I came across this cool sticker project by Evan Roth, of the famous F.A.T. (Free Art and Technology) group, where he put stickers that said “Available for Free on the Internet” on software, music and movies on store shelves as part of his upcoming “Available Online For Free” show and book release. For the first few seconds I though it was a cool anti-DRM anti-copyright law message, but then I began to realize that it had some undermining aspects as outlined by some of the astutely written comments.
It ultimately raised the concern that this particular case of sticking it to the MAN only sticks it to the entry level workers getting crappy pay who will be ordered by management to scrape them off. No one who opinions truly matter in the the handling of the said issues would probably ever see it. Also, considering the economic climate were spending is the very thing we want to encourage (at least with those who have the means), this undermines several valid causes worth promoting at the expense of promoting one. It just serves as a lesson to artists that when you release work into the world you think of the number of ways it can be interpreted. You should be aware BEFOREHAND of this range of interpretation, and make sure the interpretation you support is clearly represented in the work, if it isn’t then it is simply unsuccessful.
(Update: crediting Evan Roth, not F.A.T, for this piece. -halvfet)
