Under the current regime, and assuming you’re talking about censorship-style fast-forward+mute+black bars diffs, rather than anything more complex, I could imagine arguing either side of that case; the minimalist side looks, through my admittedly biased goggles, slightly stronger). On the minimalist side, I would want to say that there’s no fixed version of the derivative work (as per Nintendo v. Galoob), and anyway, it’s fair use because there’s no multiplication of copies and the movie companies aren’t selling airline versions to consumers. On the maximalist side, I would argue that sure there’s a fixed version; it’s the combination of the diff and the movie, and that it’s not fair use because movies are creative works and the changes are very minor.

I do hope for regime change, but I don’t see it coming any time soon. That’s why I like Creative Commons; it pushes the camel’s nose in legally.

seth, my argument presupposes nothing about any reasonable philosophy of art. Other than that, I must admit to total bafflement when I try to make sense of your statements.

All culture is ‘remix’ culture. It always has been and always will be. But you are a a fan of an idea, (your language makes this clear) and the idea is more important to you than the process of description with which art is assumed to be associated. Your argument, along with many others on this site, see art as illustration: the presentation of what is otherwise a priori.
It’s not that I disagree with your ideas but that I disagree with your interest in an art of ‘ideas’, as I disagree with all the ideologies of romantic modernism on one side or the other: all the ‘isms’ as such. See my comments on Cubism above.

If enough people do enough insightful, moral, witty, snarky, parodic, or improving things with the right to disseminate diffs, then perhaps more of the camel will follow the camel’s nose and the current regime can be really changed.

Seth, I don’t see that you even have the ability to distinguish ends and means in my aesthetic experience, which puts you at considerable risk of confusing the two even while you’re preaching that that confusion should be avoided.

You still haven’t proven to me that you’re as interested in culture as you are in sampling: as interested in the ends as the means.

How could I possibly convince you of my internal state here? Please, feel free to hook me up to a polygraph. I’ll tell you that I’m interested in both. I love Hitherby Dragons. I’m not so fond of the Grey Album, but I recognize that it’s well-regarded. I also like plenty of non-remix culture. And remix culture culture must stand and falls on its own merits (even if some of its power comes from its cultural inputs). But when someone proposes to ban something I like, I have to look hard at the regime in question. And so yes, I’m a copyfighter. I spend a lot of time thinking about mechanism, and means, and regulation, both as means to preserve the culture I love, and because they’re interesting for their own sake. But that doesn’t mean I forget why I started fighting.

never mind. I’m done

Every artist who’s worth anything is a historian. The only reason artists ‘invent’ anything is to describe the experiences of their present- a present now ‘newer’ every; every one more unlike the last. One needs to find new words for this. That’s not the same is making up new ones for the fuck of it. From Mozart to Cool Herc, it’s all about continuity.

“No idea’s original, there’s nothin new under the sun It’s never what you do, but how it’s done”

Do you even bother to read what other people write?

You proved my point

Also, you can’t do mashups of multiple works under the diff scheme.

I’m not going to say that I agree with what conservative copyfighters (or airlines, or Fox) do with their freedoms. But I don’t think that they’re violating anyone’s natural rights in this respect. I don’t like some re-edited things; I do like others. I find myself going about 50-50 on directors’ cuts. The cut (original published) version of (the novel) Stranger In A Strange land was better. MST3K was better.

Is it narcissism to think that you could do better? Not if you’re right. And if it is, is that such a crime as to warrant the harshness of your language?

What I am complaining about is those who defend this mess as a great new world.

Have you seen JibJab’s This Land Is Your Land? Or read many of the stories in Hitherby Dragons (_Tantalus (I/IV)_ or Aslan Shrugged, for instance)? Heard The Grey Album? Remix culture, as Lessig calls it, produces some great stuff. Sure, Sturgeon’s law still applies, but to label it all entirely anti-intellectual pap only makes you look stupid.

Legally yes, morally no.

The Mona Lisa, like the Illiad is a known thing, no more worthy of respect per se than the Pope. Any response, or criticism or sampling, if it’s worth anything presupposes some knowledge of the thing being responded to. Why riff on something no one gets? And the response the argument with the original source is the point.

Put another way: Familiarity may breed contempt-Duchamp’s Mona lisa- but ignorance breeds chaos. Most intellectual defenses of sampling don’t get the point of it, the good and the bad. Fox News is cheap theater. Using everything as fodder for your own crap without knowing what the fuck it- using without responding- is anti-intellectual. But we ned some of that, so I’m not complaining. what I am complaining about is those who defend this mess as a great new world. It’s like the absurd defense of cubism as an ‘invention.’

Libertarians don’t understand art because they don’t understand the social processes that produce it.

“If my derivative is clearly portrayed as mine and not yours (despite deriving from your work), then I have carte blanche to do whatever I like.”

Fuck you.

You may create a work of art.

I may create a derivative work of art based on yours.

These two acts are not in conflict (if we abolish the abomination that is copyright).

However, you have a moral right for your work to be free from modification or being placed in a context that affects it – so long as your work is portrayed as yours, either explicitly or implicitly.

If my derivative is clearly portrayed as mine and not yours (despite deriving from your work), then I have carte blanche to do whatever I like.

In other words, as long as ‘Mona Lisa with Moustache’ is clearly attributed as a derivative by another artist then Leonardo has no complaint. The moral crime is if ‘Mona Lisa with Moustache’ is (even only implicitly) attributed to Leonardo.

Artists are free to create, but not to misattribute.

Incidentally, plagiarism is sampling, but with misattribution. It is honourable to copy another’s work and credit them, but not to claim their work as one’s own.

I’ll try to be clearer.
If you think sampling is cool then you should accept Fox’s sampling of news. Your only complaint should be that they claim to be “objective”.
By all means let the audience twist anything any which way and believe what they want. It may be shallow but it;’s not illegal.

History changes the meanings of things, Scalia is an idiot for arguing otherwise. But Anyone who wants to remake something without taking the time to understand it is either a coward or an idiot. You can’t ignore he scale of Hollywood as an industry but a movie at some point [when?] develops a structural integrity a ‘thingness’ as art or product that deserves respect as such. I don’t like watching reedited or reformatted movies any more than I do reading abridged novels. The Iliad at some point in time became a ‘thing’ of which there are ‘variants.’ I study these ‘things.’ I learn from them.

When does this discussion become little more than a diminution everything outside science to the level of narcissism? Like the bongo playing of Richard Feynman: All ‘knowledge’ is scientific and the rest is simple individual pleasure.

“What a vulgar little country the web has turned out to be.”

Is that better?