[cc-community] No Hard Copy Distribution Condition (Let's discuss)
Greg London
email at greglondon.com
Sat Feb 16 10:36:14 EST 2008
> The value paradox of popular work is that it the most financially
> valuable and well regarded work but also the work where that value is
> most created by the desire of society to copy and derive from it.
Yeah. I was trying to avoid the finer details of which work
is the "serious" work. I'm fairly sure that the work that
alters the world is the work that the world adopts, not
neccessarily the work that the original author wrote.
"Play it again, Sam." being a simplistic example.
That line isn't in the movie, but it's the line that
the world adopted and assigned to the movie.
If Moral Rights were so powerful that Hollywood could
get court ordered injunctions against anyone who
misquoted the movie with "Play it again, Sam" on the
notion that the misquote somehow attacked the
"seriousness" of the original movie, then the world
probably would not have adopted that line and that
scene at all. "You played it for her. You can play it
for me. Now play it." just doesn't have the same ring to it.
My main point though was that you can't design this
to happen. The world adopts what it adopts, and no
law is going to force it. You might be able to
kill it off and prevent it from happening by having
overly monopolistic rights to the point that
the public isn't allowed to misquote a movie.
But I don't think anyone can point at some legal
contruct and say "Ah, now THIS will finally allow
all the serious artists to create serious works"
That, and I think that "serious" as a way to describe
works creates a poor metaphor just like "pirate" is
a poor metaphor to describe folks using Fair Use.
"Serious" invokes a cathedral-like view of the world.
But works that truly alter the world are more often
of a bazaar-like nature. The work of many, and the
world as reader becomes part of the creative process.
Greg
More information about the cc-community
mailing list