The danger of being ignorant is in becoming unable to distinguish truth from lies, and thus being reduced to spouting garbage on one's blog (like Avatar does today):
The creation of anime requires, to put it bluntly, a tremendous amount of scut work. [...] That sort of project can't be done by the bazaar. You can't open-source it. Basically, you have to pay people to do it. [...] So keep that in mind - in a copyleft, non-profit environment, anime dies.
The way media companies attempt to frame the debate is conflating truth with lies. Anyone who's been to a Dale Carnegie course knows how it works: make someone agree with you ("stealing is bad, right?") and then maintain the agreement while you drive the discussion ("and so, ripping a soundtrack from your DVD is immoral").
Anime requires a tremendous investment, that much is true. But what does Open Source have to do with anything? If Avatar had actually read Lessig's book, he'd have known that the issue of media monopolies bending the law for protection of the incumbents and to the detriment of consumers has nothing to do with it.
If the bending is done right, in the end your willing sock puppets with agree with any nonsense on their blogs. How is "copyleft" synonymous with "non-profit"? Red Hat and MySQL sell nothing but copylefted things and reap handsome profits for it. It simply is FUD to conflate these things.
I don't want to debate the rest of the article, because while it makes some good points (like noting the expense of anime), they are unfortunately obscured by the ignorance and parrotting the rhethoric of the ringleaders for the "intellectual property".
UPDATE: This topic seems to degenerate quickly, and I'm a part of the problem. So I'm not going to respond to Steven's accusation that "Red Hat has never made a schedule and stuck with it". It seems like my tangential point about ignorance was more true than I realized! Now if you excuse me, I have some bugs to fix, because the schedule for RHEL 5 U3 includes them (the same schedule which we never made).
UPDATE: Shamus managed to get involved. Look, I know that I did not address your bloody point. I was not trying to address it. All I want is Andy to stop posting innuendo about Open Source while trying to reason about copyright. He brought this into the discussion for no reason. Show me where Omo is proposing a cooperative development of anime by amateurs. You can't, because he doesn't!
I'm afraid I have to continue to educate here. Lessig was not arguing for amateur access specifically. He pointed out the massive reuse of material in the property based media industries, and he also pointed out that by the gradual strengthening of the copyright regime in America these industries were strangling themselves. Normalization of the copyright regime would benefit the amateur access (which Steven and Andy keep mixing with "Open Source"). But it is entirely peripheral to the survival of anime.
Just look at the eyecatches. They are only protected by the fair use, and you again Lessig has demonstrated how flimsy that protection is. Can you say GAINAX LAWSUIT? If it was Disney and Mickey Mouse, the lawsuit surely would be there in a moment. I can even go further, how about Geneon suing NHK for plagiarism?
It has to be clear for anyone who is not brainwashed to pull open source into the discussion that the status quo is untenable.