Wallace & Gromit teach Oz kids to respect patents
Museum exhibit “contains strong and accurate IP messages”
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Wallace & Gromit have taken on their toughest challenge yet: teaching Australian kids to respect intellectual property rights raising a generation of patent trolls.
The plasticine pair travelled to Australia to appear in the Wallace & Gromit's World of Invention exhibition at Scienceworks, one of several museums run by Museums Victoria.
Visitors will have the chance to tour what’s being billed as “a life-size version of Wallace and Gromit’s home” in which it is possible to “discover how simple ideas transform into life-changing inventions.”
Inventions on show include the Telly-scope II, the Blend-o-matic, the Thinking Cap and the Karaoke Disco Shower, plus the Chocolate Teapot and Ice Hot Water Bottle.
Notes accompanying the exhibits explain each invention, and do so in terms approved by IP Australia, the exhibit’s principal sponsor and provider of Australia’s patent office, trademark and design registry and also the overseer of plant breeders’ rights.
“We … have worked with Scienceworks to ensure that the exhibition contains strong and accurate IP messages that are relevant to an Australian audience,” IP Australia’s website boasts. “We hope that the exhibition inspires a new generation of Australian inventors who understand IP rights and how to use them to protect their inventions.”
As the parent of a child who insisted on spending AUD$50 of birthday funds on a plastic “elder wand” at a recent Harry Potter exhibition, your correspondent hopes that the IP messages are also present in the inevitable gift shop, along with an explanation of licensing fees and colossal markups.
It's not the first time the inventive duo have hitched their wagon to IP protection: London's Science Museum did likewise in 2009. ®
COMMENTS
Next up, Krusty the Clown!
"Hey kids! Have you heard of 'culture'? Yeah, that's right. It's what you get when you buy a DVD or a CD.
What's that? You think human culture should be free from corporate profiteering? Nothing could be further from the truth! Without corporations to make money from you, there's be no jobs. And your mummy and daddy would die from a lack of food. You love mummy and daddy, don't you? You don't want to see them die of starvation on the streets, do you?
And without a corporation to control what you can see and talk about, why...you could see or think just about anything! And that would be bad kids, because then you might think that corporations are all bad and you wouldn't give them any money and then your mummy and daddy would lose their jobs and we all know what happens when mummy and daddy lose their jobs!
So love mummy and daddy, and never ever EVER try to engage in freedom of expression or have an original thought.
Thank, have a nice day."
Re: Next up, Krusty the Clown! - Wrong trousers is one thing, but this is plainly below the belt.
If I had two upvotes, I'd use them on this.
I keep losing what little respect I have for copyright every time I see an un-fastforward-able doomsday message from fbi (or whatever). Or I can't download something I am willing to pay for, just because I can't download/stream because of where I'm trying to do the paying.
You see, copyright is meant as a mechanism to get the content-creators to get their due (so they can afford housing, food and pints of lager or guinness by doing what they do well and we enjoy consuming)
So: I'd be only too happy to pay for the priviledge of paying the artists and artisans their due for their hard work.
I'm more bound by moral obligations than technical ones. And I know most people are, or at the very least as long as it's convenient. Trying to block me from decoding a DVD or a BluRay disc I bought, so I can watch it on my non-spinning-media-able device is plain stupid. I am up to the challenge, thanks to the teenager-boffins who have made circumventing it easy and only a websearch or a torrent away.
Now getting Wallace and Grommit in this thing is plain dirty. Wrong trousers is one thing, but this is plainly below the belt.
How sad
Yet another of my heroes (Wallace and Grommit this time) have feet of clay !
Errrr
I'll get me coat
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