Conservative Copyfights

Actually, you’re missing the gist of this copyfight, which is really about a split between the business and religious wings of the conservative alliance, neither of which gives a damn^H^H^H^Hdarn about what liberals think.

The copyright issue is “derivatives works”.

The *business* problem is that if you allow “derivative works” for religious sensibilities, that opens the door for *anybody* to make a derivative work. And while the religious market is small, the general issue of derivative works is not, particularly for the secular teen fan market. On the other hand, it’s bad politics to be against what religious conservatives want on issues of morality and children. Very bad politics.

So we get some talk about artistic vision rather than admit that if everybody does it, the consequences could be profoundly unsettling for the market. Don’t think liberals matter – it merely looks that way.

Cynically, the resolution seems to be to only allow derivative works for religious conservative moral sensibilities!

As I understand, remixing is the right to use works as part of another, creative composition. I hardly think that a censored version of a film or TV show counts as a new, creative composition. Ergo, I wouldn’t consider a “remix” defense to carry any weight.

It seems that editing which only involves snipping and which doesn’t involve the creation if any additional copies should be fine.

That is, if I want to buy 10 copies of The Brown Bunny, and then create 10 two minute long “family friendly” editions of the movie and rent them out or sell them I don’t see how that’s conceptually different from my buying 10 copies of a novel and running a black marker over all of the offending bits and reselling it. Based on first sale doctrine I can’t imagine that it would be illegal for me to do that.

copyright protection is a guarantee to the author(s) of creative works that their work is sacred – only those changes to which authors give permission are legal (like the airline editing mentioned above)

sampling pre-existing music to create a “new” song for sale is unauthorized, it is a violation of copyright law

ripping off a photo from somewhere online and using Photoshop on it to make a “new” picture for paid publication is a violation of copyright law

(exceptions being based on very specific Fair Use conditions, or perhaps if the alterations are so extreme as to make the original work completely unrecognizable)

it is not illegal to make changes to artwork if no re-selling of the work is involved – so music may be sampled and integrated into someone’s personal wedding video without any infringement, or people can pass around jpegs which they’ve found online

books can be blacked out and given away

but nobody may alter somebody else’s creative work and then re-sell it as something “new” (or different – as in “friendly” to some selected audience) without permission from the author of the work

that’s the whole point of copyright law – to protect authors against an infringement of their creations

conservative critics can, however, make their own damned creative work, and shape it any fucking way they want to – but instead, they essentially pirate work and defile it, because they have no imagination of their own to author the kind of work they want to see in the first place

their problem (in this respect) is not with culture, but with their own limited capacity for imaginative brain function

“Conceptually” – what is this word you speak of …?

A problem is that copyright law, especially modern DMCA/DRM/it’s-all-licensed-not-sold copyright law, does not get along very well with “conceptually”.

Oh, there actually is a special bowlderizing DVD player, look up “ClearPlay”.

chuchundra: when you buy a DVD from these people they send you a legitimate copy of the original movie, as well as your copy, and you then destroy the former. They make $ by charging you more than the maufacturer’s price, and the studio sells the saem number of dics–more, plausibly, since many of these people wouldn’t buy the uncut original. I think this seems like a fine idea, especially if it allows me to get a clean copy of the “no Jar-Jar Binks” fan edit of episode one, as it should. also, I think the studios’ desire to please this christian constituency could be the thin edge of a wedge which allows other remixers dearer to my heart to do cool movie mash-ups and who knows what else, without getting sued. I feel like it’s no skin off my back if people don’t want their kids to watch transgendered starfish, or whatever.

I think it should be legal to sell diffs but not remixes; that is, that the edited version should be playable only when the original is present.

Would require a more complicated DVD player, though.

I have to say I come down on the side of producerism on this one. There has to be a right of the creator to maintain the integrity of a piece of work if he or she wants to. How about if we take it up a notch; ought there to be a version of Sesame Street with all the black kids taken out?

or a version of Schindler’s List with a few scenes inserted which make it clear that Schindler was rescuing the Jews from incarceration in prison camps where no mass exterminations were carried out?

It seems to me that the conflict here is about moral rights, which in most European countries are separated from economic rights over intellectual property. Even when a work is in the public domain, authors in Europe possess moral rights over how a work is packaged and labelled and cannot abandon or transfer those rights.

The Alan Smithee rule might well be applied here: We might credit consumers with the power to re-edit a work as they see fit, but they can’t use the same title nor the name of the original author to market it. If the editors of sanitised versions are forbidden from using the same name and marketing materials as the original version without the consent of the original authors, the market for their works would decline considerably, as each would have to be marketed on its own merits.

There are precedents for AOC products like Parma ham and champagne that work that way. Perhaps something of the sort might be made to apply to IP. That way, it might still be possible to produce fan edits and derivative works, but they would have to be retitled and presented in a manner that makes clear that they are not the original artist’s vision and that their content is explicitly disavowed by them.

I don’t have a problem with people removing the transgendered starfish if they like (though it would be great if we could force them to wear “I am an idiot” sandwich boards afterwards) The director etc should have the right to remove their names from any cut which they haven’t approved, that’s the limit of the integrity they should be able to enforce. (Conversely, they must have the right to make sure that anything they did produce will have their name attached)
The actors might be in a stronger position, if you think they should have rights over their image – Julia Roberts would obviously be unhappy with an X-rated version of Pretty Woman, and she can’t just take her name off the credits.

It’s a long quote, but it’s worth it:

Copyright under civil law countries tend to focus much more significantly on noneconomic rights associated with copyright, and copyright is more likely to be referred to as “authors rights” or “droit d’auteur.” Author’s rights encompass both economic rights and “moral rights”. In France, moral rights are tied to the cultural heritage of the country and played a role in the French Revolution. France is considered to be the country that pays the greatest attention to moral rights. There, moral rights are said to be inalienable, inheritable and in perpetuity. In other countries, moral rights may be assigned away in various degrees, and may be conterminous with economic rights of author’s.

Moral rights generally include the right of paternity and the right of integrity. The right of paternity means the right to have one’s name associated as the author of a work. The right of integrity means the right to make sure that the work maintains its artistic integrity and thus is not changed in a way which maligns the work or its author. Other moral rights exist to one degree or another in various countries, which include the right to determine the first publication of a work, and in limited circumstances, accompanied by compensation to the exploiting party, the right to have a work removed from circulation.

Moral rights are required in Article 6 bis of the Berne Convention. The moral rights are said to extend even after the transfer of copyright during the autohr’s lifetime and exercisable after death during the term of copyright.

As a Yoorpean, I would not hesitate to exercise this option if it were my works of transcendent genius being mutilated. (And since the EU, in its magnanimity, even embraces the Welsh, Dsquared can play too.)

As for the FDRUSA, it generally inspires in me these days little more than a vague feeling that I should start learning the fiddle.

R.Mutt: Wonderful comment.

Instead of taking away someone else’s IP rights, why don’t the “family friendlies” exercise some individual liberty and not watch the movies with starfish of questionable gender?

Don’t these people read Bunyan any more? They need to ponder Mr. Facing-both-ways. Either you reject the prevailing culture or you don’t, but attempting to construct a halfway house ain’t gonna work. Why don’t they make their own movies? Lord knows their tithe-swollen churches could well afford to finance them.

“Either you reject the prevailing culture or you don’t, but attempting to construct a halfway house ain’t gonna work. Why don’t they make their own movies? Lord knows their tithe-swollen churches could well afford to finance them.”

Your concluding and unfair slam aside, Steve, this is exactly right. The problem with people of a conservative faith (including my own faith) spending time, money, and legal effort securing the “right” to remix the dominant culture according to their own private wishes is that it doesn’t amount to anything; it just buys into the same choice mentality which undergirds the whole cultural orientation which troubles them in the first place. The social conservative complaint ought to be something other than derivative and parasitical; it ought to come up with something on its own. In some small ways, it has done so–there are socially conservative “counter-cultures” out there. Moreover, there is also the important argument about who controls, or at least ought to be able to contribute to, the dominant culture itself. Many conservatives have gotten involved in that battle–some of whom are, admittedly, genuine theocrats, but most of whom are (in my judgment) unfairly tagged with that label simply because they want to see more evidence that their popular religious or moral preferences are informing the media machine. In any case, you’re right that in the long run contenting oneself with edited movies is the worst of both worlds–it doesn’t build any alternatives, and it excuses one from having any responsibility for or interest in (and thus accountability to!) the mainstream, since you can always go and get rid of whatever you don’t like on your own anyway.

I should add that culturally-motivated remixing has its place, perhaps especially in terms of planting the seeds for an eventual alternative culture, or cultivating a necessary argument in favor of change in the dominant one. Henry’s right that progressives ought to get onboard with this movement, at least up to a point. I just mean to say that, similarly, there’s a limit on what this kind of technology ought to be seen as capable of doing on behalf of any given set of values; while practically speaking I obviously make use of but also strategically limit my kids’ exposure to the mainstream culture and entertainment media, I’ve no interest in such a strategy being the sum total of what I have to offer them in the long run. I’d rather be able to deliver to them, and allow them to explore (and embrace or reject, as they prefer), some artistic whole, rather than my own hacked-up, skip-this, change-the-channel-there, spliced, cover-your-eyes-now version of someone else’s vision.

The last time a large, conservative suburban church got involved in film financing: http://www.annatambour.net/Dreamscapes_Susan-MacDonald.htm

Howzabout this:

1) Enable “tagging” of digitized films. You could tag films for language or content, but also, e.g., for music cues, certain actors or characters, certain colors, etc. At playback time, use Boolean filters to navigate through the film as you see fit. Joe Bible gets to skip the [expletive], while I could load up a multi-disc DVD player and watch hour after hour of nothing but [expletive].

2) Get rid of the [expletive] MPAA. Stop rating movies altogether.

If a creative filmmaker knew that there would be digital tagging in place, she would then make the movie with that in mind, just as filmmakers nowadays make films with the [expletive] MPAA in mind.

I don’t understand the obsession with diffs over straightup edits of the sort conservatives propose. In neither case are copies being multipled (not that I have a problem with that, but I think we can separate the derivative work prong of the copyfight from the sharing prong; Japan does just fine with the former permitted but not the latter forbidden). And the effect on the market for the originals (and authorized derivative works) is the same.

One major problem with diffs is that it’s’s hard to do multiple generations. If I have a diff of of Spongebob which removes fishnet starfish, and I want one the same but dubbed in Esperanto, I would have to have three spindles on my DVD player. Maybe people think this is a good idea? I can’t imagine why someone would want to have a rule which effectively permits only one generation of changes.

Reread the post, folks. How much should we force culture onto those who don’t want it? Obligatory viewings of the Crying Game and The China Syndrome? Heather Has Two Mommies, or off to the reeducation camps you go? I’m half horrified that Henry actually thinks such an enforcement mechanism is defensible, and half relieved that nobody here really understands what he’s proposing.

I wouldn’t want to force anything on you, but maybe you should go take a warm glass of milk and then have a nap.

Then maybe you could reread the post yourself. After you’ve calmed down some, you may see he’s not saying what you say he’s saying at all. He’s not talking about forcing anybody to watch Crying Game. Sorry, he just isn’t. He’s talking about what happens to the notion of a “common culture” if more and more people choose to sculpt the “common culture” into something they don’t share with anybody else anymore.

Nowhere does he prescribe forcing people to participate in a “common culture”. He’s wondering what happens to us if people choose not to do that.

Gosh, I wonder what he means when he says, “At the moment, I don’t have any very good answers…” Could it mean… he doesn’t prescribe anything?

Now go get some milk.

“Why don’t they make their own movies? Lord knows their tithe-swollen churches could well afford to finance them.”

What tithe-swollen churches would those be? I’ve only attended one church in my entire life that could be categorized that way. Remember: the billionaires are “tithing” the DNC and the ACLU.

Sheesh, by some of this reasoning I’m violating the copyright owner’s rights by walking out of the room to get a drink, and not pausing the disk.

“or a version of Schindler’s List with a few scenes inserted which make it clear that Schindler was rescuing the Jews from incarceration in prison camps where no mass exterminations were carried out?”

Or maybe a version where Schindler arming the Jews he rescued, and training them to sell their lives dearly if the SS came for them, was sent down the memory hole? Oh, wait, that IS what Spielberg did…

corpuscle, surely you’re not saying “love it or leave it”? Can I accept only parts of the bible as true or useful? And choose to only read those parts? And if I do so, will you accuse me of having “not much regard” for the work?

Wait… you mean all this time there’s been a “Pause” key on the Bible? Like, where, man? I could really use it.

seth, I guess everyone assumed you were trolling. The difference, of course, is honesty. It’s the same reason quoting isn’t plagiarism.

The essential issue here is freedom.

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.

From the perspective of some ideal copyright regime, I don’t have a problem with Fox (but I’m a copyright minimalist). Nor do I have a problem with it from my ideal universe of media; I think we need more unabashed partisanism, rather than the lie that there’s some objectivity or neutrality which media can represent.

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.

clew: OK, if that was your proposal, then you’re right about the diff thing. Still, it’s not clear to me why this isn’t strictly worse (for convenience reasons) than permitting direct alteration under a non-multiplication regime.

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

Seth, read that title a little more carefully.

I read what you wrote. And I guess you don’t value history any more than Ayn Rand. Dj’s were the first samplers, and rap follows from that. More? Go to disco in the seventies, when gay clubs and parties in NY couldn’t get bands to play. Necessity is the mother of invention. But of course to liberarians it’s just the opposite: invention is the mother of necessity. Hey lets all be ‘creative.’

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”

I’m not a libertarian, and I have no idea what libertarians think about invention. In my view, there’s no one source for invention — I build software because I love the pure feeling of doing so (see Ellen Ullman’s _Close To The Machine_ for more on this view), because I have desires which code can help me satisfy (necessity), and because my software helps other people.

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.

Novalis,
“I also like plenty of non-remix culture”

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.