What is the connection between Semiotic Democracy and Participatory Democracy?
• The IP crisis principally effects the workings of semiotic democracy. It is unclear the extent to which semiotic democracy (the manipulation and sharing of extant cultural products) and participatory democracy overlap. For every “Vote Different” ad that uses existing cultural products to further political discussion there are thousands of blog posts, comments, and Internet videos, that are entirely unaffected by IP concerns in the cultural sphere. • While the ability to embed YouTube videos of FoxNews coverage right into a blog post or quote liberally from the New York Times may be curtailed by harsher IP laws, that is a cherry on top of the Internet sundae. Under any IP regime, the Internet will continue to allow for the dissemination of individual non-derivative ideas.
