AKMA’s Random Thoughts

EFF, Ahoy!

Just in time for this year’s “Blog Like a Pirate Day,” I saw a t-shirt today in one of the stores dedicated exclusively to t-shirts and sweatshirts. It read, “Piracy: Just Like Hostile Takeovers, Without the Paperwork,” and features a skull and crossbones. Because I was in a Free Culture sort of mood, I was thinking about piracy and what it was “just like,” considering the ways that a Free Culture, Open Source kind of guy resembled a pirate, and the ways he might differ.

Then tonight, Pippa and I watched Jason and the Argonauts (it was a rainy night, and the Dreamland Theater was playing Open Water and the other downtown theater — I’ve forgotten its name, it used to be the Shaggy Dog, I think — was playing The Door in the Floor, and we didn’t care to see either of them). You may remember that the climactic scene in Jason involves a fight between three stupefied-looking Argonauts and seven animated skeletons; that jogged my mind back to the piracy and skull-and-crossbones theme.

I realized that a Creative Commons emblem couldn’t just be a skull and crossbones, since part of the point is that the culture for which we’re struggling isn’t properly someone else’s good that we want to steal, but rather is should be recognized as a common good, that we want to turn loose for the benefit of the culture in general. Instead of a skull, then — a light bulb (illuminating its surroundings, and itself an invention whose patent we would not want to have seen extended indefinitely). The crossed bones — a pen (obviously) and. . . a microphone?

We’ve already established that I’m not design wizard, but this is what I whipped up in Freehand. . . .

Posted by AKMA at August 22, 2004 11:57 AM | TrackBack