In general, i would tend to agree with the basic premise of part four of the documentary Everything is a Remix. Everything in our world that exists now is based upon ideas or concepts that that came before. No mater what field of research or form of art, something is owed to those in the past that 'paved the path' before.
The documentary briefly talks about the history of Copyright Act in the United States and seems to be of the opinion that this act from 1790 was a fair way of supporting the originator of an idea or product to compensate the costs of developing this idea and allows the inventor to make a reasonable profit over the 28 years that the law protects their idea. I would probably agree that this amount of time, or even the extended period later adopted in 1909, would be an ideal time frame to make money before an idea becomes public property. The current state of copyright that this edition of Everything is a Remix focuses on has become ridiculous and seems more based on greed than the betterment of society as a whole. The film makes an interest point that this stifles creativity and innovation.
Girl Talk, a mashup artist from Pittsburgh, has become somewhat of a lightening rod for his use (or abuse depending on your point of view) of other artists songs to make his own music. From a documentary that he helped produce he argues that the media that we are surrounded with daily is the equivalent to being handed paint on the street, it should be used freely to create new art and current laws are holding this creativity back. I tend to agree and with the amount and quality of unique videos, music, and graphic art on the Internet that has been created using these methods it seems to show that the majority does also.
Sean, I agree.
ReplyDeleteCreative manipulation of copyright and patent law limits creativity. The only way I see out of this mess is to have some kind of ethics review mandated as part of any litigation on copyright infringement, or better yet, an ethics review at the time the copyright/ patent application is made. Perhaps there is an ethics panel in place already but if there is, it seems to be ineffective.
Some of these patents have such vague wording. They're just using broad strokes of the pen to claim ownership to future innovations that the patent authors don't even know will be.
It's somewhat infuriating that this is allowed to go on.
I checked into GirlTalk and it is very interesting. Definitely a lightning rod. I plan on watching that documentary later. Marked on the "to-do list"!
ReplyDeleteA lot of good points to think about with this.I echo what you finished with saying how with the internet it shows that (probably) a majority of people would like ideas to be free and allow for more creativity.
Hopefully with more awareness and people like GirlTalk pushing for a change, we will see a lot more results in the future.
Nice blog. I really liked your imbed of the original copyright act. It made me think about how old this act really is. Even though is has been amended I think it is past due for a total revamp. With the times changing so rapidly as a result of the world wide web it is definitely time to rethink the copyright act and make room for the digital age. If we are to tackle the problems that our next generation is going to have to solve with the digital tools at hand then we need to allow them to "copy, transform and create" from the memes that exist.
ReplyDelete