brentashley

Bruce Baugh responded to my copyright ownership post (in the comments) with a good lesson in human nature. No matter how ethereal the notion of ownership, it’s real to those who feel it, and to attempt to deny anyone that which their brains tell them is theirs is a tactic doomed to failure. He also points out that ownership is less the issue than use. I suppose that even with physical property there’s a philosophical argument that no object is ever really owned, but we are simply assigned an exclusive right to its use.

Doc‘s call to arms was for us to find a way to stem the tide of misaligned property analogy as pressed by the media interests; a way to get people in general to “get it”. What pervasaive meme can we come up with that will be strong enough to counter the powerful theft/piracy images? Let’s all blog aloud and get the juices flowing, shall we?

Ownership of physical property implies exclusive use. I own my lawn mower, it’s in my posession, in order for you to use it I must relinquish its use to you. You shouldn’t loan it to your neighbour in turn without my permission, especially as that extends my inability to make use of it. If you take it from me, I am left without its use altogether. I can ask to be compensated for the loss. I lose a physical entity, and therefore control over its use.

Ownership of intellectual property does not imply exclusive use. You can play my music without depriving me of it. You can loan it to someone else without affecting my use, although you should ask my permission. I never lose my ability to have full use of the work. What I lose when you use my work without my permission or recompense is control over its use.

Obviously these are two very different concepts. Yet they’re both called ownership. Concepts of theft and piracy of intellectual property just don’t fit. How have such ill-fitting analogies come to permeate our conciousness?

Doc’s got the right end of the copyright argument stick.

I’m getting tired of the media companies’ rhetoric and extended imagery that their copyrights mean that the works are their property. The copyright is (or at least should be meant to be) a license granted by law that loans the rights of copy (and use) of a work from its perpetual owner, the public domain, to the creator of the work for an initial limited period, in order that the creator may realize some gain from his effort, thus encouraging creators to create. At no time should the copyright holder become the owner of the work itself, just the temporary benefactor of its commercial value.

The EFF has a new blog called Cruelty To Analog, wherein they plan to chronicle attempts by the “content” industries to plug the analog hole.

Have a look at the draft charter of the Copy Protection Technical Working Group.

Tell me this – how do you get a roomful of sufficently technical people who swallow this crap enough to dedicate a chunk of their working life to it? Honestly, I can’t for the life of me think of one technical person I know who’s worth a single shit who would care to be involved with such a ridiculous project. It reeks of knee-jerk protectionism and shortsightedness, it’s doomed to failure and circumvention – DMCA or not – and it would stink up your resume so horribly that prospective employers who really care about technology would laugh you out of an interview. That being the case, the willing candidates for the job must be either devoid of the technical and moral values that would make them worthy of the task or motivated by greed to the extent that they’re likely pretty useless buggers on the whole.

Maybe they hire from the Tobacco industry.

Britt Blaser dissects Managerial Capitalism.

One of the best blogs I’ve read in yonks.

Well, it seems things are picking up in January 2003. As of tomorrow I’ve got two steady gigs totalling 4-5 days per week and more stuff crossing my bow. Things are looking somewhat stable perhaps at least as far as the summer.

My mother-in-law was visiting us here in Toronto until early in December. She sent off some Christmas packages and cards from our house to Canadian and US destinations.

She got a large card in the mail today at home in England. It was a card she had mailed from Toronto to Los Angeles, but because it had insufficient postage for the dimensions of the envelope, they returned it to the sender address – all the way to the UK.

I’d say it’s unbelievable, but it’s not.

It turns out that Republic Pictures owned the original story upon which “It’s A Wonderful Life” is based, plus much of the music in the movie. It’s on that basis that in 1993 they began to excercise copyright control over the movie which had for twenty years been considered by all to be in the public domain.

It still says a lot that the movie only got its wings when freely distributed, and is now much less available.

Here are some relevant links:

http://www.reelclassics.com/Movies/Wonlife/wonlife-article2.htm

http://articles.dhwritings.com/c02.html

http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/wonderful_life.html

http://www.film-center.com/canishow.html

Two stories in the Toronto Star television supplement caught my eye this week.

The first was about David Foley’s upcoming Christmas Special. In it, he and Joe Flaherty are doing a sendup of David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing Little Drummer Boy / Peace On Earth. Foley tells of having to rewrite both tunes and their lyrics when it was discovered they couldn’t get the rights to either song.

I wondered how it was that the authors or their representatives decided that they didn’t want their songs used in this way. I wondered further whether having released their creativity to the world they should really have injunctive power over its use or whether they should only have a right to be compensated for its use.

The second article was about It’s A Wonderful Life. Apparently it was not well received on release, losing half a million in late-1940’s dollars. It languished for years until 1973 when, not having had its copyright renewed by its owners (Liberty Films), it fell into the public domain after 14 years. At that time, TV stations started picking it up cheap to play at Christmastime and it became a perennial favourite.

For 20 years it remained in the public domain, there were many $4.99 VHS copies available, and there was even a colourized version. Somehow, in the 90s, Republic Pictures managed to reclaim the copyright. They have taken control, and produced a new master black-and-white print, and now it only airs on NBC and CBC and is only available on video from them.

How is it that this happened? Will it happen every time some obscure title becomes valuable after falling into the public domain that someone – not necessarily the creator – will find away to claim it for themselves?