Intellectual Property Is Cultural Theft - Thoughts

[JackRiddler]

Copyrights, patents and trademarks originated in early modern Europe as a means to protect authors, inventors and businesses and give them a chance to make a living from their works. Today these institutions have developed into monsters that threaten to altogether stifle the global culture.

Copyrights originally had a term of just fourteen years. Under the pressure of a mighty PR effort by the modern-day media conglomerates, in the 1990s the US Congress extended the term of corporate copyright to 95 years. When the rights to Mickey Mouse threaten to expire, you can be certain that Disney will lobby overwhelmingly to further extend that term.

All cultures, in case you didn't notice, live from myths and tropes. Although these basic forms can originate with individuals, truly new ones are very few and far between. When a new form meets with success, it can cross a line beyond which it becomes a universal part of a culture. Odysseus, Jehovah and the basic songs of classical and traditional music are examples. They belong to no one and to everyone. We are all free to sing these songs and to tell our stories of these legends in our own ways, even to believe the latter are real.

But this is also true of Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes and the forms of blues music, like what the Rolling Stones play. In our society, these particular myths and tropes are among those put into all of our heads from an age before we have any choice but to absorb them into our mental repertoire. But although the original creators of these three examples are long dead, under the law all three are still considered the private property of copyright holders who have the right to restrict and demand payment for their use. This is an outrageous fiction that the state nevertheless will move to enforce, at times with draconian measures.

In the news today we learn that someone still "owns" Sherlock Holmes, 80 years after the death of A. Conan Doyle in 1930. She threatened to prevent a sequel to the current Hollywood movie of the same name, if the producers should choose to continue (in her judgment) presenting the character with homoerotic undertones. This most definitely makes her a homophobe, but it also tells us that she - and the state agencies and courts who would enforce her will, were she to go ahead with her threat - are living a dangerous delusion.

Hearing this story prompted me to the above thoughts, which I decided to share with you as a prelude to recommending, in the strongest possible terms, that you watch the following feature documentary, or rather: manifesto.

RiP: A Remix Manifesto
http://www.hulu.com/watch/88782/rip-a-remix-manifesto

If it doesn't play for you, you can search for the video elsewhere or download it in varying high qualities from the source: www.ripremix.com. Not only do the filmmakers encourage you to copy and distribute their excellent and hilarious movie, they also expect you to remix it yourself and distribute the results! You can pay whatever you wish for the download, starting at zero dollars and zero cents.

Watch this, DUers, and tell me that our present-day copyright laws and institutions still make sense to you. (You'll also get to see how the originators of the blues said they heard the songs from the cotton fields, and how decades later the Rolling Stones sued successfully for damages from the Verve for using one of those very same cotton-field songs, so that they could sell it to Nike for a mint.)

I'll close with some thoughts given by Withywindle in another thread about the Sherlock controversy:

Nobody is going to go over to anyone else's house, grab their dogeared leatherbound editions of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, and draw erect penises all over the margins. The collective memory of these stories will not be altered. You will still be able to get the originals everywhere, and they will be exactly the same as they were a hundred years ago. Anyone who is not interested in gay!Holmes will be free to ignore it. No one will be held at gunpoint and forced to watch or read it. No one will be forced to recite a "we have always been at war with Eurasia and Holmes has always been banging Watson" mantra.

It's just a different type of Holmes story, that starts in the mind of its writer the same way all stories do: "What if?" "What if Holmes got hold of a time machine?" "What if Holmes worked in the same universe as Lovecraft's occultists and monsters?" "What if Holmes and Watson had a sexual relationship?" All 'what-ifs' have a right to live, IMO. Success or failure is determined by the writer's skill.

And yes, freaking out over the possibility of gay!Holmes when all the other myriad reinterpretations of the character that have been done over the years produced no outrage whatsoever--that's homophobic.

Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7396658&mesg_id=7401093

[NYC_SKP]

1. Yes, I love Lawrence Lessig's take on this matter in "Free Culture".

Great read and free online under a Creative Commons License.

http://www.free-culture.cc/

[NYC_SKP]

2. Also, patents were envisioned not only as protection but as a guarantee to share ideas.

In exchange for protection, the inventor must fully divulge the invention.

Thus, others may build on the ideas disclosed.

K and R.

[Faryn Balyncd]

3. K&R....Art 1, Sect 8 emphasizes LIMITED protection for the purpose of promoting progress

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries..."



The purpose of granting such limited protection was the public good (promoting progress in science and useful arts).

Our current laws act to destroy progress for the purpose of expanding profit, in many cases expanding time of protection for works that were done voluntarily under laws calling for a SHORTER time of protection.

Such expansions cannot possibly serve a public purpose.

We should re-assess our laws with a view toward the original purpose of the founders: "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for LIMITED times......"





K& R

[BolivarianHero]

4. Things have changed for the better in the past few months...

I remember getting shit on by DINOs here for attacking the DMCA.

[EOTE]

22. I'm amazed there are people who who would defend that POS.

Scary that so many people are only concerned when THEIR rights are infringed.

[bigmonkey]

5. I don't mind brief borrowing.

Permanent proprietization of culture is the thing that scares me the most, more than Bush.

[lostnfound]

6. The contributions of individuals sucked up into the vacuum of corporatists decades later

The "Happy Birthday" song has a copyright.
Indonesia is trying to withhold samples of avian flu viruses saying that they hold the rights to its DNA (and if the world wants it, they need to pay for it).
From trivial and frivolous to deadly serious, the corporatists want to ensure that profit is made off of every single spec on the planet. Our government should be there to rein the corporate greed in, but it is owned by that same Frankenstein.

[Odin2005]

7. I've thought the same thing for a while now. Great Post!

[MineralMan]

8. As someone who has made his living for decades

from writing and programming, I support copyright laws, but not the extended terms of copyright.

I have written works and deliberately placed them in the public domain and, when I was creating software, I put more things in the public domain than I put on the market. Actually, all of my software was sold using the shareware concept, and I did not put any limits on the use of the programs. The only incentive to pay for it came from the technical support I offered to paying customers. It worked, haltingly, but it worked.

Yet, I still had to make a living, so copyright protection for some of my works was essential. It was that that made it possible for publications to pay for my work, and for me to protect my software, which had unique features, from being stolen so others could profit from it.

By their nature, both my writings and my software had a limited time when they had value. I don't write timeless prose. I write non-fiction and wrote software that would soon be obsolete, so the long-term protection of the copyright laws was useless to me.

Authors of written works and computer software must have protection and the copyright laws provide it.

Those who propose that all copyright is wrong are simply incorrect.

[highplainsdem]

9. +1

[MineralMan]

11. Thanks!

[JackRiddler]

12. "Those who propose that all copyright is wrong are simply incorrect."

Yes. Did anyone here suggest otherwise?

Intellectual property must return to the original purpose of allowing authors to make a living and promoting the public good by allowing the spread of ideas. The purpose is not to give immortal corporations control of mythic characters (and yoga postures) created by the long-dead authors or other cultures. It cannot be to allow the patenting of genes and crops. Those are the extremes to which it is taken.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. The thing is, copyright restrictions have become so draconian that...

..."all copyright is wrong" became closer to the truth than the current legal status quo.

[Xenotime]

14. copyright = greed

[Lorien]

40. So, every creative person should just work for free, and hope that the public

will hand us a sandwich and cardboard box to live in? How does that lead to any innovation? How would artists of any stripe support themselves? (And don't give me that crap about "real artists don't work for money". Only a child has such delusional beliefs).

[JackRiddler]

44. That's certainly not what I think about copyright!

Insofar as copyright (and trademark) fulfills its original mission of protecting a living for artists and thus also motivating a free exchange of ideas, it is good.

Insofar as it becomes a device for corporate hoarding of ownership claims to essentially mythical characters and cultural tropes (such as musical riffs), especially insofar as these were actually created by the long-dead, it is stifling to culture. That's an extreme, but also a very common one, and the reason for the OP.

Insofar as it is used to exploit contract artists who don't get the copyright or trademark (like the guy who drew the first smiley face in the 1960s and got a $45 bonus), it is bad. Think of Jack Kirby's fate with Marvel, please.

Insofar as copyright holders use it to bully other artists, claim their assets, and prevent them from creating new works (insofar as everything "new" in 99.5% of cases is made of borrowed elements), it is bad.

The extreme cases and abuses in each category are easy to see. Drawing the borderlines between these categories is, of course, difficult. Certainly the 95-year copyright term for corporations and the broad interpretation that allows Disney and Viacom to crush their own consumers at will needs to be revised. Death plus 75 years for individuals is an absurdity. Death plus 25 didn't stop James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway from getting their due and passing some on to their heirs, did it now? There has to be a more reasonable limit on "ownership" of ideas that are often in everyone's heads.

Can we agree on that much?

[Lorien]

39. +2 nt

[blindpig]

10. Yes

All capitalism is theft, intellectual property is simply capitalism looking for increased profit when more conventional sources have been depleted due to the workings of capital itself. Another bubble waiting to happen.

[jtylerpittman]

17. that is stupid controlled capitalism is the way to go

[blindpig]

18. So when has that worked for any amount of time?

Try controlling a hurricane.

[jtylerpittman]

37. it has worked well for all western civilization.

[blindpig]

43. It has worked well for the 'owners' and their closest servants...

for the mass of us, not so much.

[L. Coyote]

15. Food property is culinary theft

but take the price off the banana, and you will only find them on the tropical grasses they grow on.

Intellectual property is a check in the mail, every month, to buy bananas. And I still want both of them :rofl:

[JackRiddler]

19. Your snarky platitudes have won me over!

After all, if the Rolling Stones could not assert rights on Muddy Waters' works when other bands play them, no music would be played at all. The radio would fall silent.

If Disney couldn't sue an octagenarian Carl Barks to stop selling oil paintings of the Donald Duck character that he reinvented decades earlier, the museums would be void of art!

If some homophobic whack-job didn't have the right to cancel the sequel to Sherlock Holmes, Hollywood would cease production altogether and the TV would go silent.

By the way, in your highly relevant example, I missed the part where bananas are intellectual property. I'm sure once Monsanto succeeds in having them legally declared as such, the supermarkets will overflow with them at an even cheaper price.

[L. Coyote]

29. I knew they would

I was tempted to go with "Grave digging is cultural Theft" but though you'd just feel I was trolling you.

Bananas, like poems, can just belong to a tropical grass.
But, if I cultivate bananas, I want my paycheck so I can buy a poem or two!

[joeybee12]

16. Ironically, most of what Disney prodcues comes from the public domain...

...myths and stories they repackage, yet they want their stuff copyrighted, but have benefited from others not having such strict copyrights.

[JackRiddler]

20. Pocahontas, Hercules, Aladdin...

And of course, although Walt (or his contract employees) created the mouse and the duck, Mickey and Donald joined the universal pantheon about 70 years ago.* Mr. Disney died 44 years ago. As one of the artists in the Remix Manifesto says, "They put them into our heads and then they sue us when we draw them." The part about Disney is excellent for showing that the original Disney Mouse movie, "Steamboat Willie" was itself a ripoff of a popular live-action film a year or two earlier called "Steamboat Tim" (if I remember the name right), including the music and the slapstick forms.

* You could make a case that Donald was fully reinvented by Carl Barks and Mickey rebirthed by a soapy slick team of child-hating marketers who realized the power of neotonism.

[TlalocW]

21. Right off the bat, RiP: A Remix Manifesto is full of crap

And it's not that I really care one way or another about remixes, mash-ups, etc. but to call, "Girl Talk," an "artist" because he can put Jackson Five and Queen together into a danceable song is laughable. Admittedly, I'm not part of that scene, but I can't think of any DJ's, remixers, or mash-upers, whose names have lived longer than the clubs they performed at have stayed open. I'm sure I'll be proven wrong on that by someone. Don't care. I can do the same thing with mp3s. Maybe you think it will sound like crap, but that's just because you're not enlightened enough to understand my, "art."

It's gratifying that when it's all said and done, a one-hit wonder like Aqua will be better known for their song, "Barbie Girl," than this moron will be for his use of a PC.

TlalocW

[JackRiddler]

23. Wow! Can you really do the same thing with a computer?!

That's actually the point you seem to be missing. Just as the Rolling Stones could *really* play the same songs as Muddy Waters... with a guitar! The question is, should that be allowed? I say yes. Your assessment of Girl Talk's artistic merit or staying power is irrelevant to the argument. Good or bad, he picks up pieces and turns them into something that is indisputably different, just as other artists do in their own medium, in fact as almost art has always done. Next to nothing is entirely "original," perhaps not even "Barbie Girl"! Turning forms and tropes into original property stifles innovation, good or bad. Get it?

[TlalocW]

25. My point is

And perhaps I didn't make it clear enough...

Girl Talk = Talentless Hack
Muddy Waters, Rolling Stones, Jackson Five, Queen, Cover Bands = People who actually worked hard at mastering a difficult artform, i.e. playing musical instruments and singing

Sorry for the confusion.

TlalocW

[JackRiddler]

27. So, I guess you'll support the Talentless Hack Retroactive Abortion Act of 2010?

Would you like to sit on the Committee of Judge Censors? They'll have to represent all major faiths, of course, so there will be an anti-rock'n'roll faction you can combat, but at least you'll have consensus on the need to Stop Girl Talk - by any means.

Got any other logical irrelevancies to toss?

[TlalocW]

31. Aw, I hurt someone's feeling so now he has to set up straw men

I never said stop Girl Talk.

I'll even admit what he does takes effort and some talent, and he entertains people, and if noodling around on a computer with two pieces of art/music lets him laugh all the way to the bank, fine, but calling him an artist? No.

I could take the Mona Lisa and superglue it into George Seurat's, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," and even put some glitter on the glue spots and put some pretty, pretty bows on it. That's what Girl Talk does - takes two works of art by people who worked hard at perfecting their craft, glues them together, and puts in some glitter. To claim "Mona Lisa on La Grande Jatte," as my work of art or a Jackson Five/Queen mashup as his work of art (or call either one of us artists) is insulting and frankly, ignorant.

TlalocW

[JackRiddler]

32. Marcel Duchamp beat you to it by about a century.

That's hanging in a museum somewhere and it's an important artistic statement in the context of its time, even if you don't like it or if (golly gosh) it was Easy and "You Call That Art? My Kid Could Do That." Which still isn't the point.

You're just going to keep refusing to get it, aren't you?

Your posts have nothing to do with the discussion here. Girl Talk has his devoted following who think he rocks, as you can see from the movie. You don't like his stuff. That's great.

The discussion is about whether Girl Talk should be sanctioned legally or forced to pay 4.2 million dollars in royalties to several dozen musical artists for what he does.

The discussion is about the present copyright laws. You're free to go off for a dozen posts more on your tangent about how much you dislike Girl Talk and admire certain other artists whom you respect because they do things "you cannot" (I'd like to see if you could make a room jump like Girl Talk) but it will still be just that: a tangent. Irrelevant. A fixation on a secondary detail. Why, I wonder?

[Raineyb]

34. Your opinions on the merits of someone's work isn't relevant to the issue of how

copyright is used in this country.

Just to clarify.

[hunter]

24. I respect copyrights. If they are onerous I don't make the works part of my culture.

It's really not that difficult.

I very much enjoy buying music directly from the artists or from agencies that return a very large portion of my money to the artists. For every artist beholden to big music corporations there are thousands of excellent artists who are not.

If I want to make my own interpretation of another artist's photography there is a bountiful supply of creative commons or public domain work to be found on the internet.

The software I use on my computers is for the most part open source, and I respect the copyrights of the software that is not.

There's nothing that's "your" culture unless you are part of that culture. Too many of us think we are part of a culture when in fact we are merely spectators with zero influence upon some other culture masquerading as our own.

[JackRiddler]

33. Really now? Were you born in the United States?

Assuming you were in the 90 percent of families who fed their children Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus, did you get a choice as a child about having them be a part of your culture?

You're right if your point is that too many people are passive spectators. Restrictive ideas of copyright and property is a part of what makes them so.

[hunter]

38. I was most certainly in the 10%

Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus were not welcome in my parent's house. There were long periods when we wouldn't have a television. Ronald McDonald was an evil clown who sold toxic food to unsuspecting children. We were not allowed to recite the flag salute but even the Jehovah's witnesses were too damned worldly for my mom; they forcibly removed her from their Kingdom Hall because she often knew what God was talking about when they didn't. She scared them. After that we were Quakers, where my mom could say anything she wanted too. I think some of thee Quakers were scared too, but they also knew God can be sort of scary sometimes...

My mom and dad are both artists of the eccentric sort. Any popular culture that infiltrated their house was warped and twisted beyond recognition and made to suit their own purposes.

I love traveling with my parents today because they refuse to eat in chain restaurants or stay in chain hotels and they never follow the path most traveled. They'll stay at a Route 66 era motel where half the rooms are rented by farmworkers and the other half by shelter families and drive right on by any of the tumorous box hotels spreading across the landscape, even if it's late at night.

As a kid maybe it wasn't so fun, but looking back it really was. Yeah, families of other kids stayed at Holiday Inn, ate at Denny's, and swam in a pool that didn't have green water, but our family always went on very real adventures and we never quite knew where we would end up or who we would meet.

[JackRiddler]

41. That's a great story - you are a lucky person.

I wish my parents had followed some of those practices, though I wouldn't trade them for anyone else. They were certainly their own kind of adventure when I was growing up, and they gave me love, a powerful sense of family and an identity rooted in a rich history, and the world that opens up when you speak more than one language.

Thanks for sharing that!

[Land Shark]

26. An Int. Prop. "Trade Secret" is literally nothing more than information a corporation keeps secret

It has to have a business profitability purpose but NOTHING corpse do is for any purpose other than that. Thus, a trade secret, potentially infinite in its lifetime so long as the corporation makes "reasonable efforts" to maintain secrecy, is defined as:

INformation a business/organization wants to keep secret.

Like how the votes are counted!

And the only way trade secrets get "lost" at least in theory is by not keeping them secret. And yet... here's what happens if you stumble across one and either know, subsequently learn or HAVE REASON TO KNOW whether you know or not, that it's a trade secret (any disclosure or us triggers double or triple damages depending on the state, plus attorney's fees for willful or knowing use or disclosure:

Misappropriation is defined as the:

(a) Acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has
reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; or

(b) Disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied
consent by a person who:

(1) Used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret; or

(2) At the time of disclosure or use, knew or had reason to know that his knowledge of the trade secret was derived from or through a person who had utilized improper means to acquire it; or acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or derived from or through a person who owed a duty to the person seeking relief to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or

(3) Before a material change of his position, knew or had reason to know that it was a trade secret and that knowledge of it had been acquired by accident or mistake.

New Hampshire version of Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

So simply getting "acquisition" on notice that somebody else took it from their employment (which all sign not to do) or otherwise used "improper means" triggers punitive damages, AND any disclosure or use does as well, regardless of whether improper means were used to obtain it or it was disclosed by the company by accident or mistake -- WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE ONLY WAY TRADE SECRET RIGHTS ARE LOST - THROUGH ACCIDENTAL DISCLOSURE OR FAILURE TO ADOPT REASONABLE MEANS TO MAINTAIN THE TRADE SECRET.

[JackRiddler]

35. The irony in that is that the "loss" of trade secrets is actually their multiplication.

[begin_within]

28. Well I wouldn't be able to do what I do, and make a living from it, if it weren't for copyright law

Copyright law protects me as an individual just as much as it protects huge corporations. The same laws prevent people from ripping me off and selling what I wrote and made. So I'm in favor of copyright laws. Artists, writers, creative people in any field are protected by these laws and I believe they are fair and just.

[JackRiddler]

36. Hello? Did you even read past the title of the OP?

Care to keep pounding the strawman that I oppose copyright laws?

[Spike89]

30. It is confusing, but many of these "facts" aren't

First, the woman claiming copyright of Sherlock Holmes is in fact not the legal owner of the copyright. Second, copyright would NOT allow her to do what she says. That would be a trademark issue and as far as I know, there is no valid trademark protecting the character Sherlock Holmes. The fact is that almost the entire original Sherlock Holmes catalog is out of copyright worldwide, with the latest having only a few years left in the U.S.

Second, copyright does not prohibit mashups, parodies, or a variety of other uses. There is nothing ironic about Disney having "stolen" the idea for steamboat Willie from a previous live-action film...copyright has NEVER covered ideas, concepts, or other abstract thoughts. That isn't to say you can't be sued...you can be sued for anything, but you'll win your case. For what it is worth, I kinda doubt Disney will worry about steamboat willie going public, but Fantasia and the other "classics" are probably going to see a fight. Oh, and copyright isn't the real issue with Micky and Donald. Those are trademarks--a very different set of laws and regulations. A trademark never expires unless the owner allows it.

What's really ironic is that the quote you end with includes a number of examples that actually have been produced with the Holmes character and withstood copyright challenges. In other words, those outrageous examples of overzealous copyright were viewed by the courts as just that, overzealous.

For what it's worth, I do agree that the extensions are too long and there are other problems with copyright. But getting upset about the Sherlock Holmes thing is silly...copyright isn't an issue there and the original story was very bad reporting.

[JackRiddler]

42. next-day kick