BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Head Shop >

Creative property, creative theft (and slash?)

  
  

Page: 1(2)

 
 
Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless
20:40 / 30.06.03
Here’s my take on a possible communist model for copyright. Under this system artists would be entirely supported by a state pension which would be the same for all creators. The state would also fund the artists’ materials and organise distribution et.c. The art product itself would be made freely available to the population via electronic means or art galleries/libraries or ordinary libraries. In some ways this might be similar to mediaeval guilds

This has a few major virtues and a lot of possible flaws.
Virtues: artists are banded together- helpful for people starting out on their careers. Easier for artists to network. Artists are not placed under pressure to produce work to suit the marketplace rather than their own vision.
Art is freely available to anyone regardless of socio-economic status
-
Flaws: easy for state to censor literary output- elitist- too easy for artistic cliques to take control. People who have no interest in art have to pay for it through taxation. Danger of academism

I believe a version of this existed in the Soviet Union– certainly I know there was a Writers Union. But I also know that it was often used as a means of state censorship- Anna Akhmatova found it virtually impossible to publish her work for much of her life due to the machinations of mediocre state writers. I don’t know how copyright worked in the USSR.

Clearly this kind of system is not going to work well in any totalitarian or authoritarian state. However given a more liberal system of govt there is no reason why such a system would not work well, provided a sufficiently large segment of the population is willing to undertake the tax burden. It would not necessarily require a totally non(or post)-capitalist economy, nor even the total suppression of the capitalist copyright system- it could run in parallel to a weakened version of the current system, (though of course suppression of the current system would probably help its fortunes)

While this may seem utopian one should bear in mind that any nation giving out arts grants is in some sense already running a weak version of this system- so in fact one could argue that the embryo of this system is already in existence. And of course it has already caused controversy in some places- Im thinking of the trouble over the US govts funding of Andres Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’

So this is how I think it should work. A few remarks about how this system might cope with one of pin’s points above:

2. The Author should retain some control of the production and distribution of the text in it’s entirety, or large chunks, or fair sized chunks, or something

I don’t think this is necessary if the author’s livelihood is not dependent on the sales of the art work . Publication should put stuff irreversibly into the public domain. I don’t have any sympathy for people like Auden or Wordsworth who published stuff and later decided they wanted to rewrite it and withdraw the earlier version. I think that the present right of authors to be identified as the author of their work should be retained- also people should not be allowed to assume other names without their permission. I don’t think they should have any right of control over the use of their characters or other attributes tho’- such rules would outlaw not only fanfic but also excellent original stuff like George Macdonald Fraser’s ‘Flashman’ series. Anyone who’s good enough to rival Pratchett should be able to write a Discworld novel. More than likely very few people would be.
Another beneficial effect (from my admittedly biased pov at least) would be that it would lower the status of people mass producing generic & lame series-universes and force established writers to come up with new ideas if they wanted to keep their public. And that could only be good for new & upcoming talent

A final note: I really don’t have a good answer to the problem of artistic cliques dominating the guilds (or unions, or whatever)- which I think is a very major one. Thoughts anyone?
 
 
Alphonse commands you!
23:32 / 30.06.03
Out of interest, who decides who is permitted to enter these guilds? If one is excluded from such a guild is the individual prevented from creating any form of art? Are practitioners of multiple disciplines permitted to undertake some works and not others? Which guilds do artists who break down the barriers and distinctions between media join? Is there an automatic distinction between art created by the 'amateur' and 'professional' author? Is the artist's need for financial renumeration for their work really the only obstacle to universal ownership of art? If Francis Ford Copploa chooses or is forced to entitle his film 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' what difference does this make? Does it atone for the casting of Keanu?

Recently, a net-acquiantance found that a short piece of Buffy fanfic that he'd written last year had been posted, word for word, on another site by a different 'author' claiming it as his own work. My friend (author A) suffered no financial loss as neither he, nor B are legally entitled to profit from the work. A did not create the characters, fictional world, relationships or the situation which the work relied upon and for all his work on the story, it could not have existed without the prior creation of Joss Whedon and the other Buffy writers. Nevertheless he felt extremely aggrieved at this 'theft' (his words). Clearly there is more to this copyright lark than the ability to earn a crust. Legally, B is no worse than A, but is there a moral guilt?
 
 
Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless
12:34 / 01.07.03
Anyone should be able to enter any guild. Guilds' roles would be to loosely cover generic tendencies in art, not to act as genre police.
Barrier breakers should be welcome wherever they choose to go- and people should also be free to join multiple guilds. Amateur/pro distinctions should be irrelevant if anyone can join a guild.

But thinking about the am/pro distinction makes me think of another possible problem- publicity. No big deal if everyone has the same access to publicity tools, but if individual/corporate wealth became involved the level playing field for distribution would inevitably be lost. This would probably be really hard to police. It might only work in a society with a v.high level of economic equality


The Buffy thing- Writer B should feel moral guilt- and in the system outlined above hir actions would be proscribed. The fact that neither writer created the characters should be irrelevant. Passing off someone elses work as entirely ones own without altering it in any way should be outlawed.
There's obviously a fine line on this point tho'. Should Marcel Duchamp have credited the potter who made his urinal? Or the sanitary engineer who designed the mould? I'd argue not, simply because I think his relocation of the object in the arena of high art added sth to it not put there by its original creators.
Could this type of thing happen in literature?
 
 
alas
13:53 / 08.07.03
I'd argue not, simply because I think his relocation of the object in the arena of high art added sth to it not put there by its original creators.
Could this type of thing happen in literature?

Disney uses folk tales--which were presumeably created by someone at some point in our distant past--and novels like Hugo's _Hunchback_--now in the public domain--to create animated films. Then Disney copyrights their version, and tries to control the use of "their" characters. e.g., Mickey Mouse, who they don't want to see slashed with Donald Duck and having them going at it like the aforementioned knives across animated species lines.

Music, also, "Happy Birthday to You" is copyrighted, so everytime you celebrate a birthday party should you, by rights, send some money over to the family of the women who wrote it? The copyright issue has been a huge problem within the music industry because of the practice of sampling. And copyright law increasingly favors those with money and power, corporations, over individuals--whether creators or consumers (or both, as the case of fanfic; we're supposed to be seen but not heard.)

I'm not a fan of the current status and uses of copyright, because I believe questions of originality are in fact quite difficult to prove. Further, I have an underdeveloped theory that much of "originality"--particularly in artistic endeavors--is based on an erasure of maternal labor.

All of which results in artistic horrors like "The Wind Beneath My Wings," reason enought to scrap the notion of artistic uniqueness.

(Did you ever know that you're my bureau?)
 
  

Page: 1(2)

 
  
Add Your Reply