We all approach new media with a unique set of filters, preconditions, and beliefs. These are predominantly the accumulation of a lifetime of our personal experiences, but they also include direct/referential input about the media in question: critical reviews, recommendations from friends, trailers, commercials, etc.

Up to now, it’s practically a given that you experience a new piece of media first through the original/source version, even as you bring your unique perspective to it. Later, you may view a mashup, a satire, a commentary, or some other derivative/referential version (a new media in it’s own right but whose message is framed by the source material it references).

The experience I had, however, was reversed: I saw the mashup first. In fact, I still haven’t seen the movie.

And it’s not the first time this has happened. The World War II film, Downfall, sparked a series of seemingly never-ending mashups, showing Hitler going ballistic over everything from the Watchmen movie to BluRay’s success over HD. I’ve seen and enjoyed several instances of this Internet meme, but I still haven’t seen the original film.

No doubt, my viewing of the original will be affected by this. Instead of watching the bunker scene with tense anticipation, I’ll be trying to recall the exact lines from the mashups.

While experiencing original source media will likely continue to be the norm, first exposure to new media through derivative versions will grow. I believe this will encourage an already frenetic culture of content remixing, even if that means the remixer is creating a derivative work from a derivative work (and on), never using or experiecing the original/source material.

This is, from a very big picture view, nothing new.

Several people (Lessig, Boyle, etc.) have pointed to the current copyright climate as a stranglehold on innovation, a freezing of cultural growth, and a perverse interpretation of physical property rights through the lens of intellectual property. A common refrain is that – until the last century – all culture was derivative in some form.

Changes in copyright law have extended the protection of material well beyond the death of the creator, and the current lack of an effective system for cataloging who owns what rights to what content essentially sentences almost all content to an unending, unprofitable purgatory. Even if you wanted to pay a rights owner for the use of their content, finding them is challenging at best. It’s easier to just move on to another piece of content.

With the advent of technology, people are easily able to remix and share content. And they will continue to do so, even if it’s illegal (even if they don’t commercially profit from it).

No matter what side of the legal fence you find yourself on, the reality is that people are experiencing media in ways content creators no longer control.

I just cleaned out my RSS reader, twitter, and Friendfeed updates, and I was struck – once again – at the number of examples of how analog product is shifting towards a status of antiques. I define an analog offering as a physical object containing digitized or digitizable content (a book, a CD, a DVD, etc.).

Notably, Mike Masnick at techdirt.com posted about applying his recent experiement in applying his “CwF + RtB = $$$” formula to a series of offerings from Techdirt.

I seriously considered dropping $150 for the Techdirt Book Club just to get a signed copy of James Boyle’s The Public Domain.

Here’s the madness about that statement: I ALREADY OWN A COPY! It’s unsigned, but aside from the signature, it’s an exact copy of what I already have.

I’m a firm believer that as digital content shifts to a role of pure advertising for analog offerings, the appeal of analog offerings will look more like that of an antique collector’s assessment of their treasure trove. Sure, there are lots of things that work better (though one might bicker about the definition of “better”) than an 1940′s telephone, but there’s a uniqueness of the antique phone that can’t be replicated. An authenticity, if you will.And some people value owning a 1940′s telephone, even if it’s not functional.

I could read lots of content for free online, but I honestly don’t see ereaders as representing the death knell for paper books. The sale of paper books will likely decline over time, but they’re not going away permanently (personally, I suspect a new form/view of packaging the content of traditional books will evolve along the lines that consumers can print up their own books/magazines/anthologies using lots of digital content from various sources in the ultimate mass customization offering – some of this technology is already emerging, actually).

Heck, given the Kindle’s limitations (most recently a predilection to behave like a petulant adolescent who’s regretted a toy trade and decided to invoke a unilateral “do-over”), the only thing that’s clear at the moment is that ereaders are not growing as fast as anyone hoped/predicted/feared.

But let’s say ereaders are all the rage. Would I ask Cory Doctorow to sign my Kindle? Okay, bad example, but would I value a signed copy of one of his books more than a signed copy of the Kindle? Absolutely. And how many author’s signatures could I collect on my Kindle before it becomes unusable in its original form, thus becoming (gasp!) an antique itself.

When the content in an analog offering can be consumed digitally through another medium, channel, or experience, what’s left is the physical, analog properties of the analog offering that can’t be digitized.

LP’s are still selling, plenty of authors are selling paper books even when they offer their books online for free, heck, Cheap Trick just announced they’re releasing a new album on the 8-Track platform. Wonder how that pitch went…

“Hey guys, I know we’re old as dirt as far as the music industry is concerned, but let’s release a new album on a technology decades old that almost no one even has anymore and charge 50% more than a typical CD and make it a bundled set of content that gives the purchaser no choice in deciding what songs they want and which ones they don’t want. Who’s in?” [note: they're also releasing it traditionally as a CD]

It’s too early to tell how much this might make them as far as revenue is concerned, but it’s certainly hitting all the marks of Masnick’s formula.

When content becomes free advertising, analog products look more like antique offerings. And that’s not bad, it’s just different.

It was a great way for them to reach out to the CC community, and they were actively seeking feedback from the community as well communicating ways for CC community to help support CC in non-financial. It was very encouraging to hear that fears of negative effects from a “Lessing-shaped hole” in the organization were unfounded, and that the organization is well positioned to continue expanding its global presence.

An hour well-spent, and a good reminder of why CC is so exciting (and also another poke in the ribs to put The Public Domain *back* on top of my reading pile!)