Two challenges

Couple of challenges have emerged to some of the COPYCOPYCOPY thinking in recent days:

First, some folk have suggested that (contrary to what I argue in the book) copying is NOT stigmatised in our culture.
Second, that IP is an important subject I skate around in the book.

I don’t know what you think but I’d probably plead guilty to the second charge – IP is an incredibly complex area with many technicalities that even the experts disagree on. I’m not sure that this book is the right place to do it justice.

Having said that, It’s worth acknowledging how recent legal IP protection is (the need to signal the authentic product was after all one of the reasons why branding became important in the 19th Century) and how elusive the notion of IP is (almost everyone I’ve worked with who was concerned about protecting their IP ended up with nothing of any particular value).

For me, the notion of IP – something created and owned by an individual – is both misleading and untruthful about how most innovation and new ideas happen. Without even knowing it, we borrow from things that already exist. James Watt didn’t invent the steam engine; he copied an engine (Newcomen’s) which had been in existence for 50 years and added an external condenser to it, to improve efficiency.

On the first charge I think I’m a lot clearer. Most of the time – in most contexts – copying IS stigmatised in our culture (IP protection is a lever to prevent it happening, isn’t it?). “Copyright” vs “copycats. etc.

There are contexts in which this is not the case – coding, for example, uses copying as quotidien mechanic (why write lines of code yourself when you can just cut and paste from a code library?), not least because it’s faster and more reliable (writing screeds of code afresh every time is bound to increase errors). Teaching music is another. Learning foreign languages another again (“Repetez, s’il vous plait!”). But in most contexts it remains a “bad thing” and a marker (“stigma”) of dubious morals.

Indeed, just as I chose “HERD” as a title for a book about our fundamentally social nature because it provoked a strong response from those who don’t like to think of themselves as “Sheeple” (UGH), so I also chose the term “COPY” because it kicks against received wisdom and cultural acceptability. I could have talked about “social learning” or “emulation” or “homages” or “bricolage” or whatever, but these euphemisms merely avoid the hard truth – our culture does not like copying…

What do you think?