andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2004-04-20 09:33 pm
andrewducker) wrote2004-04-20 09:33 pm
The Right to Remix
Should I be allowed to cut up a book I bought and paste the bits back together in a different order, for my own amusement?
Should I be allowed to cut up a book I bought and past the bits back together in a different order and show it to my friends?
Should I be allowed to cut up a book I bought and past the bits back together in a different order and then sell those bits to someone else?
Should I be allowed to distribute instructions to other people on how to cut up their book and stick it together in the way that I did?
Should I be allowed to make a machine that could cut up a book and stick it back together in a specific way and then sell/give this machine to others?
To reframe some of those:
Should I be allowed to remix music for myself?
Should I be allowed to remix music for my friends?
Should I be allowed to give my remixes away?
Now, of course, there's a fundamental difference between music and books in this case - if I give away the transfigured book then I don't have it any more, if I give away the remixed music I still have the original. So performing remixes for my friends and giving them away is violating copyright which, all arguments notwithstanding, is currently illegal. However, this doesn't apply to the last two.
Should I be allowed to tell other people how to remix their own music?
Should I be allowed to write a program to remix other people's records automatically?
Take, for instance, The Grey Album, in which The Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album were mixed together. Releasing this was obviously illegal - but would it be illegal to release a piece of software which, when fed both albums, automatically produced the remix in real-time by playing parts of each at the right time? I can't see any way in which you could argue that it would be - if it's permissible for a person to remix their own music, how can there be a problem with the computer doing it for them.
And yet, this is exactly what Clearplay are being sued for. They produce a DVD player that, when playing a DVD, will automatically edit out any obscenities, nudity or excessive violence. The Director's Guild of America are deeply unhappy that someone would edit their movies. Except that nobody is editing the movies - you can take the film out of the DVD player and stick it in any other player and it plays just fine. You can even turn the filtering off in the players (or set it to a variety of different levels) - the choice is down to you.
A couple of years ago a similar thing almost happened with Windows - Microsoft wanted to introduce smart-tags that would automatically add links to pages in Internet Explorer that pointed to useful definitions. The problem being that Microsoft would decide which definitions to use. Of course, there'd be ways to turn this off, but Microsoft being a monopoly and most users being technically terrified the chances are that people would stick with the default. And this would mean that when you accessed someone's writing it would be modified by Microsoft before you saw it. People were up in arms about this and Microsoft backed down. But should they have done? Shouldn't the user be allowed to edit text on it's way from the server to their browser? After all, I do much the same myself - turning off Flash animations and freezing animated GIFs before they can appear. Is there really a huge difference between that and automatically modifying the text before it's displayed?
Do people have the right to do this? Can they take a work of art and change it in any way they want? Can they use any tool they want to shred, remix, resculpt or otherwise transmogrify copyright works for their own ends? And if so, considering that modern computers have such incredible power that they can seamlessly re-edit in real-time, doesn't that mean that artists have lost control over what other people can do to their work?
Should I be allowed to cut up a book I bought and past the bits back together in a different order and show it to my friends?
Should I be allowed to cut up a book I bought and past the bits back together in a different order and then sell those bits to someone else?
Should I be allowed to distribute instructions to other people on how to cut up their book and stick it together in the way that I did?
Should I be allowed to make a machine that could cut up a book and stick it back together in a specific way and then sell/give this machine to others?
To reframe some of those:
Should I be allowed to remix music for myself?
Should I be allowed to remix music for my friends?
Should I be allowed to give my remixes away?
Now, of course, there's a fundamental difference between music and books in this case - if I give away the transfigured book then I don't have it any more, if I give away the remixed music I still have the original. So performing remixes for my friends and giving them away is violating copyright which, all arguments notwithstanding, is currently illegal. However, this doesn't apply to the last two.
Should I be allowed to tell other people how to remix their own music?
Should I be allowed to write a program to remix other people's records automatically?
Take, for instance, The Grey Album, in which The Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album were mixed together. Releasing this was obviously illegal - but would it be illegal to release a piece of software which, when fed both albums, automatically produced the remix in real-time by playing parts of each at the right time? I can't see any way in which you could argue that it would be - if it's permissible for a person to remix their own music, how can there be a problem with the computer doing it for them.
And yet, this is exactly what Clearplay are being sued for. They produce a DVD player that, when playing a DVD, will automatically edit out any obscenities, nudity or excessive violence. The Director's Guild of America are deeply unhappy that someone would edit their movies. Except that nobody is editing the movies - you can take the film out of the DVD player and stick it in any other player and it plays just fine. You can even turn the filtering off in the players (or set it to a variety of different levels) - the choice is down to you.
A couple of years ago a similar thing almost happened with Windows - Microsoft wanted to introduce smart-tags that would automatically add links to pages in Internet Explorer that pointed to useful definitions. The problem being that Microsoft would decide which definitions to use. Of course, there'd be ways to turn this off, but Microsoft being a monopoly and most users being technically terrified the chances are that people would stick with the default. And this would mean that when you accessed someone's writing it would be modified by Microsoft before you saw it. People were up in arms about this and Microsoft backed down. But should they have done? Shouldn't the user be allowed to edit text on it's way from the server to their browser? After all, I do much the same myself - turning off Flash animations and freezing animated GIFs before they can appear. Is there really a huge difference between that and automatically modifying the text before it's displayed?
Do people have the right to do this? Can they take a work of art and change it in any way they want? Can they use any tool they want to shred, remix, resculpt or otherwise transmogrify copyright works for their own ends? And if so, considering that modern computers have such incredible power that they can seamlessly re-edit in real-time, doesn't that mean that artists have lost control over what other people can do to their work?
no subject
Our first act as readers and viewers is to re-interpret what is presented to us. I have written and published work in the public domain and the only thing that has ever concerned me about protecting my work is whether I have received some kind of vague credit. If a person can take something I have produced and make something 'better' using it, then they probably should. I would, however, like a little credit for picking the palette they have painted with. This, by the way, is an easy position to take when the market hasn't given what you produce any value yet. :)
I think artists and writers should be given praise, and appropriate payment, when due. But what I do with their work after they've finished is frequently completely out of their hands and the way we think about an artists 'rights' needs to consider that. How many times have I altered a novelist's story by telling a friend only about the one chapter that I really liked? How many plays have I distorted by only referencing one scene in an academic paper? How many ideas have I misrepresented by taking them out of their original context and trying to plug them into another with only a footnote? I'm supposed to do those things more or less every day.
Hmm..
no subject
Galoob was sued by Nintendo but won because 1) their product didn't permanently change the Nintendo games 2) there was no evidence the Game Genie would hurt the sales of Nintendo's machines. There was some weird angle to the arguments -- somehow the consumers were the ones who were accused of creating derivative works by using the Game Genie. Since the consumers were obviously using it to have fun, not to make a profit at Nintendo's expense (indeed, to use the Game Genie, you had to have access to a game box in the first place!) Nintendo's case was weak.
It's possible that in this case, the moviemakers are banking on being able to sell edited versions of their movies to WalMart, etc. themselves, but I don't see how this product is going to cut into their sales. You still have to have access to the original DVD to use the ClearPlay features, and no permanent edits are made to the movie disk itself.