You could look across cultures at design from the past and see where an artists’s work simply couldn’t be recreated easily because the work was so skillfully done, duplication too difficult for most. Those paintings can be mass produced posters now, more people can see the imagery. We benefit a lot from living in these times. Products created faster, information faster, learning easier.

When you think of this topic It’s all about what people consider “bad” in their hearts for themselves. If they’re personal rewards are higher for an original work which required a certain amount of learning they wanted to do, they will follow that path. Some just want money. And when they have money, they don’t care about what they did to get it. Designers are not the worst category of industrialist for this behavior.

With cover bands, you have to remember that some people just love playing music, love the crowds and are creating a show based on what people can’t see from the original. Led Zeppelin isn’t touring, but a cover band can be a good alternative. And that band loves playing their favorites for themselves and for you. And they should earn the money doing that at a venue. People like to see how good cover bands do.

Architecture in many different centuries was copied and it was part of that period of time and region. I think if you keep growing and changing your own design, you’ll always be a step ahead. The present moment in many ways is all that counts anyway. Dwell on the copiers and the leeches and how far into that state of mind do you let yourself go. Far enough to distract you from your own goals?

So many industries and craftsmen have had to deal with technology making their work easier. Continue to take advantage of what the technology gives you. You know that you try to copy yourself after you do something good. Reuse that framework, those stylesheets, those flash slideshows. So you can move just as fast as copiers can. They aren’t making you worse.

And I think it’s good for the masses too that copiers are out there. Because people in business tend to extract as much as they can from an invention. When copies are out there, they learn they can’t just not compete and sit on their invention forever getting royalties. It sucks, but the more you want to regulate, litigate stall the process, the more time you spend on that and not creating. Probably the less you are creating, the slower technolgy progresses by whatever increment you were contributing.

I just read this quote on Digg or Metafilter or something and I thought it was very interesting, I kind of appreciate it more than maybe I would have a couple years ago. The concept was all about authenticity.That’s the question. What makes something authentic?
http://log.scifihifi.com/post/68006873/nothing-is-original-steal-from-anywhere-that