as usual, i have copyright and culture on the brain.  between the UMUC CIP symposium at the end of May and ALA in Anaheim last week, i’ve got a lot of thoughts rattling around in here.  this ALA conference seemed unusually full of copyright-related material.  In addition to the usual ACRL and OITP meetings concerning copyright, there were quite a number of programs, including (but not limited to!) a screening of the excellent film Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property, the SPARC forum, the OITP Copyright 101 poster session and program, and Media Literacy, Artistic Expression, and Copyright sponsored by the ACRL copyright committee.  But I think it’s really two experiences, one at the very beginning of the conference and one at the very end, that made this ALA a particularly rich one for me as someone deeply interested in the production of culture materials and its relationship to commerce.

I had the privilege of presenting a preconference with Karen Munro and my fellow ⌘-F-er Anne-Marie Deitering.  Our talk was about instruction and social software and I was delighted and gratified that both Anne-Marie and Karen were excited about spending some of our valuable time talking about copyright issues and, particularly, advocacy around fair use and the use of Creative Commons licenses.  Lesser mortals wouldn’t have seen the strong connection there.  And I was even more excited that they let me lead that part!  What really got me, though, was how energizing the topic seemed to be for this room of librarians who didn’t know in advance that they’d be hearing a copyright sermon.  I was amused to be delivering this ode to fair use from the belly of the beast - the Disneyland Hotel.  I warned everyone in advance that if the mic cut out and the goons came to take me away, they’d know why.  I felt so proud to be part of our profession while I looked out at our participants who were all nodding emphatically, smiling, and generally seeming completely energized by my assertion that fair use is a speech issue, that fair use is our issue, and that we need to unite with others who care about these things - with the OSS programmers, with the artists and musicians, with the activist groups working on these issues like the EFF, etc, etc.  Anne-Marie commented that she felt like people were energized in part because what I was talking about was a vision for our profession, describing a vital role for us in one of the defining information issues of our time.  Personally, I couldn’t be more thrilled that, at least for that moment and for those librarians, that vision for our profession included passionate talk and action about copyright.  I left the room feeling so optimistic.

My last day at the conference held the real surprise for me, though.  Breakfast at the Hilton found me sitting at the counter next to a couple of guys from Detroit.  They asked me if I was a librarian and we got to talking.  Turns out they were 2/3s of the band, The High Strung.  The High Strung aren’t necessarily the kind of band you might expect to find at ALA (is there a kind of band you’d expect to find at ALA?) unless you’re a fan of This American Life or a librarian or patron at one of the 100 or so public libraries these guys have played in the past few years.  So the basic deal is this…teen librarian Bill Harmer got the idea to book these guys to play teen events at some public libraries in the Detroit area and the next thing you know, they’re doing a national tour of libraries.  These guys are out on the road as I write this on their THIRD tour of public libraries in the US.  What the heck does this have to do with copyright?  Here’s what I think, and tell me if this is a stretch…

I’m pretty sure that most of the librarians who book The High Strung to play shows at their library are doing it, basically, to show the kids - mostly teenagers, some younger kids - that the library is a really cool place, a place that values them, that it rocks.  And that probably works.  Because this band, and here’s the thing, they’re really good.  They’re not some kiddie band, filling some quirky niche.  These are guys you’d go see in a club.  And this is a band making honest to goodness real music.  Music because they have to.  Because they’re musicians and they have no choice.  The songs come, the songs get made, the music gets made, and the music gets shared.  Because that’s what music does.  That’s what music wants.  We’ve always gathered to the warm places - fires, community centers, churches, town halls - and made and listened to music.  Music is social and it is shared.  So, listen, this is what these guys do - they play an hour long set of terrific rock songs, not dumbed-down-for-kids songs, but literary, smart, tight rock songs, and then (and this is what kills me) they write a song with the audience.  They did this at the Gale event I saw them at at ALA and while i am absolutely terrified by and annoyed by “audience participation” as a rule — this was pretty amazing.  So think about these kids, maybe in some rural or suburban public library, going to see this band.  A real band, making real music.  And then being invited to participate in that process, the process of making real music.  And being truly respected by the musicians.  Maybe this is their first concert (remember yours?).  Maybe this is the first time they’ve experienced rock music outside of the context of the Music Industry.  Maybe this is the first chance they’ve had to see that music is a sweaty, messy, beautiful thing that has nothing to do with the business of music.  That whatever apparatus we need for the packaging and distribution of recorded music, it has nothing to do with the experience of creating songs.  together.  in one of those warm places: in this case, a library.  And I think allowing kids to have this understanding of art, of creation, is absolutely fundamental if we’re going to have any hope for a vital movement against corporate control of the products of our culture, against lawyers controling expression, and against what might be the most pernicious thing of all — the idea that making music is something only the few can do, only those that make it through the image machine that is music industry. I don’t know if the High Strung know this is what they’re doing.  I suspect they might just be musicians doing what musicians do - making music, taking to the road, sleeping in vans and foresaking their homes because the music insists on being shared town to town.