You might want to take a more careful listen to that next broken-beat or vaguely Basic-Channelish track you download from some random MP3 site.
It might be a portion of someone's genome... ! ------ mail forwarded, original message follows ------ To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <Jon Ippolito> Subject: <nettime> copyrighting DNA tunes Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 09:48:42 -0400 >>From the Now I've Seen Everything Dept: "Maxygen's scientists and lawyers are proposing [to] encode the DNA sequences as MP3s or other music files and then copyright these genetic 'tunes'....As the 'authors' of these DNA-based songs, Maxygen could, in theory, control the rights to the compositions for 95 years or more--as opposed to the 17 years given under current patent law." http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,52666,00.html As laughable as Maxygen's proposal is, it also hints that the structural defects of copyright--which is supposed to protect the lowly from the mighty--are independent of the particular situation of art and artists. What's next, a Celera Genomics press conference with guest spokesman Lars Urlich? I pity you science fiction writers out there, trying to think up futures as bizarre as our present. jon # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]