{"id":120,"date":"2009-03-26T18:31:02","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T18:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp\/?p=120"},"modified":"2009-03-26T18:31:02","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T18:31:02","slug":"lock_it_down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2009\/03\/lock_it_down\/","title":{"rendered":"Lock It Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

\"locks.JPG\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday I returned from New York to find that once again my neighborhood teen bad boys had tried to steal our scooter. The thing is equipped with lockable steering and a lockable kickstand, and the battery is still sitting in the house in winter storage, so pretty much all they could do was drag the 200 lbs. bike a few feet into the yard. Still, I am irritated. So today I went to my friendly local hardware store<\/a> and purchased $43.75 worth of security. The rest is up to fate, I suppose.<\/p>\n

The hardware store is a little more than a mile from my house, so I had time to muse on the situation while I walked through a persistent drizzle. (What can I say? All attempts at performing Singing in the Rain<\/i> for one fell flat.) I thought about our discussion<\/a> of copyright last week and re-examined if I had misjudged the situation in any way now that theft had come to my own back yard (unfortunately, in the literal sense). For me, it was kind of like watching The 700 Club<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, when my comparisons were complete, it seemed that I was iTunes-ing the situation (very similar strategy of slowing potential thieves down with locks–though I’ve seen them cut through 1″ steel cable before, so no illusions on its effectiveness given adequate time to work). The difference, of course, was that if they took the scooter, I would not have a scooter. Still, a scooter is a thing I bought. What if it was a thing I had built…from scratch…with my dad (sniff)? Talk about quadruple pissed to the nth degree. I empathized with the music creators who felt they were being robbed blind with no cops in sight.<\/p>\n

But I realized that that’s precisely the reason I feel so desperate to get reasonable rules for this new game worked out. I don’t argue that rights and regulations are still valuable in the digital age. It’s the chaos I hate. Right now when people consider how they can correctly use materials in their own work, they’re likely to feel wrapped in a bunch of heavy Marley-style chain link while the content is just sitting there in the open field, innocent as a babe. For anyone who wants to do things right, they’ll struggle mightily to do anything at all. All this at a time when almost any conversation about recorded digital media is how to monetize it! <\/p>\n

By the time I got back to the house, I didn’t have any new answers, but pushing the conversation felt even more critical. Carrying around all that metal was exhausting, and I’d like to be able to expend my energies on building something new rather than protecting something old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I returned from New York to find that once again my neighborhood teen bad boys had tried to steal our scooter. The thing is equipped with lockable steering and a lockable kickstand, and the battery is still sitting in the house in winter storage, so pretty much all they could do was drag the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}