are leading the way. In five or ten years, I suppose open source folks like Matt Asay will arrive just in time declare the free software pioneers irrelevant again.

“Open source” in the “cloud” is about more than just infrastructure. Yes, software freedom is about more than source code, but source code is the foundation of software freedom. If you control the software, things like data portability and federated services come much more naturally. The open source movement won’t understand that until the free software movement makes it manifestly obvious — but don’t expect a thank you.

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A Cautious Criticism of Father Rosica

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Catholic, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | Permalink
November 17, 2009 9:04 am

Father Thomas Rosica is the founder and CEO of Salt and Light, which, aside from being a TV station, has a fantastic blog. He posts often, and I enjoy his posts. But sometimes, it seems like he just doesn’t understand the Internet. I hope the Catholic News Service just took his comments out of context, but listen to what he had to say about the Catholic blogosphere.

Wow. Okay, first a bit of context.

Regarding the “negativity,” Rosica drew heavy fire from many Catholic bloggers after his harsh criticisms of the pro-life movement a few months ago. He had an important point about mercy and compassion, and if you dig through the drama, there was a lot of really nasty stuff directed his way. But… isn’t that to be expected when you tell well-meaning (if often, err… uninformed) people that they’re doing the “work of Satan?” There was plenty to disagree with in Rosica’s post. It’s unfortunate that the conversation spiraled to such low levels — on both the part of Rosica and his detractors — but to extrapolate as if that’s an accurate depiction of “the blogs”? Come on. What Catholic blogs does Rosica read?

More importantly, there are some serious issues the Church faces with the communications revolution of the web, and Rosica is a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. He’s not just any priest, but he has a special role in assisting the Vatican with these challenges. And there are huge challenges. Writer for the Catholic Register, Dorothy Cummings McLean, explains:

What we are seeing now is a communications revolution in that anyone and everyone can set up a blog and begin writing on Catholic issues. And depending on the material presented or the skill in presenting it, anyone can attract a large following. No endorsement from the bishops is demanded or even expected by the readers. This leaves the bishops–and traditional media power structures–in a situation akin to the invention of the printing press.

I have no idea how much of a player either Salt + Light or The Catholic Register is on the “Catholic blogosphere.” My guess is that their readerships are dwarfed by the readership of such blogs as “LifeSiteNews”–which has a large American following–”What Does the Prayer Really Say” and “American Papist”. From a Girardian perspective, such blogs have something that old media might want: huge readerships and fervent fans. Meanwhile, old media have something bloggers might want: funding and credibility. These longings might be setting up what Girard calls “mimetic rivalry.”

This is similar to the challenges that traditional news organizations are facing, or, well, traditional communicating-anything organizations. But Rosica’s suggestion? Oversight. Oversight?! I really, really hope that was taken out of context, otherwise someone needs to explain to him what a bad, bad idea that is before he embarrasses himself and the Church. Providing formation for Catholics in this matter in the way that the Church provides formation in general would make sense, but that’s not “oversight.” How would you even begin to provide official mechanisms of oversight for Catholic websites and blogs?

The only solution is to participate in the conversation — not to try and regulate it. This needs to be done on a diocesan level, like Boston Cardinal O’Malley or New York Archbishop Dolan have been doing. The Archdiocese of Toronto has an excellent blog as well. As Dorothy explains:

How to respond to the Catholic… blogosphere? Looking at the popularity of “Father Sean’s Blog”, the blog of Boston Cardinal O’Malley, it might be a good idea for the CCCB to begin their own blogs or endorse their favourite blogs. The dream of an episcopal stamp of approval (or even funding) might inspire some bloggers to mind their manners.

Bishops and clergy need to engage with Catholic bloggers, to set a good example, to encourage charity, truth and hope — not to enforce it. You simply couldn’t. I really hope Rosica’s choice of wording was just an incredibly sloppy misstep as opposed to anything remotely resembling a plan. Because that would be a terrible plan.

The Catholic Church knows a thing or two about evangelization. It ought to be at the forefront of social media, not fumbling around like a tired old media giant trying to be an information gatekeeper. It knows better. Fr. Rosica, please don’t suggest “oversight” as a way forward. If it’s a suggestion, ditch it, and if it’s a talking point, drop it.

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My Encomium For Brother Domenic

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Catholic, Personal | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
November 17, 2009 2:51 am

On November 14th, 2009, I was invited to give a speech at a tribute to Brother Domenic, principal of De La Salle College “Oaklands” from 1996 to 2009. I graduated from De La Salle in 2005.

In March of 2004, sitting in English class, Mr. Hunt told us that we were all schizophrenic. We were schizophrenic for “attending a school run by a man from another century,” and putting on our uniforms, and combating this “tidal wave of junk,” and then going out and living in it. “It’s one thing to be stuck in this hurricane,” he said, “but it’s even worse to be a schizo stuck in this hurricane!”

From Mr. Hunt, being a “man from another century” is a profound compliment of the highest order. I’ve been fortunate enough to know this man from another century for the past eight years of our century — and, unlike Alessia, only four years as a student, and the other four as an alumnus who hangs around the school a bit too much. Since graduating, I’ve attended — among other things — every Christmas and Founder’s Day mass that I could. Only a direct conflict would stop me; if my exams were in the afternoon, I’d be here in the morning.

One of the main benefits of being at the school assemblies has always been Brother Domenic’s speeches. I remember him stressing what it means to be a signum fidei at the opening assembly in 2001, when I was in Grade 9. I remember a speech railing against the phrase, “that’s nice,” as a focus on mediocrity. I remember him stressing that, at De La Salle, we are not taught to be great, but to be good — not in terms of being mediocre, but in terms of being centred on Christ. The most memorable of all, however, were the words of wisdom Brother offered us during a time of great mourning, at Ian Lawson Van Toch’s Mass of the Resurrection. Brother Domenic said,

The way we measure success as human beings is terribly flawed. I am increasingly of the view personally that we have it terribly wrong. It is not the length of days or the accomplishments or the conquests, or health or the career, which makes us most human and therefore like God in whose image we are created. It is our capacity to love and be loved by others.

Success is our capacity to love and be loved by others.

And love? The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium Et Spes (“Joy and Hope”), explains love in the following way:

(24) God, Who has fatherly concern for everyone, has willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood…

For this reason, love for God and neighbour is the first and greatest commandment. Sacred Scripture, however, teaches us that the love of God cannot be separated from love of neighbour…

Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, “that all may be one. . . as we are one” (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.

In other words, man cannot truly be successful except through a sincere gift of self.

Love is a self-giving — to love is to serve — and to be truly successful is to love and to be loved.

Brother Domenic, it’s clear by your abundant service and gift of self to the school community, and by the community of people assembled here today who love you, that you have truly been successful.

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Free Doesn’t Mean Devalued

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Free Culture, Free Software, Music, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
November 13, 2009 9:45 pm

I’ve tightened up my post on why free music doesn’t mean devalued music for Techdirt. If you’ve read the original, it’s largely the same content, but cleaned up a little and much more concise.

Free Doesn’t Mean Devalued:

The concept of zero took ages for societies to recognize, let alone understand. Mike has explained before how it’s been a stumbling block in economics for some libertarian and “free market” types more recently. People who think about economics in terms of scarcity get upset when abundance pushes price down towards zero, as if the economic equation were broken. But if you flip the equation and think of it as a cost of zero, you realize that the trick is to use as much of those abundant goods as possible, adding value to complementary scarcities for which you can charge. Zero doesn’t break economics, it just requires a different approach.

But artists and other creators hit a different stumbling block than libertarians (libertarian artists aside…). Zero is a problem because they feel like their art is worthless; they aren’t hung up on scarcity, they’re hung up on “devaluation.” We’ve heard it from journalists. I hear it most often from fellow songwriters. The economic theory makes them feel as though their work is just viewed as some sort of cheap commodity. The thing is, value and price are not the same. Price is monetary value, but value is so much more than money. Price is what gets driven down to marginal cost, but value factors into the demand side of the equation. Expensive things aren’t necessarily valuable, and valuable things aren’t necessarily expensive. I value oxygen a lot, but it seems silly to pay for the air I breathe each minute, given the abundant supply.

More importantly, songwriters who get hung up on “devaluation” confuse recordings with music. They equate the two. A recording is not the song, it’s just an instance of it, and a digital audio file is just an instance of the recording. Equating these reduces music to recordings to files. As important as recordings are, there’s so much more to music. When you think of a song, do you think of the recording, or a memory you had connecting with the music? Do you think of the file and how much it cost, or the emotions, people and experiences that the music conjures up? The recordings are just a means through which we experience the music. Songwriters (of all people!) should know that the value in music is so much more than the price of a recording. It’s not devaluing music to give it away for free, but it can increase its value by allowing more people to connect with it, to know, love and understand it — to value it. It’s through that experience that music is valued, not price!

Ironically, the underlying concern ends up being economic — how will we make money? A price of zero for digital audio files doesn’t mean that no one values the songwriting profession, or that no one is willing to spend money on music and keep songwriters in business. Sharing digital audio files makes the music more valuable and leads to more opportunities for monetization. When you give music away and connect with an audience, the opportunity for monetization is in the associated scarcities — access, containers, community, merchandise, relationships, unique goods, the creation of new music, etc. — by giving people a reason to buy. Getting hung up on “devaluation” is a distraction from the opportunity — the necessity — to experiment with new business models.

So, can we please stop complaining that free means devalued?

Check out the lively discussion in the comments. Also, usually I’m pretty obsessive with backlinks, but somehow I missed an obvious post worth a link: Free Doesn’t Mean Unpaid

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Is There A Better Word Than “Balance” In The Copyright Debate?

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Free Culture, Free Software, Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
November 13, 2009 9:42 am

Mike Masnick questions the word “balance” in the copyright debate:

I’ve long thought that balance is the wrong way to look at it. The purpose of copyright law is to incentivize the creation of new content, and thus the standard on which copyright law should be judged is one where the [benefits of the] creation of content is maximized. As such, there shouldn’t be a question of balance, because the ideal situation where content is maximized should make everyone better off. Talking about balance is figuring out how both sides should compromise to meet in the middle. Talking about maximizing content creation, on the other hand, is talking about ways to improve the marketplace of options for everyone.

He links to a paper by Abraham Drassinower of the U of T Law School arguing that balance is the wrong way to view copyright policy. “Balance” as a concept in copyright suggests that the law is designed to reward a content creator for their labour (the “sweat of the brow” argument), Drassinower argues, though Masnick has to tease out the main point: “Balance” falsely implies that this is a zero sum game, when “the goal of copyright should be maximizing the [benefits of the] creation of content overall, such that everyone is better off.”

I’m sold. I tried to use this point at the Toronto Copyright Townhall and in my submission to the consultation.

But, if not balance, then what?

Words like “balance” are used often to make sure that the interests of the public aren’t forgotten in the face of copyright holders’ interests. I strongly support the group, Fair Copyright for Canada, but “fair” has similar problems to “balance.” What words might serve to include the public interest without suggesting a zero sum game? Mike described it as “maximizing [the benefits of] content creation,” but that seems more useful in explanation than at the sound bite stage.

What about “calibrate?” I notice that Mike used the word in a subsequent post on why morality isn’t relevant in copyright: “A properly calibrated system is one where there’s the greatest overall economic good and everyone has the greatest opportunity to benefit” (strongly related — if it’s an economic question rather than a moral one, rights holders interests are not necessarily opposed to the public interest). “Calibrate” seems like the most accurate word. It doesn’t directly conjure up the notion of the public interest, but it does so indirectly by suggesting an approach that’s about more than “protection.” But it’s too technical for a mainstream audience.

Is there a more accessible synonym for “calibrate?” Optimize? It works, but “optimizing copyright law” seems a bit too vague, and doesn’t really capture the non-zero sum game and the public interest. Thesaurus.com doesn’t help much either.

So what else? I’m not sure. I like “calibrate,” but it won’t work with all audiences. “Optimize” is nice to use in passing to reinforce the point, but it doesn’t introduce it. “Balance” and “fair” are still useful for drawing attention to the interests beyond that of rights holders, but I won’t offer those terms without a caveat or disclaimer.

Other suggestions?

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The Temporary Web and Digital Histories

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , | Permalink
November 12, 2009 11:47 am

Jeff Jarvis recently voiced some concerns about the temporary web:

Twitter is temporary. Streams are fleeting. If the future of the web after the page and the site and SEO is streams – and I believe at least part of it will be – then we risk losing information, ideas, and the permanent points – the permalinks – around which we used to coalesce. In this regard, Twitter is to web pages what web pages are to old media. Our experience of information is once again about to become fragmented and dispersed.

My own worry is that I’m twittering more and blogging less. Twitter satisfies my desire to share. That’s mostly why I blog – and that’s what makes the best blog posts, I’ve learned. I also want to store information like nuts underground; once it’s on the blog, I can find it. But when I share links on Twitter, they’ll soon disappear. I also use my blog to think through ideas and get reaction; Twitter’s flawed at that – well, I guess Einstein could have tweeted his theory of relativity but many ideas and discussions are too big for the form – yet I now use Twitter to do that now more than this blog.

I don’t relate very much to the idea that the temporary web destroys the ability to read and write in longer form. Maybe it’s because I started blogging only shortly before I started microblogging, but I can still be pretty long-winded. Jarvis notes that Twitter conversations have the “half-life of a gnat,” and that they “go up in smoke.” Sure, that’s a limitation, but it’s also a lot like regular in-person conversation. I think it has just as much to do with the nature of informal conversation as it does with the fact that Twitter lends itself towards that type of communication, yet we don’t worry about day to day conversations going up in smoke. That’s why we have other types of communication. I get Jarvis’ point, and it’s important and useful to be aware of the nature of the medium, but it doesn’t bother me too much.

What does bother me about “streams” is memory. I’m a digital pack-rat. I have important MSN conversations saved from the past 8 years (which is nearly forever for someone who hit the age of reason 10 years ago). I have tons of long emails with close friends filed away (and backed up) for safekeeping. I don’t take the ease of record-keeping with digital communication for granted. Memories of important and meaningful phone conversations fade, but I take advantage of the fact that I can revisit a conversation that happens online.

Except, Twitter is lousy at that. Ever try digging for a message you posted a year ago? Facebook has become the same way since it adopted a stream-like interface. I get the focus on real-time, but it drives me nuts that results disappear from Twitter’s search engine after only a few months. Real-time can be the default, but what about offering a sort of search that taps into the history of conversation, rather than solely what’s trending?

I welcome the move to a more stream-like web, but what about taking advantage of our ability to store and access our history? Real-time is cool, but sometimes I’d like to search the past.

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Information Serendipity In Different Mediums

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Personal, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
November 11, 2009 9:50 am

I’ve been meaning to comment on Mathew Ingram’s defence of newspapers and serendipity. Clay Shirky has been talking about the bundling that occurs in newspapers as a mere accident of print, something that was only necessary given the constraints of paper, but doesn’t make sense otherwise. Mathew disagrees:

Is there a purpose in aggregating the horoscope and the weather and the news about the coup in Tegucigalpa? I think there is, and I think newspapers do a pretty good job of it.

It’s not just because they have to — although that’s part of it. Maybe I’ve just been trained as a newspaper reader for my whole life, but I like the serendipity of tripping over fascinating articles about things I would never have known even existed were it not for a newspaper. To take the Saturday Globe and Mail as an example, I read about an up-and-coming Muslim hockey player, a profile of Paul Shaffer, a review of the punk band Gossip, an article about contentious city council politics in Aurora and a great feature on retirees and their vanishing pensions.

Just two days before Mathew’s post, my friend Emilie and I were having the same conversation. She reads the newspaper daily and made the same defence. I used to read the paper regularly when I was commuting to school in Grade 9, but more recently, I’ve come to get my “news” through Gwibber and Google Reader. It’s not that Mathew or Emilie don’t use the web, but they both have found something valuable in newspapers that the web hasn’t been able to offer — information serendipity (by that, I mean serendipity with respect to encountering ideas). Mathew continues,

Could links to those stories show up in my RSS reader? Possibly – but I doubt it. The mix is just too eclectic. And I would never have sought out the article about the Muslim hockey player, because I don’t particularly care about hockey and therefore I would likely never have come across it. Would the retirement piece ever make it to Techmeme or some similar aggregator? I doubt it. But it was still worth reading. And so were the half-dozen or so articles I can’t recall right now, which I tripped across as I read the paper. I would never have deliberately sought them out either.

I think Mathew’s missing one of the most serendipitous aspects of the web — the social aspect. I wouldn’t likely stumble upon those sorts of articles through my RSS subscriptions (though I’m subscribed to some pretty eclectic stuff), but through Google Reader shared items (e.g. Turadg Aleahmad shares some really interesting things, like this Wikipedia article on Mamihlapinatapai). I stumbled across Valaam chant through a friend’s Facebook posted items the other day, a genre of music that’s entirely new to me and will likely influence my own music. I find interesting links through Twitter/Identi.ca every week that are outside my regular areas of interest (e.g. this video riding blog from Sunday). I may follow someone who shares some interests in common with me, but that doesn’t mean their other interests are my usual fare. Information serendipity here is social.

Then, beyond the social, Mike Masnick was writing about serendipity of search a few weeks before Mathew’s post:

There’s a separate side of having search so ingrained in our lives that isn’t often explored: the serendipity of search… I do a countless number of searches during the day — it’s ingrained to quickly and automatically jump to the search box all through the day — and usually two or three times per day, I end up going down a fascinating, if unexpected path to learning something new and interesting. Usually, it’s related to what I was originally searching for, but leads me on a trail of additional information, well beyond what I expected to learn. Other times, it may be a total tangent, but still one that ends up being useful and relevant in odd and unexpected ways.

A couple days after Mike’s post, I was watching Margaret Visser’s The Geometry of Love with the RCIA group at the Newman Centre. She makes a passing comment in the video about the serendipity of browsing through the stacks at Robarts Library — yet another type of information serendipity.

Beyond information serendipity, there’s a likelihood of social serendipity (in encountering people rather than ideas) that exists in a communications medium like the web that you wouldn’t find in a newspaper. On any medium, it’s not so much a question of whether there’s an element of serendipity as it’s a question of what that serendipity is like.

Information serendipity on the web is different than in newspapers. There’s information serendipity in bundling, in proximity, in linking, in social connections, and then there are other types of serendipity altogether, like social serendipity. I think it’d be really interesting to dig deeper and explore the differences…

Information Serendipity in Wikipedia

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Against the Test Drive Approach to Spousal Love

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Catholic, Personal | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Permalink
November 10, 2009 9:23 am

Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth, wrote about why everyone should have premarital sex on Feministing yesterday.

Let’s face it – if you’re going to commit yourself to someone for (presumably) the rest of your life, it’s probably best if you know that you’re sexually compatible. I don’t think this is particularly radical thing to say; in fact, it seems quite logical to me. But somehow, if you suggest that pre-marital sex is a good and maybe even necessary thing (especially if you say those things while being a feminist) you are an evil, evil whoremaker.

Do I think that people can have perfectly wonderful satisfying relationships without having had sex before making a commitment? Sure, I’m positive that happens often. But considering what a huge role sexuality plays in our lives and relationships…well, I’d rather be super duper positive.

What a tragically narrow vision of sexuality! Sexuality is reduced to an action. It’s not just Valenti. Films become rated R: “contains sexuality.” The example that will always stick out in my mind is Nick Carter asking in Backstreet’s Back, “am I sexual?” (Yes, Nick, you are a sexual being.) As wonderful as sex (the act) is, sex (-uality) is so much more than that. It’s especially ironic considering Valenti is trying to reclaim a more nuanced vision of sexuality from “the virgin/whore binary,” yet her nuanced vision remains so narrow. Sexuality isn’t just having sex. It’s about being created male and female, about our entire being, not just our genitals.

More importantly, I’ve become increasingly skeptical of the “test-drive” approach to love. Yes, of course you want to get to know your partner before you make a longterm commitment, but suggesting that means you ought to take their body for a test drive is a bad, bad way to approach that commitment.

It sets up the spousal model all wrong.

I’ve come to refer to this as the “pleasure and duty” ethic. If people consent mutually to the use of their bodies for pleasure, what’s the problem? Look at the model: Pleasure is the end goal, and consenting to the “use” of your body parts is the means of attaining it. Fluffy feelings of bonding might be a nice side-effect. Orgasm is the intent. The other person becomes a means of achieving your orgasm, and you become a means of theirs. This is objectification by definition, even if it’s mutual and consenting. On top that, pleasure is the metric of success. That is, a successful sex act is one that brings about pleasure. The act of sex becomes, at least in part, an economic transaction where you trade access to your body in exchange for pleasure. And that’s not always going to be a fair trade — and you may evaluate the quality and the fairness of the deal. After all, we test drive cars. And we also sell and replace them when they no longer serve their purpose.

I have a crazy idea: What if the goal of sex is self-giving rather than pleasure? What if the idea was to come into ultimate union with another human being, and the means of attaining that was complete and total self-giving and affirmation of the other as other? I have a feeling that the pleasure factors in as a side-effect, without “driving” the entire experience.

I don’t feel the need to take my future spouse for a test drive. I’m not marrying a car.

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Pat Lee on Art and Originality

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Free Culture, Free Software, Music | Tagged , , , , , , | Permalink
November 9, 2009 10:31 pm

One of my closest friends, Pat Lee, has a webcomic, The Fantastical Adventures of Caspian the Sea-Devil. The “about” section contains this fantastic gem on art and originality:

This comic, like all comics, consists of written and drawn elements. The written element, the story, will be somewhat guided by my hand as the author. Mostly though, it will be the result of zillions and trillions of books, movies, videogames, TV shows, albums, magazines, websites, and other comics entering my brain, being processed and compiled by the unusual factory within, and emerging the other side transformed into what you see here. On the surface it may look like I’m “writing” the comic, in the traditional sense, but I make no effort to hide the fact that I’m really just manipulating, mutating, repurposing, and reinterpreting the countless stories that have come before mine. Hopefully I can reorganize the impossibly cluttered contents of the Culture Sponge I call a brain into a finished product that is interesting, exciting, fun to read, challenging at times, will make people think, and most importantly, will trick people into thinking that these were all my ideas.

Outstanding. Webcomics, music, writing, even software applications — every creator builds on the works of others. How’s that for recognizing it upfront? (Lest anyone jump on the last line, it’s a joke!)

Now, Pat, how about dropping the “no derivatives” and switching to a Share-Alike licence, like you mentioned?
;)

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