Re: Re: will everyone concerned about copyright please read this

On 20/09/2011 23:06, Christopher R. Maden wrote:
> On 09/20/2011 05:03 PM, joseph harris wrote:
>    
>> All the calssic composers would have been [are? ;-)] delighted that
>> their music has lived on in the popular songs of the past two
>> centuries or so; they might have been more pleased if some revenue
>> had gone to their descendants! ;-)
>>      
> How can you make that assertion?  Have you never met or heard of a
> cranky artist who did not appreciate another artist reusing his or her
> work, especially in an unanticipated way?  One only needs look to the
> music sampling furor of the ’80s and early ’90s for an example, not to
> mention the famous Disney orgy cartoon.
>
> Artists should be compensated for their work, but if they are allowed to
> lock it away from re-use, that *will* impede cultural progress.
>
> ~Chris
>    

Chris,

Freedom means any cranky artist is entitled to lock his work away, just 
as you are entitled to refuse entry to your home, except under legal 
duress.

But you raise another vitally important question, and you remind me it 
has not been addressed. You assert that locking away *an* art work 
'*will* impede cultural progress'. I cannot see how the inclusion or 
exclusion of a small number of works or artists impedes the culture as a 
whole anyway; indeed a system that increases the number of artists seems 
the more valuable - that is copyright.

But what is unresolved is what culture itself actually is. In Europe, 
until the 15th century, the only culture was that of the Roman Catholic 
Church, as dictated by the Vatican. While the stirrings of change began 
a century before, it was not until the development of the printing press 
in Germany that ideas were easy to spread, and that the single monopoly 
of the Vatican - through the Monastery clerks - could be broken.

But books and pamphlets were printed for money and profit. Not till the 
Queen Anne Act did the rights of creators figure in this commerce. 
Funnily enough the origins of that Act lay in the wish of the London 
printers to stop the piracy by Scottish printers of the books printed in 
London. The steady rise in the creation of IP since that time clearly 
bears a correlation to copyright and other IP laws. The early adoption 
may well explain the dominance of British writings, and also have 
contributed to the 'shared culture' that may have been important in the 
growth of the British Empire through the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries.

Joseph Harris


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