Posts by Mark Harris
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Mark H - care to clarify 'the best'?
Context?
There are rather a lot of ANZ artists - who did/ have spent limited time/s overseas but *dont *end up* in Sydney or London or where-ever - and never want to. Home is here, and here is where our kind of creation goes on.
True, but there are also plenty who do, especially in the music business.
O, and apropos your 'rancid' comment - have you changed your mind on that?
Thanks to ME, I have a memory like a sieve. Where did I say that?
Work -exists. Fortunately, a lot of the time, it is copyright-protected, and not subject to your open-slather views.
You must have missed my mega-posts yesterday. I'm not particularly in favour of open slather. I believe in copyright properly applied, for a limited time. I know you don't agree, so let's not go over that. Just don't slander me as a pirate, please.
Caught up with some of the latest shenaghans aproposDRM?
You mean Vodaphone giving up on it? :-)
-
In what way? The only suggestion you've given, if I'm not mistaken, is to reduce the length of the copyright term. If that is your way of addressing the fact that people can just infringe copyright laws at will these days, it seems rather peculiar.
The law as written (in different ways in different parts of the world, but let's focus on New Zealand) was written for a different one-way paradigm, where consumers/end users/ call-them-what-you-will have no input to the system other then being a source of revenue. Now they have an opportunity to simultaneously be consumers, authors and publishers without the need for intermediaries. The millions of blogs and websites of the net testify to a growing need to be heard, whether or not you have something worth saying.
The law doesn't recognize this. It doesn't recognize that the way we reuse work has changed. We link and quote with gay abandon in ways that some copyright maximalists think is infringing. We don't generally accept that position. Once upon a time, reference to other works was limited to academia and journalism. Now, everyone's a potential journalist.
When one person copies something, it's an infringement. When everybody copies everyday, it's a cultural change.
I'm not really suggesting anything an alternative, just thinking of the existing protections in a different way.
I'd suggest to you that you're thinking in the same old way, based on 300 year old concepts that just don't apply any more, or on 40 year old concepts of "intellectual property" which never did work.
I find hipocrisy in the idea an artist's reward should be conceptualised as something that society extends out of the goodness of its heart, as opposed to being inscribed in the same mercantile logic that governs the exchange of all other goods that people work to produce
Sorry, but that's exactly what it is. It's a license to exclude others from gathering revenue for your work to encourage you to create more. It's not out of the goodness of society's heart - it's a trade off. The creator gets to benefit for a limited time, then society gets to benefit.
You seem to have bought into the idea that copyright is property. If that's the case, that's sad, as it limits the way you can think. I talked earlier about defining the debate. That's what maximalists have done in pushing the concept of "IP", conflating copyright with patents and trademarks. If we really wants to look at what the best benefit is to both creator and society, I think we have to step outside that paradigm and start afresh. I can't overstate that the game has changed radically.
If an artist (say, JD Salinger) made a single masterpiece and then decided to pack it in, should s/he not be compensated for his or her work?
For a limited time. That's the deal. Whether you choose to go on or not, that's the deal you and society sign up to. If you don't like it, don't publish.
-
It's funny how for some things you're willing to let the chips of technological progress fall where they may, and not conceive of any redress or counterbalance because it would be futile if not counterproductive, and for other things you'd like to wind the clock back fifty years.
I said I'd see winding the term of copyright back to what it was then as a good start. That has nothing to do with technological advance. You chip away at these little things and never address the substantive point in the next paragraph:
But it's not enough. I'd say to you that the world has changed. Copyright law was initially designed to regulate publisher to publisher conflicts. Now, everyone on the Internet is able to publish and republish. Technology now allows anyone to infringe, where once you needed a solid investment in plant. The game has changed and laws must change to reflect that.
then you said:
I just don't agree with the principle.
What are you offering as an alternative?
-
But, see, I know some of them...
-
That IEML stuff is very timely. I've been reading about Neurath's work with Isoptype, and thinking about universal language issues. I might have to promote all that up the to do list ;-)
-
But that diagram is awfully familiar. ;-)
-
Foucalt is in my to read pile, but I haven't noted Levy before. Thanks. (wonder if I can download it? ;-)
-
Did I say it was?
Well, that's how I read
Technically, artists who have their stuff pirated are victims of, shall we say, non-legality. Do you say that all crime victims should just "adapt or die" (rather than seek redress via the legal system?)
-
I'd also argue that in NZ the reason why so many need a day job, not to put too fine a point on it, is being slightly too precious about their art, if you will, and plain laziness. NZ bands are notorious for playing irregularly and then complaining that there is no money in it.
Add to that the size of the traditional in-country market, which I believe is just too damn small to carry all the artistic weight we'd like it to. Which is why the best usually wind up in Sydney or London at some point. And I think this applies across the art sector, not just music.
-
Copyright is a capitalist institution. Socialists are more likely to think that all ideas belong to the state, or humanity (which they feel the socialist state is the perfect representative of).
Wow! What a thought!
I neither advocate nor deny it, I'd like to point out, but I am going to consider its implications. Just not right now.
Thanks Ben