Mob Pyschonnectivity

Mob Pyschonnectivity

It’s my new catchphrase (not a genius work I admit, but work with me). It refers to the now common occurrence of repetitive information deluge that begins on the corners of the net and becomes a trillion crows cawing to blot out the sky. Corporations should be scared. The mighty cease and desist has morphed from the tool of choice to excise a threat into a lit bomb fuse. And this time the powder burns are still on the lapels of the film industry attorneys who tried to cease and desist away the a code that unlocks HD-DVD copy protection.

The “pass it along” of the number has wound its way through chat rooms, forums, and my personal favorite:

“Keith Burgon, a 24-year-old musician from Westchester County, New York, grabbed his acoustic guitar at noon on Tuesday and improvised a melody while soulfully singing the number. He posted the song to YouTube, where it has since been played more than 45,000 times.” (Read the rest of the NY Times Article (reg’t req’d))

When the news hit Digg.com, it mushroomed. Ultimately, Digg.com the new “Am I Hot or Not” for net news and media (it is actually a great site) decided that the crows were more frightening than the suits. It bowed to the pressure of its users, who felt anything less than defiance was a trespass on their speech rights. Digg has become the King Leonidas of the Net.

I am decidedly torn on this issue. I am a proponent of open discourse on the internet, but I am loathe to support the notion that all intellectual property has gone the way of the dodo. Moreover, I question a culture that advocates a mass information riot sometimes just to “stick it to the corporations.” In any event, Mob Pyschonnectivity is something that attorneys should be wary of before they automatically resort to letters that have a long half life on the net.