The Right to Remix
Apr. 20th, 2004 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerShould 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
Date: 2004-04-20 03:11 pm (UTC)I do think that simple plagiarism is cut and dried. But reusing characters is obviously a long way from that. And writing things that intersect with 'original' stories or which make use of them in other ways is another kettle of fish entirely.
Cory Doctorow has now released "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdon" under a license which explicitly allows for derivative works to be made (so long as a profit isn't also made). So he's fine with 'remixes'.
Personally I'd be all for that to be generally applicable. I don't, personally, view someone's work as being sacrosanct once it's made public. But giving credit is something I do feel strongly about. So I'd be fine with people making things derived from my writing, so long as they mentioned me as the originator (and a link back to the original would be nice).
no subject
Date: 2004-04-20 03:20 pm (UTC)Well, not really. I strongly feel that the feelings of the originator deserve to be respected: current legal status awards legal ownership for 70 years after the originator's death, and if Disney has their evil way, will probably keep on extending. Once the originator is dead, though, their feelings need no longer be considered, because dead people don't have feelings. ;-) But the law doesn't consider the writer's feelings, only the writer's property.
With printed matter the problem is that there's a possibility that if the writer openly agrees to let fanfiction be written in their universe, they may have been deemed to have voided their copyright, and anyone can walk in and do it: my feeling is that if the writer says publicly that they're against fanfiction, their feelings should be respected: if they avoid mentioning it, the odds are that they know about it and choose to take no public notice, because the law does not permit them to make a distinction between people writing stories for fun, not for profit, and people writing stories for profit that should rightfully come to the originator. (I'm all in favour of writers getting what profit they can out of what they've written, and not being done out of that by anyone else coming along after them and making use of their work: but the law doesn't make that distinction.)
And where fanfiction is concerned, rightful profit doesn't come into it: there is none.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-20 03:27 pm (UTC)I refer milady to this
no subject
Date: 2004-04-20 03:34 pm (UTC)Is this any better?
Date: 2004-04-21 03:24 am (UTC)"Trek" is/was basically a fanzine where Star Trek fans wrote their own "continuing voyages" of the Starship Enterprise. I own a couple of the early "Best of" books, including a great story based on the crew of the Enterprise beaming into the set of the Enterprise TV show (or was it the other story which had the same thing reversed, you know, basically the plot of Galaxy Quest but years earlier...)
This is a clear case where someone is profiting from fan writing based on someone else's characters and settings. I have to assume that Paramount gave permission (and got a good chunk of change) out of this.
But what about sequels to Gone with the Wind etc.?
Oh, and I didn't find your knowledge of his ability to do HTML interesting, ok? :-)
Re: Is this any better?
Date: 2004-04-21 03:37 am (UTC)But what about sequels to Gone with the Wind etc.?
Dunno: I find them unreadable.