Thanksgiving and the Networked Community

This Thanksgiving I went to Connecticut with my boyfriend to celebrate the holiday with his best friends. Upon arriving at the house we would be celebrating in, I was greeted by a group of 14 very close, tightly connected friends that had clearly been sharing the bond of friendship for many years, through many experiences, in many different cities. Currently, the majority of them live in Boston, are in there late 20's/early 30's and are artists in some respect. There is a fashion designer, film directors, singers, composers, graphic designers, architects, actors, producers, and manager. Every one of them is a talented musician, and several bands exist in the circle as well. What was unique about this group of friends was the fact that they had decided to pool their creativity and distribute it in a number of different ways and into a number of different things. The graphic designers were designing the cover art for the bands and the bands were providing soundtracks for movies while the directors were shooting music videos for the bands, etc. etc. It was a beautiful synergy of talent, passion, and innovation that created new, interesting products and materials. This reminded me of a concept David Bollier presented in this week's reading. Bollier states that the issue with copyright today is that, "... it does not take account of the inherently social collaborative nature of creativity..." Additionally, he states that, "It is increasingly obvious that value-added creativity does not emerge solely through individual authors as copyright law presumes... It is becoming clear that originality does not reside solely in the individual but in the networked community." It was interesting to see this sort of small, enclosed, networked community in action. More and more I feel that society's notion of where originality comes from will shift and evolve, and hopefully copyright law will adapt to a new standard.