Did he tell you that you could publish copies of the work and sell it or give copies away?
“Leaked out”? Is that some sort of sly speech for “stolen”? Because I don’t see how else something that the artist DID NOT want released could be “leaked,” unless something nefarious was going on.
So you mean that if someone can steal someone else’s private work (even if the original is returned later), then it’s okay to publish it against the artists’ wishes, and all the artist can do is accept royalties? No way to undo the wrong that was done to them, eh? (Their work was stolen or swiped from them, after all.)
And what amount of royalties do they get? Do they get to set a price of how much their work is worth, or do they lose that right as well, after their work is stolen?
Ah. So, because you think that most people would be “bored” by your work and (I’m guessing) you’re not worrying about people rooting through your private belongings, looking for stuff to publish, that everyone else should feel the same unconcern about their private belongings? Did it occur to you that perhaps some people have a great sense of privacy about certain works and feel like their privacy should be respected?
It does become a little different once the work is released, because the artist apparently thought it was okay enough to be seen. (Hence, they weren’t concerned about their privacy, at least at that time.) But, sometimes people change their minds, and I think when it’s their work, and they’re still alive, they’ve got a right to change their minds. But—I do understand that there is a different dynamic once the work has been released.
Hm. So, do you think that Sibelius, for instance, didn’t have a “right” to destroy his own work, but you just aren’t sure of what method should be used to control his actions over his own work?
Unless, of course, the artist gave a copy of the rough to a friend, for the express purpose of having that friend give feedback on the work, and this friend gave copies of his copy to other people he knew.
Kind of hard to put the genie back in the bottle once he’s gotten out. Especially with all the dirt cheap duplicating equipment available these days.
In the book publishing industry and the recording industry, creator’s have a negotiated royalty rate with the publisher, if an established artist has his work bootlegged, he/she should be able to sue and recoup the same rate (or slightly higher) from the bootleggers.
As the question was originally directed at me, I gave my answer. I cannot answer for the rest of humanity.
True, but at the same time, there is the issue of “cultural heritage” (for lack of a better term). The original Star Wars movies (to use a well bitched about example) are what inspired a generation of people, the crap Lucas retouched and rereleased is not. However, Lucas has indicated that he has no intention of releasing the unmolested versions of those films, and that no versions of those films, other than those approved by him, can ever be released so long as copyright is enforced (Which is, now what, a hundred years after death?), thus leaving a generation of scholars who weren’t around to see the originals wondering what all the fuss was about. (That’s assuming, of course, that there’s no changes to copyright law between now and then.)
Now, I can certainly understand an artist not wanting someone else to change his work (Orson Welles last words were supposedly, “Please don’t let Ted Turner rub his crayons all over my beautiful movie.”), but to deny people the ability to compare two different versions of the same work by an artist is another matter altogether.
No, I don’t know what the solution is. Pure and simple.
Did you pay him more for publishing rights? Or did you just have a verbal agreement?
The way copyright is now (and if you don’t believe me, check out copyright.gov) when you buy an original piece of artwork, you are not buying publishing rights. Those must be negotiated. Which, apparently, you did with this particular artist. But publishing rights are not a “given” when artwork is sold.
Did I say “nefarious”? Yes, I did. And someone who accepts a copy of someone else’s work, given with the express purpose feedback but nothing more, is acting in a nefarious manner when they “leak it” out anyway. That’s extremely dishonest behavior. You lend something to someone, telling them, “I am lending this to you with the understanding that you are just looking at it to give me some feedback, I am not interested in having it published at this time” and the person “leaks” it anyway, they are a scumbag. Pure and simple.
So, when someone trusts a scumbag who “leaks” (i.e. steals) their work, then it’s just too bad, huh?
Of course, if artists knew that such a possibility existed, they’d just simply never show anything to anyone, they’d never trust anyone, and how would that foster creativity? Where would those wonderful things that you feel you have some “right” to enjoy be, if all artists were too distrustful to show anything to anyone, unless they were 100% sure they wanted it to be released?
Boy, deja vu. Who would have thought there’d be more than one person on this board who believes that people have little right of privacy nor, essentially the right not to publish. Yikes.
What about an unestablished artist? What about an “unknown” artist who has finally, finally done that really good work that is destined to finally get them that enviable contract that they’ve so long struggled for, but oh wait, some scumbag “leaked” their work and now it’s everywhere. How much would such a previously unknown artist earn? They have no past record of sales, they were a “nobody” before. So, how much? Who gets to decide?
And, what about an established artist’s right to negotiate for a higher price for a work that took extraordinary effort? If it’s bootlegged (stolen), then they lose their negotiating ability. But oh well. Too bad, some scumbag stole their work, who cares now? After all, the public gets to enjoy the work, so what if the artist got screwed over.
Okay, so I’ll make it a straightforward question: Do you think that artists owe humanity all of their work? In other words, do you believe that all of humanity deserves to see every single photograph, painting, essay, song, poem, etc. that every other person has created? Do you think that when an individual has created something, they have no right to say, “I don’t want this published” because the rights of the rest of humanity to see their unpublished works trumps the individual’s desire to not have it published?
That’s kind of a mouthful, but it still is a yes or no question.
Well, he will have a hard time controlling this, because older versions of the movies were out for years and no doubt someone’s archived them in some way. I feel that he must know that it’ll be virtually impossible to clamp down on all older copies, and I am sure he’s not staying awake at night, worrying about it. But the bottom line is. . . it’s still his baby. He did it. We didn’t. He invested his life to create the work. We didn’t. We just sat back, passively, and enjoyed it. His investment in it is so much more profound than ours. We did nothing other than soak it in. His wishes trump ours. But, with that said, he’s not going to be able to completely stamp out all copies of the old versions of the films. Hell, I have copies of the old versions.
::Shrug:: I “deny” people the right to see earlier versions of my photographs and artwork. Few care in my case, but if they did, I still don’t think they’ve got a right to see my older work if I don’t want them to see it. (Of course, I can’t stop them from searching down old copies of work I’ve already sold and I wouldn’t put in a lot of effort trying to prevent them from looking.) But the bottom line is that the work is mine, dammit. Not theirs. I have old sketchbooks that are pretty embarrassingly bad. No one has seen those in years, and I don’t intend that anyone (if anyone cared) is going to see them now, just to satisfy their own curiosity.
Okay, let’s put it this way: if you could find a way to effectively do it, would you want for artists be controlled to the extent that they would be prevented from destroying or altering their work, or do you believe that they should be left to their own devices, even if you don’t always like the decisions that they make? Should they be allowed to make final decisions about their work, while they are still alive? Yes or no?
The Quality Book publishing company gives Good Author an advance so he can write a book. They also give an advance to Bad Author. Both authors write their books and QB Publishing dutifully publishes them. BA’s book doesn’t sell very well. GA’s book, OTOH, can’t stay on the shelf.
The Shady Book publishing company sees the success of GA’s Book and slinks off to the library, sets up their own presses, and starts churning out their own copies of GA’s book, and selling them.
SB pub. reaps the benefits (best selling books) without incurring any of the risks (poorly selling books). QB pub. can’t recover the losses for all the bad books it publishes, because whenever it publishes a good book, the return is divided amongst itself and copycat publishers. The same goes for Good Author. QB eventually goes bankrupt, and Good Author looks for more profitable work. Shady Publishing doesn’t court authors or give advances, so with no more books (good or bad) being produced, they, too, go out of business. There are no more books being published.
Copyright is envisioned to prevent the above scenario. Shady Book publishing can’t just start printing and selling it’s own copies of every best-seller that comes along and leave the business of finding and producing those best-sellers to others.
Suppose, though, that Good Author sees that his books are flying off the shelves and that Quality Publisher’s presses can’t keep up with the demand? Furthermore, GA and QB publishing might still not be able to reap the full rewards of their best seller, because of the secondary market competing with second run publishing, or a simple inability to reach multiple markets cost effectively. This is bad because the public may not be able to read the book at all due to scarce supply or being in a neglected market.
Copyright is envisioned to prevent the second scenario as well. QB Publishing or Good Author can liscense the work to Shady Publishing, to allow them to print copies to meet the local demand, or to Next Town Presses to make copies for markets that QB Publishing couldn’t supply themselves. Shady Publishing and Next Town Press give GA and/or QB Pub. a cut of the profits. The public gets as many books as they demand, and the various publishing houses continue to stay in business.
Digital distribution doesn’t really play well with either of the above scenarios. QB Publishing, or Good Author himself, can make an arbitrarily large number of perfect copies and distribute them worldwide for minimal unit cost. The Risk that justifies the first scenario is minor, and the Supply Problem that justifies the second scenario is non-existant.
Since the reason for copyright is the promotion of science and the useful arts, the question must be asked if, in an age where anyone could reach a worldwide audience… does restricting the ability of individuals to republish, without a liscense, to other individuals promote the arts? Or is digital distribution and redistribution a more effective way?
If it IS a more effective way, yet traditionally analog publishing houses refuse to offer digital editions… should the rights we’ve granted them allow them to prevent others from filling in for their refusal to supply? We grant copyright with the understanding that copies will be produced… if the rights holder is not producing copies, and individuals fill in to supply those copies to each other, are they not effectively revoking the right they granted due to the rightsholder failing to meet their obligation?
I guess you’d call it verbal since it was in an email (which I no longer have).
That’s why I asked him about it before I bought the work, since I wanted to be clear on the matter.
In your opinion. The artist may, in fact, be looking for the person to spread it around, since, if the person doesn’t spread it around, the work may, in fact, be crap.
Well, the RIAA doesn’t seem to be having much luck in eliminating file sharing of music, now do they? Everytime they clamp down on one outlet, another springs up in Whack-A-Mole fashion.
Some artists already do that. J. D. Salinger claims to still be writing, but refuses to have his work see publication because he doesn’t like how the world reacts to it.
I didn’t say that people didn’t have the right to privacy or to withhold publication. I do recognize the fact that for everyone working on copy protection, there’s an equal (or greater) number of folks out there working just as hard at breaking that protection. I also recognize that if someone does violate your privacy, that you can only punish them, not reverse the loss of privacy.
It is my understanding that publishers have a set royalty rate for non-established artists, and while this no doubt varies from publisher to publisher, it should be relatively easy to take an average of those, add a few percentage points to it, and make that the basic rate.
At least they get something, ya know? And it’s not like the artist would be guarenteed a set amount anyway. What if that artist is convinced that he or she’s created the greatest work of art and every publisher looks at it and decides it’s crap? Doesn’t matter what kind of track record the artist might have at that point, if the publisher’s don’t want it, the artist can only self-publish the work (and if it is crap, he/she isn’t going to be making very much money at self-publishing).
I don’t have an answer for that. Because one of the thing’s which makes art so valuable is it’s rarity. Having every scribble that Picasso put down might dilute the beauty of the works we do have. Then again, we look at works by Kafka and Joyce, who both destroyed many of their writings without them having ever seen the light of day, and can only wonder at what the world has lost. I would like (I would like? I would like a trip to Europe!) for us to be able to save every scrap ever created by every great artist, but that is simply not possible. I do think, however, that the line should be drawn for works which are already published and that the creator decides they want to withdraw or alter. If the newer version is clearly superior, or if the original work is horribly flawed, then the marketplace will lose interest in flawed version. Plus, the artist could get some valuable feedback that way.
We’ll take Lucas, again, for an example. If he made both versions of the original Star Wars trilogy available, and the bulk of consumers purchased the unadulterated versions, he’d have to ask himself what it was about the originals which made them so much better. If the bulk of consumers who bought the unadulterated versions are of the age group which would have seen them in the theaters when they originally premiered, while the bulk of the consumers who bought the Special Edition versions, were people who’d only seen the originals on TV or video, then he would realize that it was purely a generational type thing.
Right, you have copies of the originals, but with the way that the megacorporations are trying to rework copyright law, it will be illegal for you to transfer them from video tape to a more permanent medium. I’m not talking about you opening up “yosemite’s House of Bootleg Videos.” I’m simply talking about you, transfering the video tapes which you legally obtained, to a DVD, so that you can continue to enjoy the movies without having to worry about degredation of the video tape. Should the megacorps have the “right” to restrict you from doing that? One can argue that by allowing you to transfer those movies to DVD you’re denying the megacorp monies which they feel they would otherwise recoup by you going out and buying the DVDs. That’s assuming, of course, that you would go out and buy the DVDs, even though the version available doesn’t match the version that you currently have. I don’t know about you, but if it’s a choice between me ponying up money for the Special Edition versions or watching a slowly decaying video tape of the originals, I’ll take the decaying tape, thank you very much.
And if those efforst to block people from making an archival copy of something are successful (which is a distinct possibility), then eventually it will become well-neigh impossible to view the originals.
There’s also the matter of works which the copyright holder doesn’t feel there’s an economic justification to keeping in print. This means that if you do want to find a copy of the work, you’ll have to do a lot of scrounging around to find a copy, if you can. Then, of course, there’s the issue of whether or not the copy you manage to find is a legal copy.
I spent two freakin’ years looking for a copy of The Indomitable Tin Goose which is the biography of Preston Tucker. I managed to find a used copy, but it took nearly constant scouring of eBay, aLibris, and other used book websites and stores before I was able to find it. At that point, I didn’t care if the copy was legal or not, I just wanted to be able to read the damn thing (no, none of the libraries had it). The Tucker Club would love to be able to reprint the book and make it available for sale to the public, but the publisher, who controls the rights to the book, demands an exorbitant sum for this, which the club cannot afford.
There’s any number of recordings out there, that are out of print, because the right’s holder doesn’t feel that there’s enough of a demand to make copies readily available. But, of course, if copies of the recordings aren’t readily available, how are people going to know about them? How are they going to be able to listen to them and say, “You know, I’d like to have a copy of that, I think I’ll go buy it.” Taste is a fickel thing, just ask any of the classical composers whose work went unappreciated during their lifetime, but gained acceptance after they died.
Right, you can’t stop them now, but with the way the megacorps are trying to put the screws to folks now (BTW, didja know that the RIAA is trying to get companies to produce things like MP3 players which require a thumbprint to operate? Where’s your right to privacy then, if those things come to pass? Why should anyone have to submit a thumbprint in order to be able to listen to music which they legally purchased?), it will become difficult, if not impossible for anyone to track down older versions of an artist’s work, if the copyright holder (who might not be the artist) doesn’t want them to.
NOTA. I would like for the market to decide which is more valuable, but I also recognize that if this were the case, many of the great works of art which we have today would never have been created, so I have to simply say that while I would prefer that all versions are available, I recognize that this is impossible.
And so you understand that he did not have to give you publishing rights. He chose to.
Good grief. Talk about missing the point.
Let’s say we are living in a world where the climate is: whatever you get your mitts on, you can copy all you want and nobody can stop you or punish you. If the artist lives in that universe, with that understanding of the way things are, then if they “share” a bunch of copies of their work with others, knowing full well that these others can distribute the work, then they obviously don’t mind if the work is shared. They won’t be harmed if it does. Their attitude will convey that.
But if an artist, living in that same universe where anything is open season to be copied, and they adamantly don’t want the work to be copied, they’ll tell everyone who they lend out a copy, “I DO NOT want this to be leaked out. Please. Just read it and tell me what you think of it, and then give it back.” If, then, someone “leaks” it anyway, they are, no doubt about it, a scumbag.
But we don’t live in that world. People show their unpublished works to others all the time, with the automatic assumption that it will not be spread around. For one thing, because most people respect others’ privacy and don’t release others’ works, out of politeness and human decency. And for another thing, anyone who “leaked” it would get in a world of legal troubles for doing so. It doesn’t stop the bootlegging completely, but the bootlegging isn’t accepted or mainstream, which is apparently is something you wouldn’t mind happening.
It’s harder once the stuff is out there. But that’s not actually what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about someone’s unpublished work that they don’t want published, but that is published anyway, against their will.
And, he lives with the realization that no publishing company will ever release bootleg copies of his books, because he could make them hurt, real bad. He also lives with the realization that if he chose to show some of his work to anyone (just so they could see it) that they couldn’t “leak” it without also being in a world of legal hurt. He wouldn’t have such assurances if things were the way that you desire them.
No, you are just saying that it’s okay if scumbags “leak” their work against their will, and there’s nothing that should be done about it.
You mean “scumbags” working to break the protection.
True enough, but it seems like you want to institutionalize the violation. Allow the scumbag bootleggers to make money and then (graciously) allow the violated artist some royalty. That’s not how it is now. Bootlegging exists, but it’s not mainstream. You won’t find bootlegged items being sold on Amazon.com. Bootlegging is bad now, but if it were acceptable, it would be far worse.
And you mean that never NEVER, has a new artist ever been able to negotiate for a higher price? What about the artists’ right to decide what their work is worth?
I have stuff that I’d part with or share if I got paid enough. It wouldn’t be worth it for me to sell at a lower price. I may never sell it (and that’s okay with me) if nobody can reach my price. That’s my right. So what you’re saying is that if, in some alternative universe, some scumbag is able to swipe my work and publish it against my will, that, along with being violated in that way, I don’t even get to decide how much my work is worth? Talk about adding insult to injury.
Right. I understand what you’re saying, and I think you’re thinking that something is better than nothing, and I can sympathize with that. But not when the trade-off is that bootlegging because more mainstream and acceptable. No.
True enough. And artists who don’t like the price they are offered can hold out for a higher price, or just decide that it’s not worth it to them. They have that right. To set their own price. They aren’t owed a certain price, true, but then again, they don’t owe the world access to their art. Bottom line, it ought to be on their terms, since they are the ones who made the damned art.
Then they don’t sell it. Happens all the time.
Right. So what was your point anyway?
No should force an artist to accept any set amount for the art. The artist should always be able to say, “Sorry, that’s not enough, the deal is off.” You want to take that away from them.
You know, I have to say with brutal honesty that I find it a little scary that you don’t have an answer to the question about whether or not an individual has the right not to publish. That seems to me to be a pretty fundimental right: kind of like the right to privacy. To have to hem and haw about whether or not a person has a right to not publish? Odd.
Who gets to define what a “great” artist. What if someone isn’t “great” one moment but then some decide that they are? Would you like for every person to save every scrap they’ve created, just in case they are deemed “great” some day? (I’m getting a little far afield here . . . )
I understand your frustration at knowing that something was out there, and now it’s harder to find. For what it’s worth, I know the feeling of frustration and have often shared it. I think that I feel more frustration over something not being released, not because the artist fervently wished for it not to be released, but because of some big business contract bullshit, or apathy on the part of a publisher who owns rights, etc. That annoys me. But if the artist deeply feels that the work should not be released again? I still feel disappointed, but I also wish to respect their feelings.
Who said that the artist wanted or needed feedback? They do not exist soley to be educated by the public, you know.
I agree that the megacorporations are taking it way too far. They aren’t artists, they are businessmen. I tire of some of their antics. (Special ire directed at the RIAA.)
These problems are going to be easier to resolve (and to some extent, solutions already exist) in the form of Print On Demand, and so forth. Print on Demand can take an out of print book, scan it, and make copies available, one copy at a time, for interested buyers. Not much up-front cost (just a few hundred, usually) and the book is available for those who care.
If the copyright owner doesn’t feel there is much percentage in them releasing the work, then Print On Demand should make it more feasable for them to release the work anyway. It’ll only get cheaper and easier in that regard as technology improves.
Well, the RIAA is evil, we all knew that. But I’m not talking about that right now. I’m mostly talking about an individual’s right not to publish.
I apologize, I am not familiar with that acronym. Could you explain it, please?
You know, it was really a simple question. Should the artist have a right to do with what they will with their art, or not? At least I thought it was a simple question.
Yes, but the same thing would happen if I told a lunatic that, no, he is not Napoleon.
That (like any other spreading of disinformation) is a problem.
Fair enough (though in some cases it is a tort, not a crime, and IMHO the law should be reformed so that it is generally a tort and only becomes a crime under particularly aggrivated circumstances such as fraudulent representation that you are selling genuine authorized copies).
If a merchant is having problems with shoplifters, most of his law-abiding customers will be sympathetic, and even tolerate a few reasonable inconveniences directed at reducing the problem. If the merchant takes to hiring goons to randomly strip-search customers, break into houses to look for shoplifted goods, and the like… well, that sympathy is gonna go away real fast.
That, in a nutshell, is the media industry’s problem, and they seem bound and determined to make it worse.
You will forgive me, but I’ve had to split my response up, because as a single post, it’s too large for the software to handle.
Well, if he hadn’t I wouldn’t have bought the artwork from him. Lest you think that I took advantage of a poor starving artist, the gentleman was Philip S. Egan, who while not wealthy or well-known, is certainly not hurting for work. In addition, he was kind enough, without my asking, to knock several hundred dollars off his usual rate.
Oh, no, I got your point. I just didn’t think it had as much merit as you do. After all, if I go handing the keys to my car to just anyone, and they take my car to a chop shop, strip it and sell it for parts, whatever rights I may have to my property, don’t override the fact that I’m a dumbass for giving my keys to anyone who asks for them.
In many ways we already do.
Of course, no one is forcing them to do this, they are doing it out of their own free will.
They’re certainly not a friend, but let me ask you this: If someone handed you something that was utterly the most profound life-changing thing you’d ever seen, and you knew that it could better the lives of many of your friends and family, would you be inclined to keep it quiet? Even if the person who gave it to you said, “Don’t let anyone else see this.” Mind you, I’m not talking about being handed classified documents which if they were publically known could put someone’s life in danger, but something for the betterment of all mankind. What if you had no idea of when or if this item would ever be made available to the general public? What if you knew that the moment people saw this, it would uplift them instantly? Would you honor that person’s request to keep it silenced up, or would you shout it from the rooftops?
That’s a generalization. I’ve shown my writings to friends with the express purpose of getting it out there and circulated around so that I could get all kinds of feedback on it. I did not say for the person to do this, however, I knew that if the person liked the writings he would start sharing it around.
That’s a generalization again, and has no validity in this argument because we’ve no idea of what the merits of any such work would be, nor do we know the character of theindividuals the work might have been shown to.
Assuming, of course, that the artist could afford to hire a lawyer and sue the person, assuming, again, that the artist would want to do such a thing.
Bootlegging pretty much is mainstream in a lot of places in the US, and in many countries around the world as well. It is not legally accepted, but it’s not hard to find bootlegged copies of nearly anything if you want one.
Then we go back to the whole stolen car business, if I go handing the keys to my car to just anyone who asks for them, I’m a dumbass.
Well, J. D. Salinger’s not exactly poor, but what recourse does Salinger have if I were to break into his house, steal his writings, convert them into .PDFs, and then post them anonomously on the internet on servers based in some country where US authorities have no hope of ever getting the servers shut down? If I screw up and leave fingerprints lying around, then I can be arrested for breaking and entering, but prosecuting me for copyright infringement is going to be a bit difficult, if Salinger doesn’t have copies of his writings that I’ve stolen which can be shown as evidence. With enough money, I could hire a lawyer of the same caliber as any Salinger could hire, and have the same number of writing experts stating that the works weren’t his as he could have backing up his claim.
No, I’m saying that what ever you do will not reverse the damage which has been done to that person’s privacy. Prosecuting a murderer doesn’t bring the victim back to life, and I’d argue that it doesn’t deter other criminals from performing the same act, it does, however, hopefully, prevent that person from killing anyone else.
You can call them “scumbags” if you like, but those “scumbags” also enable me to make archival copies of works I have which would be difficult, if not impossible to replace. Also, why should I have to carry around my entire CD collection with me, when I can easily rip it to a convient format like AAC, and carry it around in a device like an iPod? If I’m talking with someone, and I think that they might like a particular piece of music, I can easily let them hear it (no burning copies of the music, in this scenerio). Additionally, if I don’t have to buy one copy of the music for “home” use, and another copy for use on my iPod, I can then spend my money on more music, by a larger number of artists, instead of having to shell out money for duplicates all the damn time. If the RIAA does manage to find a way to prevent me from buying a CD, ripping it to my PC, and burning a copy for my car or transferring it to a device like an iPod, you can bet that I’ll be scouring the net, looking for ways around this, and I won’t be buying any music until I’m able to find a workaround, so the artists and the labels will be gaining nothing from me by doing this. I have a friend who’s spent the past fifteen years working in the music industry, and he’s so disgusted by the way labels treat artists (he’s a recording engineer, BTW), that he refuses to buy CDs since he knows that the odds of the artist ever seeing any of the money is practically nil. He’d much rather support the artist by going to their concerts and (if possible) purchasing the music from them directly.
Which, again, is better than nothing.
Nope, but I can find guys on street corners selling me DVDs of movies that are still in the theaters, I can find them selling me bootlegged CDs, or I can avail myself of the internet and download the stuff for free.
Supposition.
That, is why God created agents.
Can you afford to hire a lawyer to go after them? Even if you can, many artists can’t. Certainly if someone were to steal my writings and publish them, I can’t afford a lawyer to go after them. I accept that fact, and if it ever happens I will still accept it, I will not be hounding Congress demanding that they rewrite the laws so that the Federal government has to pay for the prosecution of that individual, I will not demand that Congress force companies to come up with technologies that will make it difficult for people to make simple archival copies of their personal property (remember some efforts at copy protection wouldn’t be able to discriminate between a legal copy and an illegal copy, they would just automatically assume that any copy you wanted to make was illegal). What I would do is make damn sure that the next time someone tried to physically break in and steal my personal property, they had as difficult time getting in and getting the stuff as is allowed by law.
Maybe so, but if the world is not willing to pay the price that the artist demands, then the artist will have to accept that fact. Sure, the artist could go around sticking guns in people’s faces and demand money from them, but that approach isn’t going to get them very far. Even if the law says it’s legal to do so. Sooner or later, someone’s going to put a stop to what the artist is doing, and they’re not going to care about the legality of the matter.
Hey, if you wanna ignore my point, be my guest.
No, I don’t and I can’t. If the artist doesn’t want to sell his/her work, there’s nothing I can do, short of sticking a gun in his/her face, to get him/her to do so. I would like to see artists to get some kind of compensation for their efforts, but I also recognize the fact that it’s impossible for them to be paid for every copy of their work. What if every time you wanted to listen to a song, you had to pay money for it? What if every time you wanted to read a book, you had to pay money for it? What if every time you wanted to look at a painting or a photograph or a movie, you had to pay for it? You can bet that all of us would be spending a lot less time enriching our lives with art. However, this is exactly the kind of scenerio that many artists and megacorps desire.
Well, all I can say is that you’re not the first person to call me “odd” and you’ll not be the last, I’m sure.
Well, I do. I realize that it’s a long shot that anyone will ever consider me to be great, but what the hell, right? After all, it was the personal diaries of nuns which gave folks insight into the course of Alzheimers. It’s those little scraps of personal letters which people sent to their loved ones, that enable us to get a sense of what it was like to be alive in America at the time of the Civil War.
I have a copy of Koyaanisqatsi which I paid $200 for. It does not leave my possession. I do not loan it out to anyone. If someone wants to watch it, I’m more than happy to invite them over to watch it, or take it over to their house and watch it with them there. Had not Godfrey Reggio been able to regain the rights to the film and thus arrange mass distribution of it, you can bet that I’d be burning DVDs of the film to loan out to people. They would not get to borrow my $200, and I wouldn’t even put that in my DVD player when I wanted to watch the film, I’d put in one of my duplicates. And lest you accuse me of being a mad duplicator, since the film has come out on DVD, I’ve purchased multiple copies of the film and given those away to friends, plus I’ve, again, purchased multiple copies for myself. Why did I do this, when I could have easily (I’ve got the necessary gear, BTW.) just burned copies and given those to folk? Because I think that the message conveyed by the film (and the others in the 'Qatsi trilogy) is so important, that I want to make sure that not only does Reggio have the money to make more films, but I want the movie studios to realize that, yes, this shit really does matter.
Hey, what gives them the right to deny me my happiness? I’d gladly fork over money to Lucas for DVDs of the original Star Wars trilogy. Heck, I’ll even let him clean the prints up, but if Greedo shoots first, I ain’t buyin’.
And art does not exist in a vacuum. Directly and indirectly, both the world and the artist are changed by how society reacts to the creation of a particular artwork. The artist can try to limit the impact of the world’s reaction upon his/her psyche, but the world will also do it’s damnedest to make sure that the artist knows exactly how the world feels about the matter, even if they have to imprison or murder the artist to get their point across.
Well, if the RIAA and others get their way, the only way you’ll get to enjoy the same amount of art as you do now, will be by availing yourself (as I will) of those methods developed by the people you’re currently calling “scumbags.”
And I certainly hope that it becomes popular, I’ve been bitching that we need print on demand since 1991 or so.
Assuming, of course, they’re not a total bastard and have acquired the rights solely so that they can supress the work. Which, sadly, has happened in the past. (Though, I must confess that I was in favor of Ted Nugent’s plan to buy Muzak solely for the purpose of shutting it down. )
Which is one that is, sadly, unsolvable. I remember watching a documentary on the excavation of a pre-Revolutionary slave grave yard in New York. The excavation was being done by anthropologists, archeologists, and assorted volunteers. Many people in the African-American community saw this as grave desecration and were opposed to it. However, having grown up in a primarily white community and being raised on images of slaverly like those found in Gone With the Wind, I was fascinated and appalled at what those poor individuals had to endure during their lives. Mind you, I knew slavery was bad, and I was opposed to discrimination of any sort at this point, but until I saw the forensic specialist holding the skull of a slave in his hands, and detailing the kind of excruciating agony in which that woman died, I did not fully understand how great the horrors of slavery were.
Now, suppose that the scientists had respected the wishes of those who felt the graves shouldn’t be exhumed. I, and others who saw that program, would not have the visceral reaction to the discussion of slavery that we do now. It would all be an intellectual matter, and I could discuss it the way one would discuss the weather. I would not know with the very fiber of my being that slavery, in any form, is utterly and totally wrong.
And at the risk of Godwinizing this, what if Anne Frank’s father had not decided to publish Anne’s writings simply because she was dead, and thus could have no say in the matter? I don’t know, but I think that the reason he chose to publish those writings was so that the world would have a greater understanding of the horrors which occured during WW II. To say that because Anne Frank (and others who have died) shouldn’t have their work published because we don’t know if that’s what they would have wanted strikes me as wrong. It is denying the world a window on a time and place which was very different than the one we live in now. Whether it be Europe during WW II, or America before Columbus landed here, or any other place on Earth, to deny those of us who were born too late to experience those things first hand, is wrong, IMHO. The only hope we have of learning from history, is by looking at those scraps which have been left to us, and if that means someone’s rights have to be trampled on, well, I think that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, don’t you agree?
It’s the winner of nearly every election, were it allowed on the ballot: None Of The Above.
And simple questions often don’t have simple answers. Like why is the sky blue? Or why do people die? Try explaining those to a child, and you’ll find that the answers aren’t so simple.
The best answer I can give is that it depends upon the artist, and I’m sure that will *not * satisfy you.
Well, it was nice that you were able to come to an agreement. But I am guessing that you don’t buy a lot of original art, then. Because if you say, “This comes with all rights, doesn’t it?” a lot of artists are going to say, “I don’t think so.”
We don’t usually show our work to just “anyone.” But yes, if you show something to a stranger, you never know what they might do with it. It doesn’t make the stranger any less of a scumbag for releasing it, though.
No, we certainly do not live in that world. If we did, there would be unauthorized copies of any old thing selling on Amazon.com. Places like CafePress would not have a paranoid copyright protection policy. Authors and artists and moviemakers would not get big contracts, because they couldn’t sell their work for that much. Why pay someone a lot of money for something when every Tom Dick and Harry can sell their own bootleg copy in a few days for a far lower price? What would be the point? It would be cheaper to be a bootlegger and just steal everyone else’s stuff, rather than actually seek out authors, get them to sign a contract, pay them, and be out all of that money. No, I think that things would be a lot different if bootlegging were really mainstream.
Oh good frickin’ grief. What is this, some sort of hyper drama moment? Art doesn’t cure cancer. It’s just someone’s private creation—their personal possession. Maybe there’s one in a million chance that someone would do something so fantastic that it would warrant violating their trust and their fundimental right to privacy. But most of the time, it does not apply. There’s no frickin’ excuse to publish it against their wishes.
They are lucky that you feel this way, and that you have some unspoken understanding about it. But I’m telling you, they shouldn’t assume that it would be the same for all people.
And when you mean, “spread it around,” what are you talking about? Do they publish it on the Internet? Sell copies through a POD? Buy ISBN numbers, publish it with a POD and sell it on Amazon.com? Or do they just show it to a few more friends, assuming that you “wouldn’t mind”? One is quite different than the other. Most artists wouldn’t get their knickers in a bunch if a friend of a friend saw something they did (even if no express permission was given), but if it ended up on P2P or on someone’s website? Totally different matter.
Until Random House is publishing bootlegged novels and they are selling them on Amazon.com, it is not that terribly “mainstream.”
Once again, let’s steer this back on course: to someone’s unpublished works. Sure, they might end up on P2P. They might end up on a website. The copyright holder can do only so much about the P2P, but copyright holders routinely contact the ISPs of copyright violators’ sites and have the sites removed. This is pretty common. Not as satisfying as suing, but it makes things inconvenient for the violator.
And the person who steals the car is still a scumbag.
Dude, you’re scaring me.
We are having another moment, aren’t we? Let’s get down to reality again. Sure, in some bizarro alternaworld this might happen, but odds are that you wouldn’t break in, that you wouldn’t know where to look, and even if you did steal them, they wouldn’t be the only copy and Salinger would prove that he did them. I don’t know how he’d get them off P2P, but they’d never be accessed by many people, because a lot of people don’t get into P2P. (Not that this would be any consolation to him, I’m sure.) The books would never be published by Random House, and they’d never be sold on Amazon.com. They wouldn’t be “mainstream,” like his other books. Of course, I’m guessing that you want them to be “mainstream,” so at least he can get royalties. Do you see why that would not comfort him much? With P2P, less people read the book. (A lot of us don’t like to read on the screen. Me included. A lot of us don’t scour P2P regularly—me included.)
With Amazon.com, everybody gets to read the book. He gets a little money, but not near enough to compensate him for the violation. Money isn’t everything.
And while we’re at it, if it’s bootlegged and no one person has “rights” to it, where is the money for his royalties going to come from? Who will pay for a book that is up on P2P, and is being published by a multitude of different publishers, all who are trying to undercut each other in price? The work will be next to worthless (money-wise), if anyone can get it for next to nothing.
And so you want to take the punishment away, make it “mainstream”? How is that going to help? “You shouldn’t have stolen Mr. Salinger’s work, but since you have, we’re going to let you keep selling his work.” That’s bullshit. When a wrong is committed, you always try to at least try to undo the damage. It can’t be undone, not completely, but the way it is now, it can be diminished. Because there won’t be any bootlegged books on Amazon.com. When a copyright violator is reported to their ISP, they are shut down. You, apparently, want that all to go away, want the bootlegged stuff to sell and make money, all for what? So the artist can get a little slice of the bootlegged profits? Gee, thanks.
The scumbags are the ones who “leak” someone else’s work when they have no right, and the ones who devise a way to violate someone else’s copyright. I don’t think it’s too scummy to help someone archive their CD collection, but of course we know that with many people, it doesn’t stop there.
You can find it because you are looking. A lot of us wouldn’t have a clue where to look, and even if we found it, we wouldn’t buy it. Face it: It ain’t mainstream. Mainstream is published by Random House, sold at Borders and up on Amazon.com. Being sold by a guy named “Vinnie” on a street corner ain’t mainstream.
But the work has already been stolen and released by scumbags. What can an agent do at this point?
A Cease and Desist letter often does wonders.
But you don’t speak for everyone else. You may want to roll over and take it, but not everyone else does. And once again, I’m talking primarily about someone stealing your unpublished works. If some scumbag did that to me, I’d try to make them hurt in so many ways. Just because that is the SCUMMIEST thing to do to someone. I wouldn’t do it for the money, I’d do it to make them suffer. Because they’d deserve it, for being such a SCUMBAG.
What? What in the world are you going on about?
An artist can ask for a price. They can be told, “Sorry dude, no way. That’s too high.” The artist can’t demand payment for their art. They can, instead, say, “Well, you don’t get to use it, then.”
But you are saying that when the artist is ripped off by some scumbag that it’s too bad, they don’t get to choose their own price. Well, no. They don’t. So what is the alternative then? The alternative is that THE ARTWORK IS NOT USED. That is the alternative. It isn’t, “Sorry, we don’t want to pay that but we insist on using your artwork anyway. Oh no, you can’t refuse to allow us to use your artwork if you don’t like our price: you have no choice. We’ve already stolen it and here’s all we’re willing to pay. Too bad if you don’t like it, not a penny more from us.”
That sucks, big time, don’t you see that?
Ah, but you can steal it and then tell them that it’s too late, the work is already out there, it’s everywhere and it’s going to stay everywhere, we aren’t going to even try to take it down, and oh, but the way, here’s a royalty for you, take it or leave it. :rolleyes:
Oh, that’s bullshit and you know it.
Many artists share their work for free on the Internet. I am one of them. I have several 50-100+ page websites with all free stuff. All I ask is that people don’t violate my copyright. But they can print out copies for themselves, put the pictures on their own t-shirts, all sorts of stuff. All free. And you know (or you soon will know) what a stingy bitch I am, so if I’m that generous, don’t you imagine that umpteen artists are far more generous?
One of my favorite pasttimes these days is to go to one of the Apple Garageband “Communities” (like MacIdol) and download music composed by these artists. I’ve gotten some really awesome stuff, and it’s all free for me to enjoy.
Artists deal with competition all the time. We can’t afford to be too stingy with our work, because we won’t sell any. Few of us can afford to demand that every time someone casts their eyes on our work that they have to pay us. All we ask is that we not be screwed over by scumbags. That’s all.
I agree. Copyright infringement is not theft. (It isn’t rape, terrorism, public indecency, or underage drinking either.)
Theft is where you deprive someone else of their property. If I steal a CD from you, then you can’t listen to it anymore, nor can you sell that CD to someone else. Theft is bad, not because I’m getting something for free, but because I’m depriving you of something that belongs to you.
If you still have the CD, then nothing has been stolen. You can still listen to it and sell it to someone else. Unauthorized copying is illegal, and we could go on all month about whether it’s immoral or should be legal (though I’ve had enough of that), but it’s silly to call it theft.
See what you’re making me do? Write posts in two parts! Curse you!
It’s very nice when people share these things, but things should be shared willingly, not forced out of people’s hands. Don’t you see that it’s all spoiled when it’s forced? You can’t do it that way. And if you want to allow scumbags to steal stuff and then just tell the victim to suck it up, that it’s too late and you won’t even try to minimize it, you’re making it worse for the victims. It’ll make people more mistrustful and resentful.
Dude, you’re scaring me again.
There are shades of gray to this, I admit, and the shades will get more gray as the RIAA gets more outrageous.
But it still does not mean that people who steal someone else’s unpublished work and release it are not scumbags.
And I agree, that’s crappy.
No doubt there were other girls in a similar position who wrote diaries, and they were never shared. We’ll never know, because the people who had access to the diaries never released them.
Some things are not meant to be released. If you try to force it on them, it won’t help. You can’t force people to give up part of their privacy. (I don’t know if you literally want to force them, but you don’t seem too broken up thinking about the violation of their privacy.) These things must be shared willingly. You can try to persuade someone to share, to beseech them, but you can’t force them and you can’t deny them their right not to share it. These are private things, and no matter how beautiful, they are not automatically owned by the world.
I have a stack of sketchbooks and a plethora of negatives. I think I’ve got some nice work in there. But it is not owned by the world. It is owned by me. I am happy to share some of it, but I don’t owe it to the world. And nobody can convince me otherwise.
YOU CAN’T FORCE PEOPLE. You can’t. You force people and they balk. They get resentful. They find more clever ways to hide their own personal possessions (because let’s get down to it: these are their personal posessions). You can’t force them under the premise that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one,” not as a matter of course. Frankly, that’s more than a little creepy. Like I said before, perhaps once in a million times would it be warranted, but most of the time, no. You start treating people like they don’t count, and their privacy doesn’t count, like all they are to you is some entity that creates stuff you like—not a human being with feelings—then you take away their humanity. That’s not right. It doesn’t work that way and it never will. Creativity withers and dies under those kinds of circumstances.
Once again, you’re scaring me. It’s not a complicated question, no matter how you want to hem and haw. Do people have a right over their own private possessions and creations? Yes or no? It’s really not difficult. You just want to make it difficult.
No, it won’t. Because that leaves me to think that you don’t think that all artists—who are human beings, by the way—do not deserve the basic human right to privacy, and to control their own creations. And that’s just beyond bizarre.
Tuckerfan, it seems to me that you believe that society has a right to access anything that evokes some sort of emotional/intellectual response. Well, convince me. What about the ‘viscreal’ response gives it such importance that I ought to have the right to access anything that will give it to me?
For every piece of history that we have access to there are millions of things that are lost forever. That’s part of change, part of life, and part of existance. If we held onto everything so we could look back and fawn over greatness, or comiserate with the dead, we would run out of room for things new. Let some of the old go and create new art, new ideas. The goal of ultimate preservation and retention is folly and ultimately impossible.
Eonwe summed it up in two paragraphs, where I needed two long-winded posts. Sheesh.
To sum it up another way, it’s cruel to treat artists as if they cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about their art. It would be cruel and inhumane to tell, for instance, the teenaged girl who wrote a politically significant diary that she must share it with the world, even though it contains something personal that she, in her shyness, would find embarassing. And don’t tell me that such a scenario wouldn’t happen if things were the way you wanted them, Tuckerfan, because we know that they could. What one person might find significant and not at all potentially embarassing could be utterly mortifying to another. And when you tell the person who is closest to the thing that they no longer have a voice, and that their feelings have been overridden, for the “greater good”? That’s cruel. People should be allowed some dignity.
It’s cruel and unbelievably selfish and self-absorbed to tell someone that it’s too bad how violated they feel, because, after all, “We all want to enjoy it! What about our right to enjoy it?”
My gosh, that has got to be the most appallingly selfish thing ever. As if the public’s right to be “entertained” should trump all else, including a human being’s dignity and sense of self. Because that’s what would be taken away—their sense of self. The sense that they have something that they can call their own, because they created it out of nothing, and that nobody should be able to take it away without their consent. And you want to institutionalize it being taken away, and tell the victim that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” For what? So that a bunch of people can be entertained? That’s appalling.
I agree. In cases where the artist does not wish their work to be released, it isn’t just about money anymore. It’s about having some basic respect for other people.
It arguably does Britney Spears little harm if someone rips one of her CDs and shares MP3s or burns an illegal copy to give or sell to a friend. At worst Ms. Spears & Co. lose a sale; at best someone who would never have bought the CD in the first place gets to hear her music and may decide they want to buy legitimate Britney Spears CDs in the future (provided, of course, they have no musical taste). A case can be made that it’s still immoral and should be illegal, but a case can also be made that loosening copyright restrictions would ultimately benefit artists, especially those without a huge marketing team behind them like Britney Spears. This is an issue where both sides have some good points to make.
But if we’re talking about an unauthorized release of Britney Spears’s private diaries, or recordings that she considered too personal or embarassing to be made public, it’s a whole 'nuther ballgame. She may be a public figure, but she has some right to her privacy and to keep other people from taking her personal property even if it’s just for long enough to make a copy. People who have not chosen to live in the public eye have an even greater right to privacy.
I have made a few of my drawings available on the Internet, and although I expect that others not attempt to pass these off as their own work or profit from them in any way, it doesn’t bother me if they save or print copies for their own personal use. But the only drawings I’ve posted are the ones that I selected myself and that I am cool with having made public this way. My current drawing notebook is in the desk drawer beside me as I sit here typing this, and damned if anyone’s going to look at it unless I say so. I’d be happy to show it to almost anyone who asked, but it does not belong to the world. It belongs to me. If it were released without my permission it would mean that either someone broke into my apartment and stole it, both crimes in and of themselves, or that someone who I trusted enough to lend it to violated that trust to make unauthorized copies.
The latter seems unlikely to happen to me as I simply don’t trust other people that much (although my main concern would be that they’d lose it or spill something on it), but if I did and my trust were betrayed it’s not a mistake I would make twice. I’d either stop drawing altogether or I’d make darn sure that no one could ever get their mits on my pictures ever again. Neither possibility is going to lead to more art for everyone or greater public access to my work. If people want to “enjoy” my drawings but they don’t want to enjoy them on my terms, they’re killing the goose that lays the golden (well, maybe bronze) eggs.
Sorry, folks, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have withdrawl from this debate for at least a couple of days due to health reasons. Saw the doc this morning and my blood pressure has jumped 30 points since my last visit and is now hovering around 150/90, they’ve got me on some new medication (with the usual 20 pages of potential side effects), and I’m awaiting the results of a whole slew of blood tests. So as you can imagine, this whole issue with copyright violation is a minor matter with me. If my pressure comes down in the next couple of days, I’ll post my response to your comments, but otehrwise we’ll just have to leave it where it stands.
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