{"id":1529,"date":"2022-08-22T08:43:30","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T15:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/?p=1529"},"modified":"2022-08-22T10:17:45","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T17:17:45","slug":"wil-wheaton-barney-the-eff-and-copyleft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/08\/wil-wheaton-barney-the-eff-and-copyleft.html","title":{"rendered":"Wil Wheaton, Barney, the EFF and Copyleft"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The biologist Richard Dawkins<\/a> is often credited with inventing the term meme<\/em> to describe how an idea or behavior can spread by means of repetition from person to person within a culture. Of course, now a days, when most people make mention of memes, they are usually referring to an Internet meme<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the idea of being able to capture and reuse cultural touch points on the Internet wasn\u2019t always a given. In the early days of the Web corporations were spooked at the idea of losing control of their intellectual property to the lawless Internet. Laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a> (DMCA) were passed to strength penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. More over many legal actions against individuals tended to ignore fair use <\/a>provisions included as part of copyright law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To counter the growing abuse of copyright law organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a> (EFF) started defending fair use rights and supporting \u201ccopyleft<\/a>\u201d licenses that applied copyright provisions in new, more collaborative ways. If not for organizations such as the EFF, it\u2019s unlikely that popular spaces such as TikTock<\/a> and Twitch<\/a> would exist today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, legal assistant doesn\u2019t come cheap, so organizations such as the EFF must get creative in raising fund and spreading their message to the public. Which explains why, 20 years ago<\/a> Wil Wheaton<\/a> fought Barney<\/a> at the DNA Lounge<\/a> in San Francisco. And oh, yeah, I was there too:<\/p>\n\n\n

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