Jesus Preached Open Source
Luke
9:49 - And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.
9:50 - And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us, is for us.
Within Jesus’ time he had already become a meme. A unit of culture, propagating throughout the immediate civilized world. The passage of that meme was free and uninhibited and then soon to be amplified by his martyrdom. Jesus understood not to inhibit this process, let it be free and simply warn people of perilous inauthenticity of imitations (the “antichrists”). Thus the followers had a vested interest in maintaining the value of the original brand.
Intellectual property has always had value, even before the “information age”. At one time this was best exploited by the distributors rather than the creators because those who distributed were best at amplifying the message. They were also best at safe guarding the exclusive originality of an idea because of their extensive financial resources.
Now that the cost of disseminating content has dropped dramatically and their ability to enforce copyright law has waned, the distributors’ power has faltered in favor of the aggregators - those that can propagate the message to willing and interested audiences. It is back to the plurarchy where those who have a personal investment in the content will defend it’s integrity. Part of that includes a sort of voluntary offering and community that invests in the health of the church. However, instead of it being a religious church, it is the church of the humanities - not agnostic but a believer in the value of man and that which we express which is beyond the understanding of common empirical practice.
