Johanna Blakely: Lessons from fashion's free culture

http://www.ted.com Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. At TEDxUSC 2010, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

• Category

  People & Blogs

[Renato Valenzuela]

steve jobs and every Apple fanboy out there ought to watch this video.

[Evi1M4chine]

I am an expert in information physics, and I have proven in multiple ways, that information can not be owned. Ever. Simply said: If you prove it exists (passing it on is *mandatory* to do that), you can not keep control. If you keep control over it, you can not prove it exists.

You can try to punish people when you can prove they passed it on. But for all but a minute fraction you can never prove who passed it on to who. As that literally requires blocking DRM between your brain and your body.

[Pednuno]

It wasn't a very serious comparison. She was just trying to show people how big the industry without copyright protection is compared. Just a little visual for people to have an idea. She doesn't base anything on it.

[Fabio Yabu]

Cool lecture, very enlightening and fun. However, you just can't compare the gross sales of food and clothing with movies and literature, simply because every single human being needs to eat and dress, regardless of copyright protection! Can you imagine what it would be like? ;)

[kev3d]

She is also wrong in saying that things like Cars and Furniture are "Low I.P." What she should be saying is that they are "Low Copyright" but they are high in Patent and Trademark protection. Furniture manufacturer Herman Miller claims to hold over 160 patents for example. The sales figures are also misleading because everyone needs to eat and wear clothes and cars are comparatively expensive to movies and books and music.

[kev3d]

She is wrong, OF COURSE there is Patent Protection. Nylon, Gore-Tex, zippers, velcro, kevlar, various kinds of clasps and fasteners have all been patented at one time or another. Yes, those patents are not the artistic designs in and of themselves, but those patents are still constituent parts of those designs. So it is totally false to say there is no patent protection in fashion.

[wendy gould]

That was cool. What a clever lady. And even though she was really nervous I think she won her audience -they were with her all the way…

I was only going to listen to a little but found myself compelled to continue to the end.

Love her

[VictoriaSobocki]

never thought of it like that!

[MasterVertex]

a DRM chip in people's brains! You're a genious, I'll pass the idea on right away.

[Laura Hoke]

yeah exactly, music is nothing like the fashion industry, that's what she is pointing out. The music industry has doubled/tripled but due to copyright restrictions it's stunted in growth compared to other industries like fashion. People break copyright law all the time with movies and music anyways, why does it need to be illegal in the first place?

[whiterabbitpress]

>The independent music growth has been double and triple digits within the last 10 years

don't you think it's because of changes in distribution technology? Before the Internet you pretty much needed to get signed on a major label, or open for a popular band, to get more exposure than college radio play. But generally has nothing to do with these fashion industry statements.