BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Song sites face legal crackdown
It was only a matter of time before the public education of copyright law required that people start being thrown in jail. I guess you have to break a few eggs…
What is even more interesting is that this article is about lyric and guitar tabulature posting. The actual market value of these printed materials is evidentally irrelevant when compared to the audacity of fans putting in the work of listening to someone’s music and putting in the effort to transcribe the lyrics or guitar chords.
One might think that there was a rule that brute-force (not carbon) copying like this was a fair use; but they’d be wrong.
Category: Copyright
Protecting Parody
The white house has asked the Onion to not use the presidential seal on its website. Evidently, there’s a law (signed by Nixon, I believe) that the presidential seal can only be used:
Use by way of photographic or electronic visual reproduction in pictures, moving pictures, or telecasts of bona fide news content
…among other accepted exemptions.
This seems to be an exceptionally odd case, as parody and the use of government materials is permitted in cases where there isn’t a law like this. It sounds like the Onion is playing along for now, but I for one think this would make an excellent First Amendment case–at least it might make a fun hypothetical to discuss in class. There are just so many interesting ways to look at this case:
- does the Onion contain bona fide news content?
- What is the role of First Amendment exemptions for laws like this…is it news or parody?
- (What context was this law passed in the first place)
The copyright commons
I was contemplating the nature of copyright as a commons today (not that I’m the first), and it occurred to me that it might make more sense to think of copyright as a technology policy. This may make it possible to equate it to other cases of information/transportation commons structures. If copyright is thought of this way, perhaps we can re-think how our we might transform the subsidizing of creative work. Taxing the gas that goes into cars (and the cars themselves) might be equated to mandatory licensing or taxes on blank media. Users and creators both benefit from this commons, and questions of lost revenue and easy/cheap access to entertainment media might be answered if we think of how information can be best fit to our media landscape. Technological locks are a possible way to enforce the law, but this idea seems eerily like putting speed regulators on our cars. We could try to change the norms of copying, so that the law is more respected, but this could be nearly unworkable given current technology and copying habits. My first thought is that this leaves only the tax option. It’s not one that anyone would like, but at least it’s a compromise. This issue certainly deserves some creative thinking.
Progress needs copying
I haven’t had the chance to examine the philosophical basis of the last post yet, but now that this thought is in my mind I feel that I’m seeing evidence of it everywhere. To me, it makes perfect sense that to fully understand something one needs to take it apart and reassemble it–to see “what makes it tick.” Thus, by definition, understanding requires some kind of a copy. Perhaps if this idea has some psychological basis, and can be measured in some meaningful way, we can form a new understanding of what types of copying are permissible. Rather than look at the technical means of copying, we might look at motives or outcome. This may gel better with common conceptions of what a law like copyright might protect: piracy for profit would be seen as wrong, while borrowing to understand and improve would be encouraged.