I’d like to begin by giving a shoutout to the King of Norway. Then I’ll explain why we at the Copyright Alliance are all about the word “go.”

It turns out the King is dropping by the Vancouver Olympics today to watch his nation’s curling team compete in the semifinals. He also wants to wear a pair of the team’s phenomenally loud diamond-plaid pants of red, white and gray. How cool is that? Would Queen Elizabeth wear a Beefeater’s hat?

For some reason, all other curling teams wear black pants, like they’re going to a funeral. Other Olympic athletes use color to make statements. Well, some market clothing lines, like the U.S. alpine skier who has sported hot pink, lime green and florescent orange. But look at the U.S. snowboarding team. They convey the ultimate attitude of casual with their baggy plaid outfits that look like pajamas. Or the Dutch speedskaters in bright orange (their flag colors are red, white and blue, but the nation won its independence from Spain in the Sixteenth Century led by Prince William of Orange, so I’m assuming that’s the connection). The Australian speed skaters are wearing skin-tight clothes marked with patterns that make them appear they’ve stepped out of the virtual simulation in the movie Tron.

Scientists have long studied our reaction to color, the associations our minds make. Take orange. No offense to the Dutch team, but it seems we associate orange with “inexpensive,” thus its use in fast-food establishments. Those “restaurants” also benefit from the fact that prolonged exposure to orange can make us uncomfortable; that encourages people to eat and leave quickly, great for a fast-food joint.

Two organizations that like to throw virtual rocks at us — Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation — like to rock the red. I know at least one professor sympathetic to their cause who would tell them not to do this, because there are already socialist connections associated with those organizations and red is of course the international color of communism.

Even though I was a cold warrior who studied international relations as an undergrad to take down the USSR — they fell two years after I graduated, but I’m afraid I can’t take any credit for that — and even though I reveled yesterday in memories on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. hockey team beating the USSR at the Lake Placid Olympics, I don’t make that association when I see PK and EFF.

I associate red with “stop.”

If you look at their web sites, it has to be an intentional association on their part. They are begging federal regulators to stop copyright owners from exploring technological solutions to both the protection and enforcement of their rights in a digital age. They raise fears about evil corporations and the stifling of speech and culture. They aim to create hysterics (which has been shown to be a phenomenal fund-raising tool).

In the spring of 2007, two months before the launch of the Copyright Alliance, I went to meet with our web designer and choose a color for our new organization. I didn’t know what I’d choose, but a colleague suggested lime green; she held up a strikingly bold purse as an illustration.

I must have tried every color in the palette before finally asking them to put in some of my colleague’s green, but when I did I knew we had found our signature color. I chose it in part because that bold green looked pretty darned good with the black. But I also chose it because I made a quick mental association with “go.”

The mission of the Copyright Alliance has always been a positive one. Yes, we certainly point out the threat that creators are under. But when we are on top of our game, we are doing so by emphasizing the tremendous gifts creators give us, the pleasure their works bring, the riches they bring our culture and, yes, our economy.

Copyright has been a force for good, and will continue to be. We want to move forward, not back. We want to embrace progress, not ask regulators to retard it. Some fear-mongers stuck in “stop” mode won’t see this, but in my travels I see that when you get outside of the Digital Hollows echo chambers found online, most people get how copyright helped create what they enjoy.

Rock the green.

Share this:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 8:53 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creators, culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.