For my last post, I chose an interesting TED Talk, "Lessons from Fashion's Free Culture" by Johanna Blakley that has slightly different angle from other 5 Ted Talks. Johanna Blakley focuses on the field of fashion, which is the only one era that is not shackled by patents and copyrights. She rather, counterintuitively, says that it is a good thing that it is not attacked by copyrights. Since the fashion industry has a complete zero copyrights when it comes to the design, there are many fashion imitations. However, Blakley expresses that this did not hurt the industry, which would have normally did in other fields. It did not make a huge problem in fashion field because the customers who buy the fakes are not the same as the customers who buy the real thing.
Blakley puts her own opinion by saying that other industries need to update their ideas on copyright in this new digital age. I personally found her claim interesting that "clothing was too utilitarian to have copyright and patents applied to it." I agree on her saying that weak copyrights and patent protections in the fashion field did not reduce people's incentive to innovate. I thought that such lacking protection of copyrights encouraged designers to make brands stronger, not weaker.
I really liked this Ted talk and your summary! Interesting thoughts here.
ReplyDeleteI also wrote my blog on her. Personally, I also find her arguments behind why lack of IP protection lead to stronger innovation in fashion industry appealing. However, I am hesitate to apply the same logic to other fields as the nature of the products are quite different.
ReplyDeleteThis was a fantastic TED talk. You summed it up very well, but you could analyze it in more detail. She was a great speaker indeed; however, like Yi has stated above, it may prove problematic applying the same IP regulations to different industries as the success from this could vary significantly.
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