So in watching this most recent episode of Diggnation (#199), I was very quickly pissed at one of the hosts (Alex Albrecht) for a project he’s undertaken. He’s part of a team creating an iPhone app that’s just of a dog licking a screen (so it looks like your iPhone has a little dog inside it licking the glass from the inside). It has the oh so creative name if iLick. Sounds like one of those little apps that you don’t really care about, but you know there are countless others out there willing to drop a buck or two to have this on their phone for whatever reason…
But anyway, here’s the rub. This is exactly like a web site/video with a claimed copyright of 2005 (link). So someone else did it years ago. That shows a lack of originality on the part of the app developers. It gets worse in my opinion due to the fact that one of the two major podcasts Albrecht co-hosts featured the video just referenced over a year ago (Diggnation #136).
I have no idea what level of intellectual property protection is available to the original creators, but regardless of that it shows an overt hijacking of an idea for profit. Sure, it’ll be on a small scale with little to no profit for the developers – but its the disregard for the originality of someone else’s idea that tick’s me off… And I know you can make the argument that his idea is different in specific ways – but it’s pretty clear that this idea looks a hell of a lot like another piece of media as well as his becoming specifically aware of it a long time ago in a very public forum.
So that got me to thinking about the whole notion of inspiration, borrowing, infringing, and stealing in terms of originality. That’s the whole purpose behind intellectual property laws, but intellectual property protection is so weak and useless unless you have lots of money to fund lawyers to establish and enforce such protection. To that end, intellectual property protection is a luxury to an extent… Sure, it’s inherent once you create something – but to protect it and enforce it takes more time and money than most have…
Using or taking the original ideas of others has advanced a lot of things… Television… Electricity… Transportation… Computers… While the act of doing so may be accepted to an extent, it is a definite window into the character of a person or company.
This is probably my biggest frustration and concern over all things internet based. Once you put something out there, there’s no 100% way to ensure that whatever you create won’t be stolen or misused to whatever ends. I love the creative commons movement, but it’s still got a ways to go.