Half-formed ranting ahead
Art, the Law, and I
In case you do not want to actually read the full thing, the cliff versions of below can be summarized as “I like copyright because I’m not a goddamn hippie.”
So in this, my last semester of law school, I am taking three I(ntellectual) P(roperty) classes, and a class in Tel(e)com(munication) Law.
One of these is a seminar entitled Art, Cultural Property, and the Law, and I am finding that I am having a key disagreement with the structure of the class. Namely, how art is being defined.
Art, in the context of this class, is being defined as the Visual Arts. So, paintings, sculptures and the like are in. I, however, come from a long tradition of the liberal arts (and sciences). Therefore, when I hear things like Art, I think of dance, theatre, music, and writings. Funny that. I keep finding that I need to readjust my thinking to the context of the class, especially when it comes to copyright law in the United States.
There is this great part of the United States Constitution that reads “The Congress shall have Power…To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” (Article I, Section 8 of The United States Constitution).* Now overtime, ye olde US Congress has expanded the meaning of the term “Writings” to encompass things like maps, photographs, movies, engravings, lithographs, drawings, and computer software programs. This is what I would like to think of as a Good Thing. Why?
If read narrowly, then you remove the economic incentive to get into the Art** business, especially in developing fields like recorded music, moving pictures, and web comics. Remove the right to be able to exploit your ownership in a piece, and why get into the creative business at all? As a result, society as a whole suffers. The key to our copyright system is that the ownership of the ability to copy is divested from the physical object. I take a photograph, I sell the photograph, I can still take the negatives and make more duplicates and sell it to other people. Why? So long as I don’t sell or otherwise transfer my right to the underlying copyright it remains mine. If the person I sold the photograph to goes ahead and makes copies of that photograph and sells them I have a legal cause of action against them.*** This is why the simple act of buying a cd does not give you carte blanche to make copies of that CD and mass distribute it. The act of buying the CD does not give you any sort of right to make copies. That right remains with the copyright holder. Same thing applies to movies. Same thing applies to books.
Go fucking figure.****
So why is it then that record labels and the like have the copyright and the artists don’t? Well, simple answer is because most record labels, as the cost of doing business with them, require you to transfer title of copyright in the sound recording to the label. Good news for some artists is that they retain copy in the sheet music. Don’t ask me why Congress made it two rights. Simple answer is probably that they don’t get this hip thing called the phonograph record.
Why can I still get to sleep at night despite this fact? It costs money to cut an album.***** It costs money, a whole lot of money to make a movie. Where is the incentive to invest if it should just be free for everyone? It is a business people.
All of this explains, in a big way, why I am generally uncomfortable with people even telling me that they own pirated music or movies or scans of books. Personally, I don’t much care. Just don’t send it to me, mmmkay?
Before you send me your arguments as to why downloading, illegal copying and the rest of it is morally acceptable, do me a favor. Imagine you just sunk a cool grand of your own money into a project and six months later you discover that not only are you not getting a return on your investment, but what you invested in is being listened to by everyone. Just imagine putting time and effort into something, it being wildly popular, and still having to keep your dead end day job because someone would rather spend all day downloading it rather than pay for it.
The. End.
It really is a shame I don’t have more people reading this. I’m sure I would receive all sorts of interesting hate mail.
*Little known aside- in the American language of the late 18th Century, when this particular document was being drafted, Science meant what we think of Art, and the useful Arts are what we think of today as Science. Oh those wacky Founding Fathers.
**This is not the 18th Century, so when I say Art I mean Buchwald. Wait… no. I mean Art.
***This is a gross oversimplification, and there are, point in fact, a number of scenarios where someone who buys an original can make copies.
****None of this mean that I am a fan of the Gestapo techniques of certain media conglomerates. Just that their underlying cause of action is, point o’ fact, sound.
*****Yes its an archaic term, but I’m a gonna use it anyway.
In case you do not want to actually read the full thing, the cliff versions of below can be summarized as “I like copyright because I’m not a goddamn hippie.”
So in this, my last semester of law school, I am taking three I(ntellectual) P(roperty) classes, and a class in Tel(e)com(munication) Law.
One of these is a seminar entitled Art, Cultural Property, and the Law, and I am finding that I am having a key disagreement with the structure of the class. Namely, how art is being defined.
Art, in the context of this class, is being defined as the Visual Arts. So, paintings, sculptures and the like are in. I, however, come from a long tradition of the liberal arts (and sciences). Therefore, when I hear things like Art, I think of dance, theatre, music, and writings. Funny that. I keep finding that I need to readjust my thinking to the context of the class, especially when it comes to copyright law in the United States.
There is this great part of the United States Constitution that reads “The Congress shall have Power…To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” (Article I, Section 8 of The United States Constitution).* Now overtime, ye olde US Congress has expanded the meaning of the term “Writings” to encompass things like maps, photographs, movies, engravings, lithographs, drawings, and computer software programs. This is what I would like to think of as a Good Thing. Why?
If read narrowly, then you remove the economic incentive to get into the Art** business, especially in developing fields like recorded music, moving pictures, and web comics. Remove the right to be able to exploit your ownership in a piece, and why get into the creative business at all? As a result, society as a whole suffers. The key to our copyright system is that the ownership of the ability to copy is divested from the physical object. I take a photograph, I sell the photograph, I can still take the negatives and make more duplicates and sell it to other people. Why? So long as I don’t sell or otherwise transfer my right to the underlying copyright it remains mine. If the person I sold the photograph to goes ahead and makes copies of that photograph and sells them I have a legal cause of action against them.*** This is why the simple act of buying a cd does not give you carte blanche to make copies of that CD and mass distribute it. The act of buying the CD does not give you any sort of right to make copies. That right remains with the copyright holder. Same thing applies to movies. Same thing applies to books.
Go fucking figure.****
So why is it then that record labels and the like have the copyright and the artists don’t? Well, simple answer is because most record labels, as the cost of doing business with them, require you to transfer title of copyright in the sound recording to the label. Good news for some artists is that they retain copy in the sheet music. Don’t ask me why Congress made it two rights. Simple answer is probably that they don’t get this hip thing called the phonograph record.
Why can I still get to sleep at night despite this fact? It costs money to cut an album.***** It costs money, a whole lot of money to make a movie. Where is the incentive to invest if it should just be free for everyone? It is a business people.
All of this explains, in a big way, why I am generally uncomfortable with people even telling me that they own pirated music or movies or scans of books. Personally, I don’t much care. Just don’t send it to me, mmmkay?
Before you send me your arguments as to why downloading, illegal copying and the rest of it is morally acceptable, do me a favor. Imagine you just sunk a cool grand of your own money into a project and six months later you discover that not only are you not getting a return on your investment, but what you invested in is being listened to by everyone. Just imagine putting time and effort into something, it being wildly popular, and still having to keep your dead end day job because someone would rather spend all day downloading it rather than pay for it.
The. End.
It really is a shame I don’t have more people reading this. I’m sure I would receive all sorts of interesting hate mail.
*Little known aside- in the American language of the late 18th Century, when this particular document was being drafted, Science meant what we think of Art, and the useful Arts are what we think of today as Science. Oh those wacky Founding Fathers.
**This is not the 18th Century, so when I say Art I mean Buchwald. Wait… no. I mean Art.
***This is a gross oversimplification, and there are, point in fact, a number of scenarios where someone who buys an original can make copies.
****None of this mean that I am a fan of the Gestapo techniques of certain media conglomerates. Just that their underlying cause of action is, point o’ fact, sound.
*****Yes its an archaic term, but I’m a gonna use it anyway.