Someone in my family who will remain nameless for soon to be apparent reasons got me a T-shirt for Christmas. Kinda. It looks a lot like this. Except he didn’t buy it from threadless.com.
He downloaded the image, printed it onto transfer paper, and ironed it onto a blank T-shirt.
So I’m horrified, right? Intellectual property, the ability to profit from creativity, etc. I’d buy one except that design is sold out. But I’m also tremendously amused. Talk about your remix culture. This particular family member is like fifteen years old. He didn’t even think twice about getting the T-shirt that way. Immediate satisfaction, no wait time.
If people want to be selling intellectual property in the future? Better figure out a way to get it into the hands of consumers immediately, cause people are gonna be doing their own pre-fab. Culture’s changing. It’s probably not going to take Lawrence Lessig to get rid of our current problems with copyright; that stuff is all going to seem silly in twenty years or so.
Well within my lifetime. The rate of change gets scary.