LightVision

I’m sure that’s exactly what a lot of people in the copyright world would like to see. Graeme Philipson has called for the abolishion of copyright and intellectual property for many years. His recent opinion in last weeks SMH (June 24 2008) was no exception, and was in response to his previous article a fortnight ago, which I wrote a post about as well. I started to think about all the industries that rely on royalties, syndication and licencing as the basis for their existence. I wrote a quick short list: music, still photography, film, stock footage, software, hosted web applications, genetic technologies, pharmaceuticals, copyright lawyers and patent attorneys, not to mention news media organisations - for which Mr Philipson writes for. He goes on to say that without copyright, Musicians would have to play concerts instead of collecting royalties on recorded music. Therefore the Australian stills stock library market, which is roughly worth AUD$100 million, wouldn’t exist - the numbers are staggering. It also means that incredible tradeshows, such as Licensing International Expo wouldn’t happen, where I found another jaw dropping statistic, - “$19.3 Billion - total estimated worldwide retail sale of licensed product in the Art & Design category“. I must say I do enjoy his confronting perspectives, we need more devil’s advocates, it encourages us to step back, reassess and reshape our business model. However, I believe Armageddon will happen just moments before the end of copyright…and mankind.