[-empyre-] Copyright?

["Patrick Lichty" <voyd@voyd.com>]

IMO cpoyright is almost impossible in the digital age, I mean REAL ironclad
control of digital info, and we digital artists who do little else are tired
of starving, and the museums are exploiting us all the way to the bank.

I'm not tired of it, I merely understand the situation.  I know how
copyright works, and I know how to violate it.  You can do almost anything
you want as long as it's small enough potatoes.  And as long as no one's
making much money off of it, there's really not a problem.

My biggest problem is plagiarism, and to me that's related but not the same
as copyright.  One is about commodity value, the other intellectual
integrity. They're not separate by any means, but not the same, either.  As
long as an artist has a real conceptual justification for it, I'm OK with
it. Hell, 1/4 of my work is appropriation/detournment.  But repurposing is
not plagiarism, but it can stomp the daylights out of copyright.

FOr example, my first series of Haymarket Riot videos (3, about 4 min ea.,
1995-7) have tons of lifted footage, and the head of the center for media
studies at UCol Boulder said "that's great stuff, if it weren't for the
copyrighted material", and I told her that we lifted the stuff willfully
under fair use and had full intentions to distribute (free, but I didn't
tell her that), and that I'd do the same thing with her stuff if I could get
my hands on it.

She wouldn't talk to me much for the rest of the conference.

RTMark sponsored a video called $29.95 that promoted the cause of 'art video
shareware', like bootlegging Cremasters, and Lucy Dunning vids.

Look, no art's pure, and I realize we all have to make a living, but this
whole copyright paradigm is very  very problematic, and is antiquated.  Open
source is fine, but it has its problems.  What if we were trying to do our
work in Hong Kong, where the copyright enforcement is flimsy as wet toilet
tissue?

I think we're dealing with an outdated (hopelessly) paradigm of copyright
that was not made for YOU, the artist, it was made for publishing houses.  I
really wish that more artists understood the reality that copyright
privileges capital, and not the individual.

So I'm rather tired of talking about copyright, as I don't care whether
something's copyrighted or not.  Copyright as we know it needs to die.  I
might be (per/pro)secuted for it, but it does not serve me as an artist.
It's all about money, and the powers that be are laughing all the way to the
bank while we're arguing about which crumb who's going to get!  It's exactly
their wishes, and I don't want to let corporate interests rule my life
(although for the most part they do, sicne I relay so much on high tech).

And I want to make money just as much as you do, but I also understand some
basic realities of our genre that demand that new paradigms be shaped to
create capital, but copyright surely is not the individual's answer.  Some
of the real stars of the e-culture are Cuck D and Prince, who (well, after
making a pot of money) figured out how to use the web.

On the other hand, I have enough ethics to know when I'm really performing a
disservice to fellow artists.  Corporate infringement? I might stop when
they send me the third Cease and Desist notice.

Maybe not.  All they'll get are my cat and my cd collection of Cibo Matto
MP3's.

ANother IMO, we're in general as artists not working smart.  We understand
the creative but not the commercial potential of the web.  E-commerce isn't
a great thing anymore, but there are ancillary ways to make cash.  I am not
advocating Thomas Kinkaide, but I also do not go to festivals I am not
overly enthused about unless I am paid to go, and anywhere I go I usually
set up a lecture, again - paid.

Means I just about break even on the trip, but after 10 years, I think we
deserve to (but are not entitiled to) have our crumbs, but fighting over
them is counterproductive, working together to try to find and collecivize
them is far better.

So, in short all this talk about squatting on copyrights and money talk on
Rhizome just breaks my heart (I'm not being sarcastic) I'm now slightly less
poor than some, but definitiely not out of the hole.

We really need to think a lot more about getting together than balkanizing,
friends.

Copyright is problematic for the individual.
There isn't (currently) enough money for all of us to live in the e-art
world.
I think we can change that, but electronic artists have to get a lot
savvier, and a lot more forgiving.  Otherwise, to paraphrase the website,
they will continue to rule us.

It might boil down to solidarity.