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Wired Interview with Copyright Comic Authors
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has an interesting interview with the authors of a recent book about comics, fair use and the permissions culture. There is also a gallery of some of the most interesting pages from the comic. According to the interview, their next project is going to be on the history of musical borrowing and the way law has affected it. 'Picture a conversation between Bach, Robert Johnson and John Lennon, in comic book form.' Now *that* would be 'Strange Fruit,' indeed."
"'Picture a conversation between Bach, Robert Johnson and John Lennon, in comic book form.' Now *that* would be 'Strange Fruit,' indeed."
I doubt that Bach and Lennon would lynch Johnson, though lynching Black Americans is what "Strange Fruit" is about.
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make install -not war
"Third, he wrotte!"
Previous postter's comments reproduced in the spiritt of fair use, and exemptted from copyrightt prottection under the parody excepttion.
Holiday's phrasing was so unique that every song is a treat, but 'Strange Fruit' was, perhaps, the song for which she is best known.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
if they would just stick to "don't copy that floppy".
Eeeveryone would be happy and no-one would get hurt.
..Captain Copyright, that canadian government produced comic about the importance of obeying copyright rules. Why is it the governments are always so bad at creating effective propaganda?
I regret spilling a glass of ginger ale on an achritect!
The comic does make a good point, though. The copyright laws (worldwide, not just in the US) are seriously fucked up if corporations are demanding thousands of dollars just because somebody's movie-theme ringtone can be heard in the background of a documentary.
You must think in Russian.
The book is called 'Bound By Law? Tales From the Public Domain', and it is co-written and produced by Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins. The art is by Aoki.
That is the point that must be driven into the heads of the don't know/don't care people. The various industries that benefit from the long copyrights are very good at invoking the welfare of the artists, the actual creators of IP, even though most artists can't live off the royalties. Live performance is the only way to make a living for most of those who can make a living off their creations. All the money gets eaten up by the starmaking machinery behind the popular song, film, and book.
If you didn't see Courtney Love does the Math in the Weird Al thread, please read it. it is a rather intelligent rant from the artist POV.
A shallow understanding of copyright law would make it seem that artists and their fans would be on opposite sides of this issue. But, except for a few who have retired on their royalty checks and no longer need to create or perform, that isn't the case. It is fans and artists vs the distribution industry. As soon as everyone understands that it is artists who should get paid for creating and while the distributors should get paid for distributing, and royalties should only be an incentive to artists as originally intended, then maybe our culture will belong to us and not locked up in private hands. Once an artist goes public with his work, then it is no longer private property. The copyright is simply a reward for contributing to the public forum. Wasn't that the original intent of the US short copyright?
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
YAWN.
Creators do benefit from copyright, actually. When the laws were enacted way back when it was common practice to reprint author's works without permission or compensation. Often the original author's name would be be removed entirely, or abridged to the point where the original meaning was ruined. The laws today continue to protect creators from seeing their works misapproriated-- and it's pretty much the only power a creator has to protect himself.
I'm not saying copyright law isn't broken in many ways, and that public domain shouldn't come much sooner (if anything, there should be a differentiation between copyrights held by an individual and a corporation), but at the same time it does serve its original intent in protecting, say, the author who doesn't want Uwe Boll to turn his book into a hack movie, or a band who doesn't want Nike to use their song to sell shoes.
Why is the comic so small? By the end of it you can't read the damn thing.
You should publish a link to Captain Copyright! Of course, you definitely don't want to link to the blog of the guy who exposed the various copyright infringements that Captain Copyright was partaking in, or the EFF's DRM counter force: The Corruptables!
You're absolutely right about the intent. It was the intent of the framers of the Constitution that an artist would not be able to live their entire life on one work.
That is, unless they lived less than 17 years.
It was an incentive to continue to perform -- not an incentive to sit back and collect.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
That power is meaningless because it can be ripped off from the authors through market power: You either cede it to the publisher or you won't get published.
Maybe we need a different sort of law, one that is more useful for honoring the artist's attribution and the work's commercial exploitation than the current one which is more useful at sueing 12-year olds.
Check out the (C) Copyright liner on a major label CD, it doesn't say (C) Copyight Artist/Band but (C) Copyright Label because they don't own their own songs anymore.
Those bands didn't have to sign their rights away. There are plenty of musicians who self-publish or work with smaller labels where they can retain control.
That power is meaningless because it can be ripped off from the authors through market power: You either cede it to the publisher or you won't get published.
If you're talking about books, you're wrong. Publishing is nothing like the music or television industry. The rights almost always revert to the creator after the term of the contract.
If you're talking about, well, everyone who publishes anything, it's no secret that people get fucked over in their deals all the time. That doesn't have anything to do with copyright law.
Play with Captain Copyright's friendly hacker defense system and use it to send him silly messages! :-)
You make a good point in that the contracts in some industries are more exploitive than in others. This problem might be eliminated by making new acts less eager to sign anything handed to them, but it could also be fixed by making copyrights nonsellable assets. The talent itself is nontransferable, why should the copyright? It isn't much of an incentive to create if it is owned by someone without the necessary talent or if the original creator has died. Sure, a collection of copyrights might make a nice legacy for the kids, but artists can do what everyone else does, buy traditional financial assets such as mutual funds.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest