The author got lost in his argumentation. He starts with design, but goes off into the lands of open source, patents, and art. It's not a well-written or researched article. Design is not software development is not art.
Copying is the way design works (2020)
11–20 of 245 posts
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#12Beautifully written article. One of my first ideological shifts happened when Napster was released. Bits flowing freely without being bounded by rules of the physical world deeply changed me and while later I do understand artists need to get paid and make a living, piracy and the pirating community is still very close to my heart. The amount of innovation which comes out of that space, is tremendous. The fact that z…
The “artists need to make a living” narrative against piracy is pure deception. Truth is that most artists want nothing more than for their messages to spread as widely as possible, as that is also the most naturally profitable path for them in the long term. It’s only when managerial types get involved the need to turn a quick buck by denying the natural flow of information becomes a primary concern. So pirate away,…
> The “artists need to make a living” narrative against piracy is pure deception. Truth is that most artists want [...]
I'd like to offer a more moderate option--or perhaps just radical in a different direction.
Artists would like to make a living, and the "deception" comes from how that slogan is used to falsely present the powers-that-be as able, willing, and actively delivering on that goal.
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
The “artists need to make a living” narrative against piracy is pure deception. Truth is that most artists want nothing more than for their messages to spread as widely as possible, as that is also the most naturally profitable path for them in the long term. It’s only when managerial types get involved the need to turn a quick buck by denying the natural flow of information becomes a primary concern. So pirate away,…
I self-publish my books. The audience is decent, I publish shortened audiobook versions for free, but frankly, I like the fact that the paper books themselves are copyrighted and no one can print them extremely cheaply and flood the market with them at my expense. It would have been natural, but also depressing.
I stopped self-publishing my books, because as soon as I offered PDFs to those who purchased my paper books the sales of printed copies tanked. Then nobody wanted to pay for PDFs and Amazon screwed my KDP sales (banned my book). The readers felt entitled to free copies and free consultation on the subject of the book. It's really depressing how entitled people feel to other people's creative output or knowledge.
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#14This is a great quote: > In the middle of Apple’s case against Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple, hoping to establish its rights as the inventor of the desktop interface. The court threw out this case, too, and questioned why Xerox took so long to raise the issue. Bill Gates later reflected on these cases: “we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox ... I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that [Jobs] h…
Copying from Xerox, some irony there.
Adds layers of irony to their “Redmond, start your photocopiers” dig https://www.padawan.info/en/images/photocopiers.html
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#15This is a great quote: > In the middle of Apple’s case against Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple, hoping to establish its rights as the inventor of the desktop interface. The court threw out this case, too, and questioned why Xerox took so long to raise the issue. Bill Gates later reflected on these cases: “we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox ... I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that [Jobs] h…
Copying from Xerox, some irony there.
It's also a lesson that always seems to fail to be learned. Xerox had the capital to set up a research arm, then failed to convert on any ideas because they were too focused on their current cash-cow. They eventually transitioned to "document company" where a document wasn't only paper, but it was too little/late.
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#16Go further. If you model ideas mathematically, you will see that societies plagued with IPDD ( https://breckyunits.com/ipdd.html ) will become extinct, because they prolong the lifespan of bad ideas, and those with intellectual freedom, where bad ideas rapidly evolve into good ideas, will rise to the top of the food chain. The equation is simple: ETA! ( https://breckyunits.com/eta.html ) Question whether we should ev…
Is there any evidence that the equations in the blog post model the real world?
I ask, because these intellectual property protections are intended to incentivize creation. If that incentive overwhelms these models of information sharing and testing frictions then the model is incomplete.
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#17I can make cheap, small-scale facsimiles, fangzhipin, to demonstrate some quality of the original. I can make exact replicas, pixel-perfect fuzhipin, to learn how the originals and their creators work. Or I can create shanzhai, unsolicited redesigns, commenting and riffing on the work of others. All these copies have an important role to play in the process of design. Whether you believe that it’s worthwhile or worth…
As long as there are new ideas, those without such ideas will copy them
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#18> As a designer, I feel the need to be original. If you’re a designer, or even if you’re just interested in design, you probably feel the need to be original, too.
I've been a professional designer since 2006, and I got over that thinking pretty quickly. A designer trying to be strikingly original is rarely acting in service of the design. If you want to be strikingly original, you probably want to be an artist instead of a designer. What a designer fundamentally does is communicate the best solution to a problem, given the requirements, goals, and constraints of that problem. Originality is subordinate to that at best.
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#19This is a great quote: > In the middle of Apple’s case against Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple, hoping to establish its rights as the inventor of the desktop interface. The court threw out this case, too, and questioned why Xerox took so long to raise the issue. Bill Gates later reflected on these cases: “we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox ... I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that [Jobs] h…
> I broke into his house
Not fun at all. Microsoft is like Disney, they steal from others and trounce others for stealing from them.
Absurd people.
Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I self-publish my books. The audience is decent, I publish shortened audiobook versions for free, but frankly, I like the fact that the paper books themselves are copyrighted and no one can print them extremely cheaply and flood the market with them at my expense. It would have been natural, but also depressing.
I stopped self-publishing my books, because as soon as I offered PDFs to those who purchased my paper books the sales of printed copies tanked. Then nobody wanted to pay for PDFs and Amazon screwed my KDP sales (banned my book). The readers felt entitled to free copies and free consultation on the subject of the book. It's really depressing how entitled people feel to other people's creative output or knowledge.
That is why I publish freely the audio versions (which only consist of about half of the stories within each book), but not the PDFs.