To illustrate my post on Periphobia, I wanted to show the wonderful segment from The Daily Show from August 2006 called "Target USA!" - a highly satiric skewering of CNN and cable news services and their contributions to periphobia.
But I can't because Comedy Central won't allow it.
Copyright is a fountain of periphobia. It isn't just about the control of an imaginary invention known as "intellectual property" by some corporation who didn't actually create the objects they claim to own and control, but it is just as much about contributing to the Culture of Periphobia.
In schools, libraries and institutional, there is rampant periphobia around all aspects of fair use of materials - confusion and disinformation reign.
Listen to the scare words:
"infringement" - "legal" - "illegal" - "violation" - "piracy" - "stealing" - "ripping" - "burning"
that pepper conversations at meetings of faculty, librarians, technologists, administrators.
The confusion around copyright, especially of digital materials, in no accident. It is an essential part of the strategy to keep users confused and afraid - afraid to stand up and claim their rights as members of the commons.
And for this reason, the confusion will not be cleared up. The gray area of fear, uncertainty, and doubt - of periphobia - will remain.
It is part of the scare tactics of corporations trying to legislate, fear-monger, and bully their way against the future: the Abundant InfoWorld where they are still trying to apply the concepts, tool, and tactics of Scarce InfoWorld. A future where the vast abundance of information and art and music and video will go straight from the creators to their audiences.
Dylan saw better, as prophets are wont to do, and transformed -- in fact, saved -- social protest and social criticism as a part of popular culture by melding it indelibly as part of rock 'n'roll. This is a case of technology not as an innovator, but as a preserver of a genre.
