Today I’m going to urge you to read a post about community. It’s a long post, but it’s an important one. The author looks at the impact of technology on copyright laws and business models, and forces us to look at the elephant in the room. Or, as he says (quoting Cory Doctorow), technology giveth and technology taketh away.

Where’s your community headed?

A brief excerpt:

More than one person has suggested to me that if everything is instantly available online for free, creators will simply stop releasing new material. If this were true, the music industry would have come to a stop over the last ten years. Yet musicians existed before there was a recording industry, and they will continue to exist after the recording industry in its present form has vanished.

Another brief excerpt:

Our cultural and legal battles are more and more turning out to be battles against young people. Besides being ill-advised on moral and spiritual grounds, a battle against the next generation is an obvious strategic blunder; young people have the insurmountable advantage of time on their side. They are going to emerge victorious.

Seriously, this post is worth reading.

Disclosure: The author, PeaceLove (aka, Jonathan), is my brother. But I’m sending you to his blog not because he’s related to me but because I think he’s framed a really big issue really well.

Photo by digitalART2.