On copyright of conversations

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Good Old Trend

One of the projects that I run on the side of Good Old, is a blog called Discobelle.net. It’s a music blog that has become quite influential in the genres that we cover. An interesting point is that we get a lot of American PR-agencies that try to get us to write about their artists. Americans, working through a Swedish blog, in order to reach an American public. The globalized internet at it’s finest.

But an even more interesting point is the one about the genre blog house, that we are partially credited for in the Wikipedia article (they’ve deleted the article now, I see). The term is some what derogatory and descriptive of the wide spread electro house that is posted on a lot of blogs these days.

In the discussion about whether to keep the article or not, the argument was brought up that there were no sources for the name, “Published sources would be helpful here” it said. Helpful perhaps, but not realistic or even relevant as this is a phrase coined in an online conversation (probably here). It’s hard to trace back to one single person. And why would a “published” source make more credible than anything else?

One of my all time favourites, Edward de Bono, makes the point that good ideas can be created easier with certain methods. And while using these methods, it’s not entirely clear who came up with the idea as there are so many people participating in different ways. It is not important either – as long as the idea is truly good and solves the problem that you have. It’s the same thing with phrases, or a lot of other things, if you ask me.

In all these ongoing conversations; ideas, phrases and thought streams are presented daily. I read something interesting, and then perhaps I blog about it adding my thoughts to the original. Someone else reads my blog post and writes their own. They add to it again, and puts together a snappy way of presenting it. Now who owns this idea?

I question the whole idea of claiming ownership of something that was born inbetween people. It’s just not an important factor any more. In a conversation centred society, old rules concerning copyright and relevant sources can hardly apply any more. Too bad the world’s most progressive encyclopedia can’t lead the way here.

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