How piracy hurts, but intellectual property theft might actually help the movie industry. Cheezburger Network's Ben Huh gets serious about copyright law.
Unless you want to see the kid from David After Dentist grown up and self-aware of his fame, this weekend’s ROFLcon convention on internet humor offered scant intellectual discourse. An exception was an impassioned lecture by Ben Huh, impresario of the lolcat sweatshop Cheezeburger Network on the future of intellectual property law and the web.
4chan harbors a resentment that Huh profitted from the Lolcat images and ideas that they created for free, and he's long been plagued by accusations (and even death threats) that he’s a ripoff artist profiting from the work of the exact kind of people in attendance at ROFLcon. In light of this, it wasn’t surprising that his stance is that people should just relax and not get so worked up about stealing intellectual property.
After a heckler was escorted out of the panel, Huh explained how culture and media moves and grows so much faster in countries like China where IP law doesn’t really exist. Sure, the people might be oppressed by their government, but they can make all the advice animals memes they want.
Of course, the flip side of China’s freedom to enjoy “remix culture” of funny internet pictures and videos is that the lack of copyright laws make it a hotbed of piracy of everything from electronics to clothing, and of course, pirating movies and music.
