It is the underlying rights to the original work that is in jeopardy from the undermining of copyright laws, as it will hurt a CREATOR’S right to decide what may or may not be done with their creations including what happens with the fixed manifestation.

You see this is the problem. Most of the general public doesn’t really understand what copyrights really stand for!

Please visit http://datarevenue.org for details.

Perhaps we’ll be done with the first prototype of said system by 2050.. a small price to pay to protect the members of the MPAA and RIAA!

Whew!! What a mess. This could have been avoided with statutory rates for copyrighted materials working in the background at the ISP level BEFORE the Internet was available for MASS public use. Now the public is outraged that someone is trying to take that free right to copyrighted materials away from them!

In the mean time the CREATORS of copyrighted materials are losing their rights to control what happens to their creations. Very few would decide upon a career as a writer or publisher once they had to support a family if there was nothing more than a “warm fuzzy feeling” that they created something. At that point it would most definitely inhibit innovation. And so, it is the CREATORS that are getting hurt the most. Ironically, their rights are protected by the Constitution of the U.S., where is the gov when you need them?

Let’s not make this same mistake with the “second edition” Internet, Mobile Networks. After all, there will be way more transactions done via mobile networks then the “first edition” tethered Internet……..eventually.

Anyway, I never saw much practical value in microblogging in the general case (although it may have some specific uses). I’d say Second Life and YouTube count as revolutionary in that they provide new platforms for expression by users vastly beyond anything previously available, though as you mention both have a pretty limited range of uses, and are not be-all-and-end-all technology; but then, most revolutionary inventions aren’t.

But getting back to copyright. A couple days ago I mentioned here that enforcing copyright on the internet is incredibly difficult, and social media sites like YouTube are the pinnacle of this difficulty. While I can’t deny the possibility that user-generated content might end up being just another fad, I think there’s plenty of reason to believe it won’t.

This entire idea of “creators” vs. “consumer” is largely a western, European one. Elsewhere in the world artistic media such as music are largely communal efforts; there is minimal distinction between “performer” and “audience”, and usually most of the “audience” participates in the performance in some way, even if it’s not highly prominent. If anything, the prominence of YouTube and other user-created content sites seems to demonstrate the flaw in our western concept, and demonstrate that even those who aren’t “creators” in the traditional sense have plenty to express in creations of their own.

I think world music and (unrelated to this post) social psychology are by far the most informative and useful electives I took.