• Moore's law probably doesn't apply to biology, but if it did, it suggests that life as we know it began before the Earth existed. Genetic complexity as a function of time has been extrapolated backwards, but it's obviously more of an interesting thought experiment than a meaningful biological theory. [url]
• NASA's Curiosity rover has analyzed some martian rock samples to answer the question: "could life have ever been supported on Mars?" The answer seems to be yes, but that still doesn't mean Mars had (or has) any life. [url]
• Do we need to look for alien life that's already amongst us? A shadow biosphere on earth could be an explanation for some mysteries like "desert varnish"... or Occam's razor might start cutting in here. [url]

Yes, that's the trailer for a new video game to be released shortly, and it was inspired almost entirely by an online group and the resulting internet meme the group produced. Included amongst this list of video games resulting from internet memes, the entire premise of the game began with what was essentially a bitch-session online over how awful shooter game sequels are.

It all started with a joke on a forum. One NeoGAF forum user, annoyed with how lazy shooters had become, complained that he was tired of games like 'Dudebro 2: It's Straight-Up Dawg Time.' It grew from there.

The phrase became a byline for tired, me-too games, but it was so absurd that it got people thinking. Soon, it had mock cover art and a storyline. Before long, a team of fans were working on an entire game, a 2D platformer, and it's on the way soon. It even stars Jon St. John, the actor famous for voicing Duke Nukem.

I think once you publish something, you lose control of it. At worst, you inspire mockery and parody. At best, you become material for future work, because what you’ve made is successful, interesting, or relevant. Usually, it is both.

All work produces spill-over repercussions that usually go against the will of the work’s creator. The creator wishes to retain authorship and control the work, while those in the culture wish to use, transform, and remix it. If the work is truly successful, it will defy authorship and turn into a shared experience for everyone. Those works are the hardest to control, because they diffuse, and spread wide by permeating into the air. The become a shorthand for those who make or enjoy similar work, becoming a shared vocabulary.

The situation requires things from both those who create the work, and those who wish to use it.

For the initial creator, they must resign most control upon publication, especially on the internet. Their work will be used to say and do things they don’t intend. Ideas, in truth, go further when others carry them, and this usually means they will go in directions the original author did not intend or imagine. For instance, I’ve had a quote of mine (“People ignore design that ignores people.”) taken out of context and used to justify two completely contradictory design methods. So it goes.

For those that use the things made by others, they should credit where possible, and have their work be transformative in some way. They can carry the ideas of others, but they must to take it further or a new direction. Then, they are obliged share alike. To not do both is to go against the goodwill initiated by the work’s creator.

And for both, we should recognize that all creative processes use materials from those who came before us, and respect the meaningful influence of others. We’re part of a long line of people who make things. It is a privilege to get to use the work of others in our own.

This simple assumption, however, is incorrect. First, copyright as the basis of artists' income is just one of many cultural economic models, namely that in which the "first copy" receives substantial investment that has then to be recouped (and more) through the sale of specific usage rights (licenses) to the users of further copies. This model is by no means applied across all domains of culture and, even where it is, it generates extremely unequal incomes. By and large, copyright-centered business models generate blockbuster economies, in which very few people earn very substantial incomes while the great majority of producers receive little to nothing for their work. Thus, the argument that copyright generated income works well only for a few, highly visible artists and their supporting industries.

Given that most independent videos on YouTube would have received no revenue at all under the old copyright regime, the important thing to recognise is that it is possible to gain some revenue by providing free access to one's material. A such, it represents a functioning, if limited, commercial opportunity enabled by a weak copyright environment.

Hello, my name is Daniel and I make songs. You can see my stuff by typing "Dan Bull" into YouTube. I've decided to find out what my music is really worth so I'm sticking myself on eBay. The winning bidder will receive:

One song on any topic of your choice, written, performed and produced by Dan Bull. Duration: 2.30 - 3.30 approx. I will liaise with you via e-mail if there any specific details you wish to include in the song. You will be free to use and redistribute this song in any way you wish, however I reserve the right to do the same. The song will be delivered to you in MP3 format within 14 days of the winning bid.

Get bidding now, because this may never happen again. Love from Dan :) x

We have succumbed to the tyranny of novelty, and music will take a beating until we wake up from this collective trance in which we’re all only chasing the newest, "nowest" thing, in which the only values we can agree upon are buzz generation and viral success. In this environment, a unique real-time experience is worth paying for simply because it is a unique real-time experience.

we're doing this for one main reason: because we're all going to be in the same place at the same time and we couldn't bear the thought of just sitting at a panel table, discussing the internet and not actually taking advantage of the time and the resources to MAKE SOMETHING. we, all four of us, are artists who LIKE MAKING SHIT.

we could have met up the night before our panel, caught a few of the other talks, got drinks together, attended the speakers dinner at the conference, chatted about our careers, had a nice leisurely dinner with each other, and said goodnight-i'll see-you-at-the-panel-in-the-morning.

that would have easily taken 8 hours.

instead, we're doing none of that and we're going to lock ourselves in a studio and make something together. WE decided to do this, nobody asked us to.

1. I think Schlosberg has set up a false dilemma here in thinking that the "tyranny of novelty" is somehow new or being driven more by the way things are in this digital age. He does admit that it's always been a part of the music industry, but I think he's overreacting somewhat in thinking that this means that great music isn't also being produced. Admittedly, there was some extra hype in the press release about how this little experiment shows how the music industry is changing, but we should all know better than to key in on a throwaway hype line in a press release.
2. Some of the discussion goes back to the same old question of the magic bullet. People want to find out what is the answer to the struggles the recording industry has had, and they want to assign way too much credibility to a key example or event, rather than recognizing that while you can pull lessons from all sorts of experiments, there is no magic bullet. That doesn't mean you can't learn from each experiment and pull out interesting lessons and see where they can be applied. It just means there's no universal "this is how it's done."
3. Finally, it seems sort of silly that anyone should have to defend getting together with some other creative friends to create some content, in the name of "but that content creation strategy is a gimmick." Let them create and stop worrying about it. In a time when people keep telling us that there are fewer and fewer incentives to create (not that I believe that), shouldn't we be cheering on a bunch of folks who get together and say "let's make something, just for the fun of it!"?

The current American system rewards authorship rights to corporate owners at the expense of both consumers and authors. The European tradition rewards moral rights to authors at the expense of the rest of the culture. Neither represents the most desirable system, in part because both falsify the actual conditions of authorship. Authors do not create value in a vacuum. All writers are already readers who are processing elements of their culture as the raw material for their own expressive and intellectual output, and in turn, their work becomes the raw materials for the next phase of creative expression.

The creator of content owns the content because he created it through his own labor, and you should always own the fruits of your own labor.

His argument? "If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it." And likewise, for "music, movies, software." But note the mistake here Johson makes: "If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it." The "therefore" is the giveaway: he says this because he thinks of the creation of the loaf as the act that gives rise to ownership. Then this leads to the analogy with other created things, like music. But creation of the loaf is not the reason why the baker owns it. He owns the loaf because he owned the dough that he baked. He already owned the dough, before any act of "creation"--before he transformed it with his labor. If he owned the dough, then he owns whatever he transforms his property into; the act of creation is an act of transformation that does not generate any new property rights. So creation is not necessary for him to own the resulting baked bread. Likewise, if he used someone else's dough--say, his employer's--then he does not own the loaf, but the owner of the dough does. So creation is not sufficient for ownership.

The more we looked, the more the neighboring details fell into place. Smith's version was mirrored left to right so I loaded the image in Photoshop and flipped it. "Oh my god! He totally stole my work!" I was dancing around the room. "Paul Smith stole from me!" I will admit it was a strange reaction. I didn't realize this until later in the day. I was actually thrilled that someone had ripped me off. Someone I liked.