on copyrights and society
Feb. 17th, 2005 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyeari just wrote this in another thread:
the [copyright] system is corrupt. extending copyrights will only serve to increase the corruption at the expense of the society that depends on that culture as a framework for building on top of.
Imagine what would be lost if someone filed a lawsuit against Gustav Mahler in 1895 for allegedly plagerizing Mozart (who had died over 100 years earlier) in his 2nd symphony? How much of Mahler's work (given his emotional instability) since then would we have been gifted with? Without Mahler's ability to synthesize styles and sources into a coherant whole (now practically considered textbook material for the transition from Romantic to 20th Century composition), what would a John Williams or a Howard Shore have been able to do? The best music of Hollywood came from this ability to mix styles and genres to achieve the emotional support of the story, and Mahler was the first to do that WELL (and was dreadfully criticized for that in his lifetime).
Going further back, what would have been lost if Beethovan was not allowed to compose music in the "symphony" form because Mozart had a patent on the "business practice" of a 4-part piece of music featuring movements in the order of adagio, andente, allegro, and allegro, changing keys halfway through the 4th movement to achieve a dramatic climax?
don't laugh and don't think its irrelevant, because that is EXACTLY what is happening in culture and society today.
the [copyright] system is corrupt. extending copyrights will only serve to increase the corruption at the expense of the society that depends on that culture as a framework for building on top of.
Imagine what would be lost if someone filed a lawsuit against Gustav Mahler in 1895 for allegedly plagerizing Mozart (who had died over 100 years earlier) in his 2nd symphony? How much of Mahler's work (given his emotional instability) since then would we have been gifted with? Without Mahler's ability to synthesize styles and sources into a coherant whole (now practically considered textbook material for the transition from Romantic to 20th Century composition), what would a John Williams or a Howard Shore have been able to do? The best music of Hollywood came from this ability to mix styles and genres to achieve the emotional support of the story, and Mahler was the first to do that WELL (and was dreadfully criticized for that in his lifetime).
Going further back, what would have been lost if Beethovan was not allowed to compose music in the "symphony" form because Mozart had a patent on the "business practice" of a 4-part piece of music featuring movements in the order of adagio, andente, allegro, and allegro, changing keys halfway through the 4th movement to achieve a dramatic climax?
don't laugh and don't think its irrelevant, because that is EXACTLY what is happening in culture and society today.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-02-18 05:23 am (UTC)Take a look at this article about Xbox hackers being sued for making new "skins" for video games. (As far as I could tell from the article, they weren't being sued for publishing derivative works without a license, but for publishing instructions on how to modify one's own copy of a game. I should Google for more details, but I haven't yet.)
And I'll suggest, yet again, that folks read Lessig's book, Free Culture. There's a lot of ammunition in there for arguing against extending copyright too far, and examples for explaining the problem to others.