Last night my mom wanted to see Michael Jackson moonwalk again, so I called up the blog post where I’d embedded a YouTube clip from his legendary Motown performance in 1983. Alas, it was gone.
So instead, we educated ourselves about copyright law:
Later I replaced the Jackson performance with someone else’s upload of the same clip and wondered (again) where all this was leading. Where is the line between the need for money and the need for social good, between what is mine and what is ours, living in a cooperative society as we do?
Seriously, I know I can be seen as a bit left when it comes to taking sides in this great debate, what with my love of Creative Commons and positive readings of Lessig and remix culture in general–not that I have completely consumed the Kool-Aid, but just sayin’. Still, especially after our Remix book club convo a few months back, I have been keeping an eye out for a similar book taking the “other” side, or at least “another” side. I thought Mark Helprin’s Digital Barbarism might have made for a good choice, but then I thought maybe not. (Has anyone read it?) Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” is of course not the direction I was looking to go this time out, though I’ll be interested in digging into that one for myself at a later date (Gladwell reviews it for the New Yorker here).
I have also been keeping tabs on such things as the orphaned works/Google issue and the ASCAP ringtones public performance suit, but still haven’t come across a good book arguing the benefits of strict copyright control and the future, etc. Anyone have suggestions?
There’s no good book like that, because there’s no good argument that can be made for the monster we’ve created — unless you’re a major corporate entity, that is. Copyright protection, if it were to truly realize its original vision, should never have gone past something between 20 and 30 years, period. Creators of ‘intellectual property’ would have a few decades to make their bucks off their work, and then it would quite rightly be set free to be built upon by other creative minds to come. That anyone should control, and be paid, for a work for essentially their entire life and often beyond is madness. Not least because over time the pressure to share, acquire and use becomes unstoppable anyway, short of creating a fascist police state. This also ties in with the culture we created that assigns those copyrights from the artist to a company; this has really become all about the company locking in their profit regardless. That they have to give some pittance to the artist is only one of a hundred considerations and costs of doing business, *not* the main focus.
But Steve am I then able to make my bucks off of whatever work I create that somehow builds upon another artists work? What if my work brings me more money and attention than the original I’ve built upon (I’m thinking specifically of Saints & Devils which you’re familiar with – and I jumped through every hoop I had to in order to be able to use those samples) That’s a complicated issue. Especially for those composers who create music for “major” corporate entities (like ESPN, HBO, Coca Cola, McDonald’s, etc).
I do think there are other shades and nuances to this issue that might be found via interviews “on the ground” with musicians, engineers, (small and large) studio and record label owners. The conversations I’ve had with my friends in that world – musicians who rely on music making for their livelihood – reveal a VERY different set of opinions than the party line touted by Wired magazine or Lessig (I’m generalizing a bit, I know…) I think there’s a documentary out there yet to be made.
Please don’t get me wrong, I totally TOTALLY agree that the genie is out of the bottle and trying to stuff it back in is insane. Well, not insane – it just can’t be done.
Sure Chris; making your own bucks building on previous work is perfectly alright. If say, copyright were restricted to 30 years max, you’d still you’d still have to compensate the original artists whose work was still covered. But the rest? They would have had their 30 years before to reap what they could from it. And in the meantime they’ve been creating more.
Of course many people who benefit from current copyright are happy with the status quo; after all they could still be getting compensation for something they did 60 or 70 years ago! What other kind of object created by people works this way? Why doesn’t a painter get another cut of money every time his painting is resold? How many furniture builders get compensation every time someone sits down at their table for a meal?
The other incredibly important bit to remember is that copyright was envisioned to promote *two* equally important goals: 1) to ensure a creator of more ephemeral and reproducible work some time to generate meaningful income from that work, but also 2) to make sure it passed into the public domain in a reasonable time for all to freely inherit and use as part of our common heritage and culture. All the stress has been given to #1, with #2 being pushed off three or four generations past the works original relevance.
I don’t disagree with you Steve. But we’re not the people Molly wants to hear from.
If you talk to William Grant Still’s daughter, or to people at the Lomax archives and the Association for Cultural Equity, you will hear opinions on these issues that are very different than yours or mine. My original point to Molly is that the kind of dialogue she’s looking for might be found not on a website (like this one) but “on the ground” with people who may not be so enamored with the digital age as you or I.
I’ve corresponded with Still’s daughter – William Grant Still was a composer who was seriously underperformed in his lifetime. And it is completely conceivable (although I’m not sure if I agree one way or the other) that some of his innovations in music were…um…”appropriated” by other (re: white) composers in his field. So when you meet one of his descendants now in charge of his legacy, you can (or at least I can…) understand their concerns about controlling the rights to his published and recorded work.
If Still is finally getting his due as a ground breaking composer, why is it so necessary to give away the relatively minimal monetary rewards that his children will only use to continue to perpetuate his creative work? I get it. I can empathize.
While I’m sure Still’s heirs are nice folk and it’s a good story, I just don’t buy it. While continued extension of copyrights makes for a few heartwarming scenarios, it pulls the rest of it into absurdity. If you can justify 30 years, you can justify 95; if 95, you can eventually justify eternity. Copyright is there to benefit the *creator*; when that creator is gone, the clock needs to stop ticking and wind down in short order. That others live of the work of someone else should give way a soon as possible again to the natural state of things — meaning *new creation* by those who are still around.