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Do IP Laws Stifle Popular Culture?
A reader writes: "This could probably fit under 'Patents' as well. Anyways, here's a long but very intelligent essay on the abuse of copyright and trademark laws we see today, full of examples showing that these laws are being used to restrain enterprise and free speech instead of
promoting them. Writing in Reason Online , Jesse Walker concludes that the 'culture industry' just wants us to 'shut up and get back on the couch.'"
The article states "this shift reflects the increased popularity of "dilution" laws over the last several decades, culminating with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995. Under this rule, it is illegal to produce, say, Microsoft brand ramen noodles, even though that other Microsoft isn't in the noodle business, lest the lousiness of your pasta undermine the software company's reputation."
Which leads one to wonder when the Linux community will rise up in arms over the abuses of its trademark, perpetrated by certain IPO-hoax distributors and laundry detergent companies.
Yes, this is mildly troll-like. But, do think: the whole LinuxOne debacle could have been settled by pressing a trademark case against them.
Perhaps Disney does have some sort of right to expect everlasting control over its mouse character. It has, after all, put a helluva lot of resources toward developing it. It doesn't make sense that someone else should be able to poach their success.
And, yet, the cases of fanfic being shut down, and that goofy R&R Museum case... but if the building shape isn't "owned" by them, then does that mean I can start making candies with a hole in the middle? Seems to me that Lifesavers has put enough work into publicizing "the one with a hole in the middle" to own it. And yet... can Michelin make the same claim for tires?
It's a very sticky issue all around, and there are *no* clear answers. Consider Microsoft using the Linux name... even those claiming no trademarks should ever be allowed would probably have a tough time swallowing that bitter pill!
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Even with everything you need being free, you'll find a few roadblocks in your path... Movies, music, television, newspapers, books, and magazines, as trashy as some of them are, are art. Programming is much more of a science.
First, I think programming is much more of an art than you give it credit for, and many programmers have artistic leanings in other areas (music, video, painting, whatever).
I guess I didn't make myself clear in my original point, however. The Open Source community could develope free and open tools, protocols, and storage standards for creating and packaging the media. Artists would have access to these tools, and would be facilitated in creating content. Open source projects of this kind could reduce the production costs to a low enough level (effectively zero, modula the artist's time, if "virtual casting" technology were to ever reach a point where human actors become secondary or superfulous -- not something that will happen this decade probably, but will happen eventually). With production costs near zero, many artists would likely release some of their material under an open, collaborative license, for exposure and marketing if nothing else (much like the mp3.com phenominon). Hobbiests would be even more so inclined. As for wizardry, I would submit that for every "discovered" wizard who has "sold out" (as a theater friend of mine put it), there are probably hundreds of equally if not more talented "wizards" who would contribute their talents, if only they had the tools and channels available to them.
One of the real problems right now is that content is rather expensive to create, and this is an area open source could address directly.
And who knows, with a growing wealth of open, free (as in speach) content, we might very well not need to rely on the media moguls as heavilly for our entertainment. Over time Open Content quality would no doubt improve, much as it has in the open source movement, probably surpassing that which is produced in hollywood rather quickly (though that may not be saying much) and hollywood et. al. would find themselves marginalized in popular culture.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The most dangerous thing about restrictive copyright laws isn't what they do to old works. It's what they do to new ones. Copyright has traditionally been tempered by the doctrine of "fair use," which allows a limited amount of appropriation for the purpose of parody or criticism. [ ... ] In 1991, for instance, the long-forgotten '70s pop star Gilbert O'Sullivan, discovering that rapper Biz Markie had appropriated three words from his song "Alone Again (Naturally)," successfully sued, not for a share of the royalties, but to suppress Biz Markie's record altogether.
How ironic, that a link in this story may have been the catalyst for further censorship via copyright and legal thuggary, as it appears that the 15 minute silent film "Star Wars: The Remake" Parody has now vanished from the net, after receiving a rather glowing review in the aforementioned article.
Remind me to give George Lucus another $8 when his next Star Wars film comes out. (NOT)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I once read that once a movie or song becomes 50 years old, it automatically turns public domain. Is this true? Does that mean that copying and distributing "Citizen Kane" or "It's a Wonderful Life" is perfectly legal? What about the VHS or DVD?
May I suggest rereading the article posted?
The short answer is (asuming you live in the United States) your congress was bought cheap by media intersts, including Disney and Time-Warner, and copyright has been extended retroactively from 75 to 95 years (for corporate held copyrights), and from life+50 to life+70 for individual copyright holders.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
People allow themselves to be spoonfed propaganda all of the time.
In the US "Campaign Finance Reform" is a big issue, people don't understand what it means.
"Gun Control" is another term for social engineering. Keep the poor and middle class afraid and they will keep voting for you.
"Family Values" is a way for people to control what you do in your own home. Scare the Christians about the homosexuals and make them angry about the disintegration of the "traditional" family then they'll vote for you.
Americans (although I'm one of them) tend to like quick and easy things. It's easier to let CNN tell you what you should think about issue X than it is to get as much information as possible and decide for yourself.
Look at how many laypersons think that DeCSS is a copy protection issue. Why? Because the AP wire that sparked the story on CNN labeled it as such.
Thinking is hard. Reacting is easy.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well, the justification that is normally put forth is that copyright protection provides an incentive for people to be creative. And I guess it's hard to argue that's not true.
But the more relevant question is whether the benefits to society from increased creativity outweigh the losses from decreased availability and the possibility lawyers can go around banging on people's doors. It's not at all clear whether this is true.
Certainly in the age of the Internet and increased ease of copying, we are beginning to see the costs of the decreased availability and of legal intervention more clearly.
The one area that gives me pause is the notion of music and of promotion. Imagine a world in which everybody was free to copy music or sing everybody else's songs. Presumably, it would be difficult to be a record company in such a world. But would there be less music made? Would garage bands cease to exist? Would there be fewer of them? Of course not.
But the music industry takes some of those bands (more or less at random) and promotes them to the public. Once a song becomes popular, it certainly adds something to the social fabric. For example, you meet a member of the opposite gender and you can dance to the same song, because you've both heard it on the radio.
So there is definitely some value to the promotion that the music industry does. The real question is whether IP laws are the only way to promote this.
IP laws are a relatively new invention; while most of our laws have evolved from millenia-old religious principles (it is wrong to kill somebody, you shouldn't steal somebody's property), only in recent centuries has the idea surfaced that ideas constitute property. Would we be better off if some prehistoric person had been able to patent the wheel? The idea is preposterous. The public benefits from having wheels, not from a chance to get rich by reinventing the wheel.
Oddly, technology is leading us down the right path. You still can't press your own CD's and sell them to the public as if they were the real thing, and that's good; I think few here will argue for that freedom. At the same time, it has become virtually impossible to prevent people from sharing music with their friends, thus eliminating most of the artificial scarcity that copyright laws cause.
I recently read a news story on here where someone explained the philosophy behind patents and copyrights as a guarantee that ideas would eventually be released to the public and not held as secrets. That idea is so extremely and completely wrong that it goes to show how disconnected from reality a lot of patent and copyright fighters are.
Copyrights and patents and such things protect the creators BY keeping them secret. And we, the public, are the creators. Not collectively of course, nothing is ever accomplished collectively, but individually, everyone can create something. If copyrights and patents did not exist the big companies could just package up whatever Elvis Costello creates, advertise the hell out of it, and completely screw him out of any royalties and everything. The point of copyrights and patents are so that when someone comes up with an idea, they can profit from it. Society as a whole (if you care about this kind of irrelevant crap) benefits as well by getting the opportunity to foster creativity by paying for the works produced by the creative individual.
When it comes to record companies and things of that nature, the artist of his own free will signs a contract. If he doesn't agree to certain portions of that contract, such as them going after people making fan sites and such, he doesn't have to sign it. Once he does, he is locked in. If he breaks the contract, he should be jailed. If he bitches about the contract, he should be ignored, he accepted it.
If we had no laws protecting intellectual property, we would see the production of such works fall off dramatically. Not only because the majority of people in the world understand that their creations are not worthless and want to make a profit from them, but also because of time constraints. Think back on human history. We did not get arts of any kind until people had the ability to specialize in one certain area and through trade of money obtain all of the things they needed which they didn't have time to produce themselves. Money made art possible. Money still makes are possible. If you take money out of the hands of artists in the name of "freedom", you are dooming those artists to working away their lives in menial, unsatisfying jobs, rather than letting them profit from their creations without millions of people ripping them off left and right because they can't see the immorality of theft if its done over the Internet.
Esperandi
Go ahead, repeal IP laws, then don't be surprised when your favorite artists, poets, and musicians have to stop making their art because they've got to get a job at McDonalds to pay their bills.
This mirrors very strongly with the RIAA case, in which there are several artists under major record labels that want to support MP3s but their record label says no. The true creative owners of the works, because of signing deals with megacorps, have lost the ability to be able to be said what is done with their work. On the other hand, the way that music and creative work distribution has been done before the internet, any creative person that signed with an independant distributor would have quickly faded into obscurity. Along these lines, I would suggest that part of the deal with CSS and the MPAA is that they want to limit the number of films out there that do not go through the MPAA. Up till recently, they've done a good job, but the recent successes of art house films (Blair Witch, Pi) are beginning to push the envelope.
It all comes down to the fact that RIAA, MPAA, the major television networks, the major publishers, all want to be the sole distributor of creative works. If they had there way, most of the money that we spend on our entertainment will go through them, and then they distribute to their respective creative artists, but keeping a large portion for themselves. Sure, before the internet, people made their own works, and distributed them without the help of the major channels, but the audience they would achieve would be very very small compared to major distribution artists. The internet has changed all that, and allows anyone with simple tools to become their own publisher; in some cases, enterprising people have become small distribution houses themselves but certainly without the same cut that the major ones take (e.g. MP3.com, goodnoise.com).
In otherwords, RIAA, MPAA, and the rest appear to be trying to maintain a monopoly.
Sure, there's no strong evidence for that, and a lot of connections would have to be made for that. But if these groups are successful (hopefully not) in their current court cases, it might be easier and easier to prove that such a monopoly exists. Remember one of Judge Jackson's key points on Microsoft and it's monopoly was that the cost of entering the field that Microsoft has set is too high to be overcome reasonably, thus suggesting monopoly powers. Try to get your own film to more than 30 screens accross the country, or a fiction book you wrote yourself in every bookstore without the aid of one of the major companies. Can't do it, can you?
One additional point, however, that was made in the article, and in all fairness is a concern, is the issue of dilution. I know it wasn't mentioned specifically, but I remember hearing that one of the reasons that Disney did not want to give up the copyright on Mickey Mouse was that they were afraid of people placing him in high erotic (and beyond) situations with no ability to protect that. Ok, sure, you and the rest of slashdot readerships would know that if you saw such a picture, you would know for sure that it wasn't by Disney. But this is America, where a woman can win millions of dollars for spilling hot coffee all over herself. We HAVE to think that everyone is stupid, lest we avoid legal problems. I could see a case that if dilution of trademark laws were not in place, that a parent may be able to sue Disney over that pic (even though Disney didn't make it) as it traumetized her child. Such cases are more a concern when the characters and situations are aimed at young audiences, but the concept is still that the distributor must make sure they don't into such a situation. While extending the copyright time is one way, it's a placebo (and a bad one at that); instead, education of the masses on what "derivative works" mean, and co-operation with the various fanbases to help establish guidelines (as has been done for some shows like B5) will help set rules that need not be extended time after time...
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Instead of writing fan fiction, get together with other people and create your own setting, that you can write about and do whatever you want with.
This is an excellent point.
Not to long ago I posted a proposal to forego the products of Hollywood altogether and return to fireside chats and more traditional, noncontrolled forms of entertainment. However, while I have had little trouble boycotting Hollywood (indeed, they have lost hundreds of dollars in DVD sales in the last couple of months from me alone), most of my friends are unable to tear themselves away from their bread and circuses, even knowing the harm the publishers of the material they consume are causing.
Your suggestion is I think much more powerful and interesting. Create our own content and take back our popular culture from the media moguls! With the open video disc project working toward a fully unencumbered digitial media standard, and ever larger storage media emerging (making patented video encoding and compression methods possibly obsolete altogether), the logical next step is to create our own content and completely divorce ourselves from hollywood altogether.
The open source community could take the lead in developing free software which would allow anyone to create digital special effects, and perhaps even digital casting (computer animation instead of acting, with the ultimate goal to be rendering of scenes where one could not tell the difference). Coupled with one of the open content licenses, this could become a very powerful counter-cultural medium which would do to Hollywood, the MPAA, the DVD-Forum, and the RIAA what open source is doing to the likes of Microsoft - obliterating them from the grass roots.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You say that there are more books, music, movies, and software today than ever before. What does that prove? Would you seriously suggest that we have enough culture, that we don't need to write any more books or record any more music because we already have all we need? A stagnant culture is a dead culture. Or perhaps you are suggesting that we only need a half-dozen or so voices to define our culture, that we have Time-Warner and Disney, so we don't need any more voices? Wrong again. Culture thrives when there are a multitude of voices, each giving its unique perspective. Take a look around you at what comes out of the movie and music industry. Most of it isn't necessarily bad per se, but much of it does have a bland, cookie-cutter sameness about it. That's what happens when you allow a small number of cultural gatekeepers to take over; it all starts to sound the same because it's largely the same people producing it.
The bottom line is that all great works of literature, art, music, science, and film have borrowed themes and ideas from stuff that has come before. The increasing trend toward cutting new works off from what has come before does stifle those new works because a work that is produced in a cultural vacuum is generally irrelevant. It doesn't "speak" to its listeners and viewers.
You seem to have the sarcasm down to a fine art, but you don't do much to refute what the article actually says. I'm curious, what do you say to the article's claims that George Lucas will not allow new artists to borrow from Star Wars the same way he borrowed from Kurasawa and from popular myth? What do you say to the article's claims that for (certain types of) new music to evolve they must be able to sample from previous music the way that music lifted guitar riffs and other musical elements from music that came before? Why, in your own words, is it ok for the current gatekeepers to have borrowed from work that came before, but it is no longer acceptable for anyone to borrow from work that is currently popular? Why was it necessary to extend lengths of copyrights? Were artists really having trouble making money with the shorter terms, or are they just trying to guarantee their continued dominance into the indefinite future?
Try as you might, you simply aren't going to get me to feel sorry for the media compaines. They are doing just fine, and they would continue to do just fine, even if intellectual property law were rolled back to what it was 50 or even 100 years ago. However, if I don't like the crap they're churning out, I would like an alternative, and media companies seem hell-bent on preventing me from having one. But, then, God forbid anyone consider anything besides corporate profit in determining social policy or anything.
-rpl