Uh, is I.P. Freely here? Hey, everybody, I.P. Freely!
Wait a minute... Listen to me you lousy bum. When I get a hold of you, you're dead. I swear I'm gonna slice your heart in half! /
Today's topic is Intellectual Property. I've been reading Ourspace by Christine Harold, and she makes some very good points about IP which I'd like to share.
Here's the basic problem: Current Copyright law is putting a serious cramp in public culture.
Here's the underlying problem: Ideas being treated like property
Here's the compromise: the creative commons and collaborative works like Intermittens
We are in a period of artistic expression characterized by re-appropriation. We live in the Empire of Signs and Signals, a culture permeated by branding and logos. Even mundane objects have identity wrapped up in them. (As I write this, I am sipping coffee out of a ceramic mug which advertises "a
greener future" - choosing ceramic over paper cups isn't just a choice about the environment, it's a choice about your identity) Hip-hop relies on samples. Film and literature is made richer by referencing other cultural works. Culture Jammers are vandalizing billboards in the name of self-expression, stealing the power of the corporate imagery to strike at its own source. Hell most of the films opening this summer are reconceputalizations of old ideas. Expression and reappropriation go hand in hand these days.
And that's something that's supposed to be protected by free speech. We private citizens have the right to comment on and satirize anything we want. It's inherent to the system. This type of expression is
necessary for our freedom. An artist named Dwyer, commenting on consumer culture, created this piece of art:
this is a reappropriation of the starbucks logo... This is an obvious piece of political commentary which is protected under "Fair Use" - which explicitly protects "criticism" and "comment". These are the tools through which we, as a public, are able to exert
some control over the public sphere. Starbucks felt otherwise. They sued his ass sued for trademark and copyright infringement, unfair competition (??), and
trademark dilution via tarnishment. This last one stuck, and will appear again, so keep your eyes peeled for it in the coming years. This is a relatively new regulation, put in place to keep corporations from having their brands watered down by other similar brands. You can't produce a line of shoes with a backwards nike swoosh, you know? But Dwyer wasn't releasing a competing brand, he was commenting on the consumer culture that starbucks propagates. But Starbucks won the case, and had Dwyer's artistic expressions pulled from the public.
This, if you ask me, is criminal. It's
unconstitutional.It's also kind of ironic, because Branding strategies inherently surrender a level of control to the public. Marketers create brands and symbols, then disseminate them freely, hoping that people integrate them into their lives. Think about that nike swoosh - the phrase "Just Do It" is a great slogan because it could mean anything to anyone. It's interpretation is personal. Likewise the "Got Milk" campaign has had great success because people can reappropriate it for
anything. Marketers know that their output is going to be discussed, dissected, reassembled, talked about on the news, re contextualized by the public. In fact, they
count on it. But when someone makes a comment that the corporation doesn't like, it should be protected too. Corporations shouldn't be able to just silence legitimate parody or dissent. But they have better lawyers than the artists and private citizens they're suing.
Pirates and re appropriation artists challenge the hoarding of information by recommunicating it to the public. They do not feel that the rights to certain forms of expression should be kept prisoner by private corporations. They're acting as a kind of intellectual robin hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the public.
Here's a great example of what's wrong right now: The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extention Act was the
eleventh time copyright has been extended since 1960. Disney's lawyers want exclusive control of Mickey Mouse, an image which is so ingrained in our culture that he's run for president.
All of us grew up with Mickey Mouse. Many of us have childhood memories of shaking his hand at Disney World, our families posing for a cheesy portrait wearing those stupid mouse ears. But unlike other elements of your childhood, you can't put Mickey in art. You can't write a book or movie about going to Disney World. You can't paint a portrait of Mickey Mouse. Not without Disney's permission.
It didn't always use to be like this.
Originally, Copyright was intended to
inspire creativity by insuring the livelihood of artists and writers. The founding fathers of the US protected works of art under copyright for 14 years. The intent (argued by Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard IP professor who participated in the above Dwyer case) was to block off that particular expression so that other artists wouldn't just keep releasing the same works over and over again. The original phrasing was that copyright should secure "for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." All the current discourse is niggling about that word "limited". We've gone from 14 years to 70 years beyond the life of the author, 95 years in the case of a corporation as copyright holder.
Siva Vaidhyanathan of NYU says, "Copyright law rewards works already created and limits works yet to be created, which is precisely what copyright was supposed to
avoid. Copyright rewards the established at the expense of the emerging."
Lessig (who is the father of Creative Commons, btw) insists that "always and everywhere, free resources have been crucial to innovation and creativity; ...without them, creativity is crippled." Here, he's talking about the Commons, the body of cultural material we can draw on to express ourselves. He summarizes the case against our copyright culture here:
1. Creativity and innovation always build on the past.
2. the past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it
3. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past
4. Ours is less and less a free society
In
Ourspace, Harold argues that the pirates, who seek to liberate information from those who would control it, ultimately reinforce the real problem, which is the notion of
ideas as property.
She thinks that the real avenue for change, the real answer to this problem, is not piracy, but the
exploration of collaborative works. The Creative Commons, Open Source Software, Intermittens Magazine -- these are examples of expressions by
groups of people. None of them are territorially controlling their ideas and prohibiting them from being used by others. Collaboration under the creative commons (ie copyleft) creates cultural works which others can enjoy freely - not just in the ways Disney wants you to.
