Late on the Tyranny of Copyright... and "the Copy Left" vs. "copyleft"

Surprisingly, my Dad read Robert S. Boynton's piece "The Tyranny of Copyright?" in the 25 January 2004 New York Times before I did. Here are my comments (slightly redacted):

That's not a bad article... I can't believe anyone would read the whole thing unless they are as paranoid about our nation's creative future as I am. If you read this entire article, I would appreciate you humoring me and entertaining a few points:

-First, full disclosure. Last tuesday, a similar protest as the Diebold protest happened. I participated just as I did in the Diebold matter... I decided not to tell you this time :). This time it was to keep a really good piece of music alive... and, if the lawyers for the Beatles (EMI) ever get around to it, I once again might face the spectre of a lawsuit (however, this time many many hundreds of people participated in the protest, it would be crazy to go after us all... we'll see what happens).

The work in question? A DJ had taken the a capella tracks from "The Black Album" (by rapper Jay-Z) and re-created the background music using exclusively sounds taken piecemeal from the Beatles "the While Album"... the result? The Grey Album. He did not get permission from anyone to do this... or it would never have happened.

-Second, the author tries to coin a new term/meme "the Copy Left" which is not used for this purpose in this community... and, unfortunately for the author, this exposes a large misunderstanding on his part. "Copyleft", in practice, refers to allowing anyone to copy, modify and distribute a work as long as any changes made to the material (a "derivative work") are licensed under the exact same terms. This may not sound like a big deal, but it is... it has the effect of using copyright to ensure that a work and any downstream derivatives remain freely usable.

-Larry Lessig makes a powerful point in a short Wired article [this month](< [1] here after 4 March: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/

) where he points out that all the major modern content distribution channels (radio, cable, motion pictures, etc.) were all considered "pirates" at their beginnings. (the article will be available on 4 March)

-Further, a quickly made point is that there was no intellectual property protection before a few hundred years ago... and our planet has a vast history of remarkable creativity that needed no special incentive besides immediate compensation, slavery, etc.

-Lastly, Yochai Benkler (mentioned in the NYT article near the end) is, in my eyes, on par with our own Pam Samuelson here at UC Berkeley. He is an amazing thinker and a vastly deep mind. He isn't a large public figure like Lessig... but attacks problems from a quite different but complementary intellectual tact. I'm not sure the corporate interests know exactly what they are up against with the level of scholarship intrinsic to our community. We don't do this for money... but for culture. That is how we will win.

Posted by joebeone at Febrero 29, 2004 10:31 AM