The copyright tug of war
The David Lange & Jennifer Lange Anderson reading "Copyright, Fair Use and Transformative Critical Appropriation" challenges our current system of copyright and fair use as is needed in our changing technological landscape. For those of you interested in this topic, another text you might want to read is Siva Vaidhyanathan's The Anarchist in the Library.
Vaidhyanathan makes several interesting points as he discusses the realities of reduced music sales (that were inaccurately blamed on the Internet and file sharing), the organization of terrorists involved in the attacks of 911 (and the perceived role of the Internet), and piracy of movies, as blamed on new and more effective ways to download and copy films (even though VCR’s were designed to do the same thing and have been around for decades). He sees each of these situations as attempts to control what he believes are First Amendment questions and speech rights. He also argues that copyright, as it exists today, is outdated and “stifles real creativity by everyday people” and “no longer promotes progress” (p. 94). He concludes that it will take information anarchy to challenge those in control of copyright, lest we be resolved to a “Hobbesian black market of culture and information, one we can already glimpse” (p. 95).
Sound familiar?
Vaidhyanathan makes several interesting points as he discusses the realities of reduced music sales (that were inaccurately blamed on the Internet and file sharing), the organization of terrorists involved in the attacks of 911 (and the perceived role of the Internet), and piracy of movies, as blamed on new and more effective ways to download and copy films (even though VCR’s were designed to do the same thing and have been around for decades). He sees each of these situations as attempts to control what he believes are First Amendment questions and speech rights. He also argues that copyright, as it exists today, is outdated and “stifles real creativity by everyday people” and “no longer promotes progress” (p. 94). He concludes that it will take information anarchy to challenge those in control of copyright, lest we be resolved to a “Hobbesian black market of culture and information, one we can already glimpse” (p. 95).
Sound familiar?
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