After the success of his book The Pirate’s Dilemma, Matt Mason is of course talking all over the world about innovation in the cultural scene, youth cultures and how to compete with pirates. Here are some interesting videos on some of his talks, in preparation to his keynote speech at the Incubate Pirate Conference on September 17. First off, here’s a great promotional clip for his book, which is a great introduction in the subject of his book, if you haven’t read it yet:

Remember, you can still get a digital copy of the book via the Pirate’s Dilemma website, and you’re able to name your own price for it. Next is a video of a speech Matt gave at the Deutscher Trendtag last year. In this presentation, he discusses the topics of his book. Entitled The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, he talks about how underground cultures have brought on the most innovative ideas, which later often have been adopted by many businesses. He also explains how to compete with piracy, stating that it not only has negative effects but that pirates sometimes also create solutions that literally change people’s lives. Again, his conclusion is very clear and clever: if you want to beat pirates, copy them:

Piracy in the arts is the overarching theme of Incubate 2010. This theme is visible throughout all different parts of the festival program and will be especially investigated at the Pirate Conference on Friday September 17. Tickets for the conference are sold seperately from the festival tickets through incubate-innovation.org and you determine the ticket price. Arrr!

Charles Leadbeater will open Incubate 2010 with a keynote speech on Sunday September 12. Charles Leadbeater is a British author and former advisor to Tony Blair. His most recent book, We-think, explores the new phenomenon of mass creativity exemplified by web sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia and MySpace. Check out a brief overview of the basic ideas in this book in the clip below and after that see the man himself explain how the sharing of content and knowledge by plain people leads to bigger ideas and innovations than contemporary major companies are capable of.

Last year, when Matt Mason’s book The Pirate’s Dilemma got published in The Netherlands (titled: Piraterij; hoe hackers, punkkapitalisten en graffitimiljonairs onze cultuur remixen en de wereld veranderen), he was interviewed by Frank Meeuwsen for DutchCowboys.

The interview contains four short clips in which Matt mason describes and explains the Pirate’s Dilemma. He goes on to talk a little bit about youth cultures, his favourite pirates, and putting up a digital version of the book for Pay What You Want on his site: “10% of the people who downloaded the book, paid up to 5 dollars for it. And what was really interesting about that, was that it didn’t affect physical book sales negatively at all. When we first did it, we got so much press about doing the download, that actually physical book sales went up because more people were interested in the book.”

Watch the full interview here:

We’ve just confirmed Jiggy Djé to share his thoughts on copyright/piracy and the re-usage of culture at the Incubate Pirate Conference. Jiggy Djé will take seat in the panel following Matt Mason’s keynote speech on piracy in the arts. Other members of the panel are: Matt Mason, Martijn Arnoldus (Creative Commons Netherlands), Sander van de Wiel (Pictoright), and DJ /rupture. Atze de Vrieze (VPRO 3voor12) will moderate the panel.

Jiggy Djé is a Dutch rapper that started making hip hop in 1997. Together with DAC (De Amersfoortse Coöperatie) he released two albums: diDACtici in 2002 and Professioneel Chillen in 2005. In 2006, he won the public price at the Heineken Grand Prix, the oldest and most renowned Dutch music prize. The same year, Jiggy Djé released his debut album and founded his own record label; both titled Noah’s Ark. He signed artists like Hef, Önder and SpaceKees to this label. Follow Jiggy Djé on Twitter.

Tickets for the Pirate Conference can be bought trough the Pay What You Want principle. Through incubate.org and incubate-innovation.org visitors can indicate how many tickets they want to buy and what total amount of money they would like to pay for them. The payment can then be made via Paypal or bank transfer. The Pay What You Want principle is not applicable to the normal day tickets and passepartouts of Incubate. Incubate tickets can be bought through the Incubate website.

This blogpost is in Dutch, because the article it refers to is also in Dutch.

Naar aanleiding van ‘Embroidery’ van Rob Scholte schreef Rob van Gerwen een artikel dat (zoals veel werken van Scholte) sterk aansluit bij de thematiek van Piraterij. Getiteld “Een beeld is voor wie het waarneemt”, behandelt van Gerwen thema’s als beeldrecht, kijkplicht, merken(recht) en borduurwerk. In dit artikel vraagt hij zich onder andere af waarom het beeldrecht zo eenzijdig is en altijd uitgaat van degene die het beeld maakt, terwijl de betekenis van het beeld volgens van Gerwen juist wordt gevormd door diegenen die het beeld waarnemen.

“Misschien gaat die nadruk op beeld maken – in plaats van op beeld zijn – ervan uit dat alles in een gemaakt beeld er voor een welbepaalde reden zit. Maar misschien ook geldt dat alleen voor de zogenaamde meesterwerken – waarbij de kunstenaar zo geniaal is dat hij volledig bepaalt wat de aard en betekenis van zijn werk is – maar dat is een onhoudbaar idee, vindt ook Rob Scholte. Een kunstenaar bedenkt wel iets en stopt er ook heel wat energie en zorg in om zijn werk te realiseren, maar welke betekenissen dat werk vervolgens krijgt geeft hij uit handen. De betekenis van een beeld is altijd groter dan wat de maker voor ogen had. Ofwel: de maker bepaalt veel maar iets wat wezenlijk bij het beeld hoort, nl. zijn betekenis, komt pas tot stand wanneer mensen er gebruik van gaan maken.”

Download het hele artikel van Rob van Gerwen over ‘Embroidery’ van Rob Scholte hier.

Het werk van Rob Scholte is omstreden, mede omdat hij vaak gebruik maakt van bestaande afbeeldingen. Tijdens de Incubate Pirate Conference geeft Rob Scholte een lezing over de betekenis van piraterij binnen zijn werk en in de beeldende kunst in het algemeen.

We’re really proud to announce that Hank Shocklee will share his views on copyright and piracy with all of us at the Incubate Pirate Conference. Hank Shocklee is Music Producer, founder of Public Enemy & The Bomb Squad. The Bomb Squad is a hip hop production team, mostly known for their groundbreaking work on Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. This album, released in 1988 (before the record labels and lawyers really started paying attention to sampling), is known for its dense, sample-heavy production, often utilizing dozens of samples on just one track. The Bomb Squad are also known for their ability to incorporate harsh, unmelodic sounds and samples into their songs, generally enhancing them. Because of this highly influential sound and productionmethod Hank Shocklee is viewed by some as the Phil Spector of hip-hop.

A worldwide role model for pushing the envelope and breaking new artistic boundaries, Hank Shocklee is looked upon as the leader of the pack. Whether via his production legacy which continuously ranks at the top of the ‘best of’ lists or throughout the academic circuit, Hank’s ideologies and techniques are studied amongst a wide cross section of people that include music fans, aspiring artists, audio technology developers, universities and media policy makers.

As a DJ, producer, composer and record company executive, Shocklee has managed to work with and develop a large variety of artists and musicians across many genres all while keeping a very innovative approach and a distinction for high quality productions. Shocklee has been a force behind some of the most significant music and film projects of the last two decades including Public Enemy, Ice Cube, Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Anthony Hamilton, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, Ernest Dickerson’s Juice and countless others.

At the Pirate Conference, Hank Shocklee will be interviewed by Job de Wit (freelance pop/hip hop/house journalist) about his method of production, his view on (the future of) copyright, and sampling and the recycling of material to build a new work and a new context.

That same evening, The Bomb Squad will perform in the regular music program of the Incubate festival.

Tickets for the Pirate Conference can be bought trough the Pay What You Want principle. Through incubate.org and incubate-innovation.org visitors can indicate how many tickets they want to buy and what total amount of money they would like to pay for them. The payment can then be made via Paypal or bank transfer. Also visit incubate.org and incubate-innovation.org for more information on the program of the Incubate Pirate Conference.

The Pay What You Want principle is not applicable to the normal day tickets and passepartouts of Incubate. Incubate tickets can be bought through the Incubate website.

On September 17, Matt Mason will give a keynote speech at the Incubate Pirate Conference. Mason is the bestselling author of The Pirate’s Dilemma, the first book in the history of the world to hit the number one spot on Amazon’s economics/free enterprise bestseller list, and the rap bestseller list, at the same time.

In advance to the conference, you can download The Pirate’s Dilemma from Mason’s own site. The price is entirely up to you. Of course, we can only recommend you to download it and pay the price you think it is worth. It truly is an inspirational book.

In his own words: “There are millions of books on amazon.com, and on average each will sell around 500 copies a year. The average American is reading just one book a year, and that number is falling. The problem (to quote Tim O’Reilly) isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.”