A week ago, Boingboing blogged about Microsoft’s British short film competition titled, “Thought Thieves.” The weirdness of the title has taken a little while to sink in.
If, however, copyright law and policy seems Orwellian at times, then it is just and proper that the Thought Police should be tracking Thought Thieves. The Constitution tells us that copyright should be guided by the progress of Science. But as Orwell wrote:
In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science.’ The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.