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This book looks interesting, but I feel a certain (juvenile?) aversion to the advice offered in the linked excerpt. I think copyright law is a plague on cultura

This book looks interesting, but I feel a certain (juvenile?) aversion to the advice offered in the linked excerpt. I think copyright law is a plague on cultural production, and everything has been getting progressively worse since the death of the rapidshare mp3 blog, siloing of content, technological advancement of DRM, automated DMCAA take-downs, etc. Playing by the rules seems like admitting defeat to me. Might as well get a real job. I love those Richard Prince Instagram screenshots too, no shame.

kmeisthax 5y ago
You're half-right. There are a lot of noncommercial or personal infringements that are being overprosecuted by either zealous litigants or outright fraudsters. However, at the same time, there are also a lot of artists who misrepresent or misunderstand what they actually do and don't own. The kind of people who will scream about how "the Internet is public domain" on one end, but also that someone with money "stole their idea". Likewise, there are also artists that are genuinely getting ripped off, but don't really have the means to fight back[0]. This is more common than you think, and I feel like this book is aimed at that group of people. [0] This is why you have lots of bots that steal Twitter art and resell it as T-shirts or NFTs.
schrijver 5y ago
Artist’s don’t like to play by the rules in general, but if they ignore copyright they also need to find a way to fly under the radar. Which in turn can diminish the visibility of what they do. So there’s a practical impetus for getting to know these rules. The book is indeed full of practical advice on how to work within them. But in doing so, it also explains the paradoxes of copyright, and I hope, sows the seeds for a more critical attitude towards it. You obviously already have a critical attitude, but for most artists it’s not so pronounced, and also more ambiguous: many artists are quite happy to support copyright, as long as it protects their work, however, they’re not quite so happy with copyright protecting the work of others when they want to use it as part of their own. I hope the readers challenge their intuitions a bit.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  There's Nina Paley's view that copyright is brain damage. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc She's made that an integral part of her work, including particularly Seder Masochism: https://sedermasochism.com/ https://sedermasochism.com/ https://vimeo.com/264768954 https://vimeo.com/264768954 Full movie: https://archive.org/details/sedermasochism/ https://archive.org/details/sedermasochism/

kmeisthax 5y ago

You're half-right. There are a lot of noncommercial or personal infringements that are being overprosecuted by either zealous litigants or outright fraudsters. However, at the same time, there are also a lot of artists who misrepresent or misunderstand what they actually do and don't own. The kind of people who will scream about how "the Internet is public domain" on one end, but also that someone with money "stole their idea". Likewise, there are also artists that are genuinely getting ripped off, but don't really have the means to fight back[0]. This is more common than you think, and I feel like this book is aimed at that group of people. [0] This is why you have lots of bots that steal Twitter art and resell it as T-shirts or NFTs.

schrijver 5y ago

Artist’s don’t like to play by the rules in general, but if they ignore copyright they also need to find a way to fly under the radar. Which in turn can diminish the visibility of what they do. So there’s a practical impetus for getting to know these rules. The book is indeed full of practical advice on how to work within them. But in doing so, it also explains the paradoxes of copyright, and I hope, sows the seeds for a more critical attitude towards it. You obviously already have a critical attitude, but for most artists it’s not so pronounced, and also more ambiguous: many artists are quite happy to support copyright, as long as it protects their work, however, they’re not quite so happy with copyright protecting the work of others when they want to use it as part of their own. I hope the readers challenge their intuitions a bit.

dredmorbius 5y ago
There's Nina Paley's view that copyright is brain damage. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc She's made that an integral part of her work, including particularly Seder Masochism: https://sedermasochism.com/ https://sedermasochism.com/ https://vimeo.com/264768954 https://vimeo.com/264768954 Full movie: https://archive.org/details/sedermasochism/ https://archive.org/details/sedermasochism/