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JohnOAS
SFN Regular
Australia
800 Posts |
 Posted - 01/07/2008 : 18:10:51
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I'm not sure this will spark much of a discussion, but in light of the sort of people that hang around here, and some recent discussions, I thought people might at least be interested.
Cory Doctorow: Artist Rights (link to article)
Sure, it's fine to talk about the artist's rights to get paid, to control copying, to have their work attributed to them and be fairly edited, but all that stuff is just the appetizer. There's one artist's right that's more important than all the rest combined: the right to free expression
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We live in an age in which more people can express themselves in more ways to more audiences than ever before. The majority of this expression is intimate, personal maunderings — the half-spelled, quarter-grammatical newspeak adorning MySpace and Facebook pages.
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Could these sites be remade to prevent infringement, and if they could, what would that mean for free expression? |
I am not an artist by almost any definition, however the discussion interests me greatly, especially as a rabid consumer of on-line content, some artistic, most not.
Cory Doctorow is quite a good speaker. This shouldn't be a surprise, I guess, as he's a journalist in various formats and also an (now more or less full time) author.
It's a little dated now, but I remember enjoying this one from 2004, when he was acting as the European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It's only 17 minutes, and a good illustration of his passion and understanding for the subject matter. He's a lot less dry than most of the tech's I listen to regularly.
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John's just this guy, you know. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2008 : 12:00:55 [Permalink]
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| I've often wondered if there's anything to keep a writer from mining My Space type sites for story ideas. Let's say a love sick My Spacer writes about some argument she had with her boyfriend taking care to include lots of detail and so on then 6 months later it shows up as a key scene in a lovey-dovey short story in Red Book or something. Is this theft? Is there recourse? How is it different from what writers have done forever - observing their surroundings, including listening in on conversations, taking notes and using this as the kernel for drama? |
-Chaloobi
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2008 : 12:05:41 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by chaloobi
I've often wondered if there's anything to keep a writer from mining My Space type sites for story ideas. Let's say a love sick My Spacer writes about some argument she had with her boyfriend taking care to include lots of detail and so on then 6 months later it shows up as a key scene in a lovey-dovey short story in Red Book or something. Is this theft? Is there recourse? How is it different from what writers have done forever - observing their surroundings, including listening in on conversations, taking notes and using this as the kernel for drama?
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This is a long way from stealing, even if they wrote a story about it you could still then re-write a peice inspired by it without theft. The line is vague though, once its on My Space this pretty much eliminates any debate as to the personal property rights of the individual, short of blatant copying. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Artists Rights
