This is a story which is becoming more and more common in America, driven by many factors. Digital technology has given millions of people the tools to slice, mix, and remix bits of recorded material into new pieces of art. The corporations who regard this material as their intellectual property are working hard to protect it from being remixed through our legal system. In the process, culture is being cramped.
I discovered this idea in many places, which eventually led me to lawyer turned copyright activist Lawren Lessig's 2004 book, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. As you might expect, the book is in the public domain and available for free on Lessig's website. I read it on my phone.
In Free Culture, Lessig explains how intellectual property law has grown. When Congress first enacted copyright law in 1790, works entered the public domain after 14 years unless the author chose to renew. Congress extended this deadline so many times in the years since that the average work now enters the public domain after 95 years. While everyone is able to use the works of Mozart and Shakespeare for any creative purpose, it will be a very long time before any 20th century artists' work is freely available.
In 1790, copyright law only applied to commercially published works. Commercial and noncommercial derivative works (such as the Modern Skirts' solo or countless YouTube video mashups), as well as any original noncommercial work, were not governed by copyright law. Today, copyright law extends to every original and derivative work, commercial or noncommercial. The fear and cost of litigation by powerful copyright holders has squelched the "fair use" right.
To make these points, Lessig fills Free Culture with stories from the tangled history of law, media, and technology. He tells how RCA ruined the life of the inventor of FM radio in an attempt to keep his invention from toppling the AM empire. How a farming couple tried to exercise their right to property to keep airplanes from flying over their hen houses and scaring their chickens. How Walt Disney borrowed the idea for Mickey Mouse from a Buster Keaton character named Steamboat Bill and built its empire on transforming public domain works from "Snow White" to "The Jungle Book." How the RIAA sued a college freshman for $15 million for creating a file-sharing program. How copyright law has shut down hundreds of collectors who are trying to archive historic books, music, and film online.
I know at this point it may sound as if Lessig is a radical, but he's not. The central argument in his book is not that we should do away with government and let all intellectual property be "free," nor should we constrain corporations so they cannot use the law to fight people who steal their property. Lessig believes there is a balance between "all information should be free" and "all sharing or transforming of intellectual property is stealing." He believes that anyone who believes in the free exchange of ideas can recognize that our legal system is cramping the cultural revolution technology has enabled in the last thirty years, and there are reasonable reforms we can make to change this. Notable among Lessig's many solutions is Creative Commons, a corporation which provides "free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof."
There is a wealth of stories and information about this issue on the internet. Here are a few of the more interesting ones I've found:
A Spiegel article in which a German historian argues that Germany's rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century was due to an absence of copyright law.
A New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell which details his change of heart regarding a playwright who was accused of plagiarizing his work.
A New Republic article by Lessig about Google's attempt to scan, index, and make available on the internet over 18 million books.
The following TED Talk from Lessig, outlining many of the ideas in Free Culture (this one is great too):
The following TED Talk from Johanna Blakley, who explains how the fashion industry makes much more money than the media industry in a culture free of copyright:
This TED Talk, in which YouTube's Head of User Experience, Margaret Gould Stewart, explains how copyright and DMCA works on YouTube in ways that both help and hinder creativity.
This in-progress video series, which explores how "everything is a remix."
Interesting. I was watching a PBS special the other day about rappers and their use of samples in their music, especially during the 1980s. Have you seen it? It was fascinating to see both sides, i.e. the creative/artistic use of past materials vs. the original authors/creators of that material. I feel for both sides, I guess.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the name of the special? I would love to watch that. I feel both sides too, but after reading everything in this post I have come to believe that the balance is tilted in the copyright-owners favor more than it should be.
ReplyDeleteLoved the Gladwell article. Particularly this quote:
ReplyDeleteThe ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.
Liked it so much I just lifted it and pasted it directly here, ha.
Yeah, that was a great one. It was in What the Dog Saw, which I listened to the audiobook of, and it was cool to hear him tell a story about himself and the struggles he had gone through.
ReplyDeleteAs a drama teacher, I deal with this issue all the time. Every time you attend even an elementary school play and the announcement comes that there is no video taping, it's due to these stipulations. A huge thank you to Rodgers and Hammerstein's Library who allows parents to video tape their childrens' performances, unlike Disney who will come after you no holds barred. Interesting that they stole Mickey and now they're one of the toughest enforcers of copyright laws that I encounter. We've had friends threatened with lawsuits because they performed material without permission or adapted a play from a book. You have to have some sympathy with the authors who want their material not to be distorted and who also want to receive something back for their creativity. After all who would dare to add paint to a visual artists' finished painting hung in a museum? (oh the Victorian's did that with the grape leaves) Still, it's a tough call.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's awful.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't liken derivative works to adding paint to a painting in a museum. Taking an already created idea and transforming it into something completely doesn't have to mean destroying the original. I think you'd find the Gladwell piece very interesting, he discusses these ideas from the point of view of an artist whose work has been transformed (or in some people's views, stolen).