Beyond that, there's the realm of intellectual property (IP): the creation of something from nothing which goes on to assume a broader reality.
This is where pop-cultural memes originate. Every show you've watched, series you've followed, cartoon character you've sketched, in-joke you've cracked, every spiritual insight you've drawn from a movie, game, TV show, book, whatever - it all began with someone sitting at a desk using the written language to create something out of nothing. Somewhere along that process, a writer took his or her imagination and drafted an idea into words that other folks could understand. Again, this is not data processing. It is art.
Much of that art - and the effort behind it - remains invisible. When you read a comic book, for example, you don't see the copious notes shared between the writer, artists, editor and publisher; you don't see the bible that guides the setting and character, or the outline of plot the book will follow. You don't see the concept sketches, brainstorming, rejected ideas and revised pages and art. Maybe if you're interested in the process, you might see the scripts, storyboards, a few design sketches and maybe an interview or two with the folks behind the project. What you won't see unless you're one of us is the time and effort this process demands. No matter how much you like Neil Gaiman's stories, you do not wake up with him thinking about the project at hand, sit down with him all those hours he puts in every day at the computer, participate with him as he debates them with his collaborators, toss and turn in the middle of the night with him as he hashes out some problematic issue in the story. You just see the finished result - something you can often polish off in a few hours. As one who does this for a living myself, however, I tell you that the work involved in the creation of even the simplest webcomic demands hours of effort before anything appears before the audience.
Something else you won't see is the mental and emotional process behind each creation. Every book, every character, every sentence a writer writes is drawn - sometimes kicking and screaming - from decades of experience and observation. For the writer, this can be a nerve-wracking process as well as a cathartic one. Behind every idea in the pop-cultural Wonderland sits a writer who dug through his or her life to express it... and who, in the course of expressing it, employed years of refined skill, observation, criticism and raw talent to turn that idea into a broader reality.
And the fact that the idea can then be turned into movies, jokes, tattoos, songs, comic books, action figures, whatever does not negate the writer's role in that process... nor should it negate her rights to earn a living from it, especially not if someone else is, too.
The core of the dispute with Google rests in the idea that imagination is information, and that information should be free and belong to everyone.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Writing and Publishing Clarification
This is where pop-cultural memes originate. Every show you've watched, series you've followed, cartoon character you've sketched, in-joke you've cracked, every spiritual insight you've drawn from a movie, game, TV show, book, whatever - it all began with someone sitting at a desk using the written language to create something out of nothing. Somewhere along that process, a writer took his or her imagination and drafted an idea into words that other folks could understand. Again, this is not data processing. It is art.
Much of that art - and the effort behind it - remains invisible. When you read a comic book, for example, you don't see the copious notes shared between the writer, artists, editor and publisher; you don't see the bible that guides the setting and character, or the outline of plot the book will follow. You don't see the concept sketches, brainstorming, rejected ideas and revised pages and art. Maybe if you're interested in the process, you might see the scripts, storyboards, a few design sketches and maybe an interview or two with the folks behind the project. What you won't see unless you're one of us is the time and effort this process demands. No matter how much you like Neil Gaiman's stories, you do not wake up with him thinking about the project at hand, sit down with him all those hours he puts in every day at the computer, participate with him as he debates them with his collaborators, toss and turn in the middle of the night with him as he hashes out some problematic issue in the story. You just see the finished result - something you can often polish off in a few hours. As one who does this for a living myself, however, I tell you that the work involved in the creation of even the simplest webcomic demands hours of effort before anything appears before the audience.
Something else you won't see is the mental and emotional process behind each creation. Every book, every character, every sentence a writer writes is drawn - sometimes kicking and screaming - from decades of experience and observation. For the writer, this can be a nerve-wracking process as well as a cathartic one. Behind every idea in the pop-cultural Wonderland sits a writer who dug through his or her life to express it... and who, in the course of expressing it, employed years of refined skill, observation, criticism and raw talent to turn that idea into a broader reality.
And the fact that the idea can then be turned into movies, jokes, tattoos, songs, comic books, action figures, whatever does not negate the writer's role in that process... nor should it negate her rights to earn a living from it, especially not if someone else is, too.
The core of the dispute with Google rests in the idea that imagination is information, and that information should be free and belong to everyone.
Lo, I say unto thee: bullshit.
(more)