“Wait. Back that up. What did he just say?”

It’s the end of the week and I’ve finally gotten around to watching the 2008 Macworld keynote, dutiful geek that I am. Jim Gianopoulos just whipped a Family Guy DVD out from under his jacket and tossed off that 20th Century Fox will be including pre-ripped file copies on their DVDs, transferable to your iTunes library with a click.

(Before you jump down my throat about this hardly being new information, yes, I read all the rumors and saw the leaked screenshots weeks ago just like everyone else. But when it comes to Apple rumors—as with all retail tech rumors—I adopt a decidedly won’t-believe-it-until-I-can-buy-it attitude.)

Corporate sanctioned, studio facilitated Fair Use?

These kids might finally be getting it.

Asterisk

Okay, okay. So it ain’t perfect. It’s still wrapped in DRM. It only works within the iTunes/iPod universe. (These choices really boil down to issues of majority user behavior and coopetition, but there’s enough there for a whole other lengthy conversation. And no, this isn’t technically the first time. But the use case is so radically different it might as well be.)

Any way you slice it though this is a walking, talking Fair Use—the red-headed stepchild of the media world—delivered by none other than an über-corporation. In recent years if leviathans like this have deigned to cast their glance upon Fair Use it’s typically been to scream, “A witch! Burn her, burn her!” (Pun intended.)

That a major studio is publicly (albeit implicitly) admitting Fair Uses even exist is pretty singular in recent media history, let alone the notion that they’re going to hand one over to Jane Q. Customer at no extra charge.

This is what’s known as establishing a precedent. Quietly, tentatively, but unmistakably.

Please, sir, may we have some more?

Now, honestly, web designers can survive just fine without those articles. But WebMonkey has been around since dinosaurs roamed the Earth and 3.0 browsers first blew your mind. While it’s lagged for some time, it was an important presence in the then-nascent field of web design. A place where scores of designers first figured out how Tab A fit into Slot B. The content stored in its archive forms an historical record about how much of the early Web was made. It’d be a shame if that was blotted out.

Unless the parent company wants to relaunch WebMonkey in earnest or otherwise reuse the content in some way this seems like a textbook case of abandonware. (Yes, I know that term is usually reserved for applications, but this isn’t an “orphaned work” either—the copyright holder is pretty darn easy to find in fact.) If that’s the case, I’d advocate that this content be placed in the public domain.

To be sure, simply pushing something out into the public domain doesn’t solve everything. Somehow that content has to be maintained. Whether it’s bandwidth charges or hard drive space on your Great Aunt Tilly’s iMac, there are associated costs. But at least this way you’ve ensured that the information can still exist in an accessible form somewhere.

There has to be a better way than just blanking out useful knowledge.

For me the most salient point of the evening was Lessig’s observations on the “collateral damage” of our current (and possibly future) IP regime. It’s cultivating an entire generation that feels, as he put it, “the law is an ass.”

The laws that have the most direct impact on creative culture are increasingly antithetical to how the creative process unfolds (influence, collaboration, and variation — throw in the occasional dash of genius here and there). An entire generation of creatives intuits this. They see the dissonance between how the creative process works and what the law tells them they can and cannot do. They take one look at the law and scoff.

The fellow sitting next to me was a junior high music teacher who put his dilemma to Lessig during Q&A. I feel for this guy. By the very nature of his job he’s charged with cultivating the minds of the next generation. What’s he to do? Tell them that the creative process that birthed jazz, kick-started the Renaissance, and gave Hendrix his licks simply doesn’t apply to them? He wanted to know what he could tell his students. Succinctly, Lessig said to tell them, “be creative.”

Remix, and damn the torpedoes.

Update: Video of the event is finally available at Wilcoworld