The following video provides a great examples of how re-appropriation and sampling is essential to our culture. It traces the history of a six-second drum beat from the 1960s as it crops up repeatedly due to loose copyright only to become locked down by copyright a tightening of license restrictions.
The CCIA, a lobby group which represents major technology companies has released a study which says that the "fair use economy" represents 1/6 of the US economy. Sounds pretty impressive, right?
If it were true. The report casts such a broad net that fair use becomes an integral part of industries as varied as newspaper publishing and wire manufacturers. Read the study yourself, but I would like to close with a fair use of Nick Carr's post on the subject:
I have to admit that it would never have crossed my mind to think of wire manufacturers as being part of the fair use economy. But that's just a failure of imagination on my part, I guess.
What's most amusing is that, if you took a similarly expansive view of the role of copyright, you could easily categorize all of these industries as part of the "copyright economy." (Copyrighted content goes over wires, too, doesn't it?) And it would be an equally meaningless exercise.
You can be, as I am, a strong advocate of liberal fair-use rules and a strong opponent of onerous copyright restrictions and still be appalled by this kind of fake research. Can't industry groups make their points without stretching the truth beyond recognition and, in the process, insulting everyone's intelligence? Fair use deserves better.
Wired analyzes Presidential hopeful Thompson's record on issues of importance to this readership here.
As the campaign progresses, I'll do my best to analyze the other candidates.
The New York Times is one of my favorite sources for news, but today an article was published which fails to fully examine the issue. Eric Wilson's piece on the fashion industry's relationship to copyright identifies the current debate over whether or not copyright should be extended to clothing design, but fails to provide a balanced look at the issue.
The coalition of designers who would benefit from government created monopoly convinced a group of Senators to introduce legislation banning substantially similar clothing from being sold by a competitor. This, undoubtedly, happens but copyright should not be evoked in an already competitive marketplace.
The Constitutionally-determined purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive for creation. The American clothing industry is worth $181 billion -- clearly not a floundering business.
But it is a business predicated on fads and copying. Retro clothing would become even more a thing of the past, never to be revived due to copyrights lasting 70 years after the death of the creator or an equally detrimental length were the owner a corporation. Even though I'm no fashionista, I can testify to the cycle of style which comes as people begin to buy clothing of similar styles to "fit in" or "be cool."
Further, imagine the nightmare entrusted to the already burdened court system when they have to determine the uniqueness of a dress or jeans. Is that really something that we want?
