Godzilla

Still pondering Siva Vaidhyanathan’s points in Copyrights and Copywrongs…

Consider the following statement by Vaidhyanathan, “… copyrights used to expire on definite dates, thus constantly enriching the public domain with new material.” (p. 125)  I am quite honestly a little perplexed here. Is Vaidhyanathan saying that only items that are no longer protected by copyright are in the public domain? Having read the entire book, this quote may be a bit out of context. It also brings up another question: What if copyright periods were shorter?

Where exactly do you draw the line?

Isn’t it true that each new creation enriches the public domain regardless of copyright? The creation of Copyrights and Copywrongs certainly enriched the public domain. I am able to read the work and quote passages of it in my own writing, as long as I credit Vaidhyanathan words. Vaidhyanathan drew information from the work of others – works available in the public domain – and he credits those works in the Notes section that begins on page 191.

So, if copyrights expired in, just for theoretical discussion, five years. After five years passed, would an academic writer no longer credit the originator of a work and present the words and ideas as his or her own? Any worthy academic writer would never consider such a thing.

So perhaps we should look at this from the standpoint of  a fiction writer or musician. If the copyright on a work of fiction or music expired in five years – there would be pirated copies of both fiction and musical works everywhere. Note Vaidhyanathan’s statement, “American printers … pirate[d] others’ works … American authors had less incentive to produce original works …” (pg 43) Do we want to return to a time like that? I think not. Not only would works be pirated, but other authors would claim the work as their own creation. There would be no reason, other than moral clarity, to stop a person from pirating work. Creation on either end would decrease just as it did in Colonial times. Recall specifically Vaidhyanathan’s quote regarding the U.S. Constitution: “Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution … power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to the respective Writings and Discoveries.” (pg 44-45) The fact that the creators of our Constitution felt it was necessary to insert copyright protection is evidence of the decline of creativity due to pirated works. Also, given the short life span of people in colonial times, the original 14 years noted in Viadhyanathan’s book may have covered the majority of an author’s adult life.

So, where would you draw the line?

I noted that more than a few of us were fascinated by the historical aspect of copyright presented in Siva Vaidhyanathan’s  Copyrights and Copywrongs.

Vaidhyanathan says in his introduction, “The chief goal of this work is to explain how essential the original foundations of American copyright law are our educational, political, artistic, and literary culture.” (p. 5) Vaidhyanathan, proceeds to not only explain the history of copyright, but also proceeds to give us concrete examples through the entire text. This enhances our understanding of copyright as well as helping us to question our understanding of what fair use is and how long a copyright should be in place.

In never knew, or even thought about, what the roots of copyright are. According to Vaidhyanathan, “American copyright emanates from the U.S. Constitution, which directs Congress to create a federal law that provides an incentive to create and distribute new works.” (p. 20) Motivation to create was brought up by me during the discussion in class regarding copyright. While some in class discussed abolishing copyright or shortening, drastically, the term of copyright, I brought up the fact that creative people may have no desire to create if they are unable to protect their creations from pirating. The framers of the Constitution, according to Vaidhyanathan, saw mass production of existing works that were pirated from works by British authors. There was little incentive to create something new in the United States as pirating works was so common. The following should be noted: “Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution … power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to the respective Writings and Discoveries.” (Vaidhyanathan, 2001, p. 44-45) Copyright does give authors the incentive to create without fear of pirating. Note also, in this post, I use quotes and credit the author for his work. This is done, not only because Vaidhyanathan holds the copyright to his words, but also out of respect for the author and his creation.

It is also important to remember that the United States was not necessarily the originator of copyright. Copyright law was changed multiple times over the course of history. According to Vaidhyanathan, “…the U.S. Congress in 1998 extended U.S. copyright to match the European term [life plus 70 years]…” (p. 25) Earlier in history, the U.S. made the effort to join the international community with regard to copyright protection. Vaidhyanathan states, “… the United States agreed in 1891 to share copyright protection with the British Empire…” (p. 160) and “European countries in general have afforded broader and deeper protection to authors and publishers than the United States has.” (p. 160-161)

Vaidhyanathan has opened our eyes to how copyright came to be as well as to considerations and debate regarding length and protection. I would not consider for a moment that Vaidhyanathan should not be protected for his creation of any written work, including Copyrights and Copywrongs. Though Vaidhyanathan seems to advocate shorter copyright protection as created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, I would consider it unfare for Vaidhyanathan to have to continuously reapply for copyright of his works. Though some of my classmates may disagree with me, respect for this author, and any other who creates an original work, should give us some foundation for understanding of the need for copyright.

I have often wondered where the line between being influenced or inspired by someone and stealing from them is drawn.  Obviously copying someone’s work, passing if off as your own, and receiving some sort of credit for it be it momentary, prestige, course credit, or otherwise is wrong and unethical.  But what if the influence is less obvious.  If I write in the style of another author is that plagiarism.  As an aspiring writer I tend to read a great deal and it is natural to try to emulate far better writer’s work, particularly if you are prone to reading most of an author’s collection in a short time.  But when does that influence become plagiarism.  I think of the different movements in art.  I am most familiar with the impressionists so I will use them for this example.  In 1881 Claude Monet painted “Sunflowers”. This painting used many of the traditional impressionistic techniques; large and visible brushstrokes, calm subjects, open composition, attention to lighting, movement, and angle, etc.  In 1888  Vincent Van Gogh, a post impressionist, painted “Sunflowers”.  The paintings, both having a vase of sunflowers as their subject, look somewhat similar.  Of course there are many distinctions in style but it is known that Van Gogh was inspired by the impressionists and he probably saw the earlier painting. Obviously you cannot copy right an image of an object or a title but I wonder how something like that would be viewed in today’s copyright climate?  Whether it would be frowned upon.  If I admire greatly and attempt to write in the style of award winning author, Cormac McCarthy is that plagiarism?  What if I write a story about a man and his son going south in a post apocalyptic United States in that same style, which is a far too brief description of McCarthy’s The Road?  I think that Siva Vaidhyanathan in Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity might advocate that those things are not plagiarism. Vaidhyanathan supports a loose and balanced copyright system.  A system that “does not prevent artists from taking from the ‘commons’, supports the idea that new artists build upon the works of others, and rewards improvisation within a tradition” (p. 125).   To reach this the author suggests that the protection should “expire on definite dates, thus constantly enriching the public domain with new material” (p. 125).   Vaidhyanathan has given me a great deal to think about and I am anxious to continue looking at this controversial debate.

I have been thinking about plagiarism recently, and even more so in light of reading Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Copyrights and  Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity. Vaidhyanathan’s book is a smartly-written, seemingly well-researched work that does exactly what its title says it does. While much of our class’ discussion centered on the author’s somewhat controversial discussion of copyright law and music, I was more smitten by his discussion of Mark Twain, and Vaidyanathan’s influence on American copyright law. According to Vaidhyanathan, Twain had a view of authorship that was somewhat contradictory. On one hand, Twain was a borrower, even once admitting to a friend in 1888, that “[t]hen, we were all thieves” (p.63). However, Twain fought tirelessly for credit over his finished works, despite admitting plainly (at least privately) that he frequently borrowed and adapted stories, characters, and even speech patterns for this own work.

And that brings us to today, where many of us who have put any thought whatsoever into our educations have been careful not to “plagiarize” — to steal away — the ideas of others. This is a necessary goal, to be sure, and one that will be met with severe punishment if we fail to meet it. But I do have a problem with a policy that believes in the increasingly laughable idea of the “romantic” writer, the author who sits, alone, uninfluenced, and writes, ex nihilo (out of nothing) like some kind of omniscient deity. This isn’t accurate or possible, and worse, it is disingenuous. When we write, it is impossible to remember every book, article, saying, person, movie, or song that has influenced some aspect of our writing styles, diction, or delivery. Try as we may, we can only remember so much of what I write.

While I hope to never knowingly plagiarize, and I endeavor to cite all my sources, this cannot, by definition, ensure that I have never plagiarized. This is a frightful thought, as I plan on pursuing a doctorate starting next year, and plan on teaching at the university level.

I suppose, then, that the lesson to be learned from Vaidhyanathan and his report of Mark Twain is that the relationship between authors, texts, and audiences is far from simple. Twain took stories he heard before, and put a special twist on them that made his finished works original, at least in part. When we read books or articles for papers in school, we are doing the same thing. Hopefully, we are a little more honest than he was when we do our writing. That should be the main difference.

I have looked for an interesting video that explains intertextuality, but was unhappy with what I found. What’s worse, influential articles by James Porter and Danielle DeVoss dont’ seem to be available right now. I doubt those authors would be happy about that, considering their importance in articulating the theory of intertextuality.

Rebecca Moore Howard argues  in “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty” that “plagiarisim” is not as simple as it first appears (p. 788). Whereas most teachers believe that plagiarism is a result of either ignorance of citation conventions or a lack of ethics, Howard points to the act of “patchwriting,” the practice of taking a quote, and changing its wording slightly, as being a practice that doesn’t fit in this binary distincition. This practice, commonly considered to fall under the plagiarism umbrella, is really a valuable step in learning to write (p. 788) .

I’m not really sure what the point of this post was. Though it didn’t have much to do with Copyrights and Copywrongs, I think plagiarism is an important topic, and Vaidhyanathan’s book provides us with a look at this complex issue in a way we may not have had before.

Copyrights and Copywrongs by Siva Vaidhyanathan offers an in depth look at the history of copyright law and how it has morphed from its original intent.  Vaidhyanathan proposes three goals for the book.  The first of which is to “trace the development of American copyright law through the twentieth century…it will proceed to a series of accounts of how copyright law affected American literature, film, television, and music” (p. 15).  He walks us through key figures such as Mark Twain, Learned Hand, and D.W. Griffith.   Twain’s role as an advocate against piracy but in favor of artists building on other artist’s work is extensively discussed. The author also provides us with a description of the various copyright laws and acts.  This discussion starts with the Statute of Anne which as enacted in 1710 in Britain and is considered by some to be the first copyright legislation.   The Statue of Anne had copyright lasting for only 14 years and could be renewed for another 14.  This was done to encourage “learning and create an incentive to produce more books” (p.40).  From there we are taken though the various acts and court cases that have morphed our system into one that promotes the established over the emerging and dampens creativity.  The history ends at about the year 2000 (the book was published in 2001) with the last act being the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.  This act “grants complete power to allow or deny access to a work with the producer or publisher of that work.  The producer may prohibit access for those users who might have hostile intentions toward the work” (p. 248).  This may include critiques and scholars. The second goal set forth for this book is to “succinctly and clearly outline the principles of copyright while describing the alarming erosion of the notion that copyright should protect specific expression but not the ideas that lie beneath the expressions” (p. 15). The author argues for copyright law as it was originally intended; to encourage creativity, cultural expression, the spread of ideas, and the sharing of information.  The rights of the creator are almost a by-product of the more important goal of creating a well of information in the public domain.  However, copyright has shifted into a form of property law which stalls creativity.  The third goal of the book is to “argue that American culture and politics would function better under a system that guarantees “thin” copyright protection” (p. 15).  The author continually advocates for “Thin” copyright protection that is “just strong enough to encourage and reward aspiring artists, writers, musicians, and entrepreneurs, yet porous enough to allow full and rich democratic speech and the free flow of information” (p. 5). Rather than “’Thick’ copyright protection [which] has a chilling effect on creativity” (p.16).  The book left me reevaluating my stance on copyright protection and reweighing the benefits of these laws.

I was intrigued by a lawsuit filed against the hit band Coldplay last December. Guitarist Joe Satriani claimed that the Coldplay’s hit “Viva La Vida” infringed on his rights to his song “If I Could Fly.”Satriani claimed that Coldplay had copied “substantial and original portions” of his song. According to an MSNBC article, the case was dismissed in court last month.

After the lawsuit was filed, I listened to this comparison, Coldplay Vs. Joe Satriani on YouTube, to see if I could pin-point the “stolen” material. The chord progression did seem similar, if not the same. Siva Vaidhyanathan talks about the limited number of keys and chords musicians have to work with in his Copyrights and Copywrongs several times. After exhausting every possible combination of keys to make both single chords and progressions, are all of the following works considered unoriginal?

Coldplay claimed the similar sounds were completely coincidental. I believe them. In discussing why “thinner” copyright laws should replace our current ones, I have to argue that claiming ownership of a particular chord progression, played by different string instruments, to produce a different song, is a little ridiculous. However, under the current laws and language, should Satriani have won his case?

So the discussion about “This Is Not a Pipe” was intriguing, so much so that I thought about all the objects in images that are not what they appear to be. Here is a my take on the issue

When is a bunch of flowers, not a bunch of flowers?

... when it is a tissue box. Then, when is a tissue box not a tissue box?

... when it is just one item on a cluttered desk

... all inside a building

Nothing is as it appears, it is really just a series of pictures

I am very interested in deconstructing texts of various kinds, though I have no formal training in doing this sort of work. This is somewhat problematic for me since my MA thesis will entail deconstructing a text, the Beatles Rock Band videogame. To prepare myself for this exciting but challenging task, I am looking to scholarship that places both static and digital texts together a clearly defined spectrum of human expression. By this, I mean that I am interested in looking at digital artifacts in a way similar to how scholars have been evaluating static ones.  I am taking this approach so that I can imbue my work with a “scholarly heft” that may not at first be possible for the analysis of a text that is not “readerly” in the traditional sense. I don’t think my thesis will make a connection between playing the game and reading; however, I will be making a connection between writing and making the game. To this end, Espen Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perpectives on Ergodic Literature has been helpful.

Aarseth’s text opens with the familiar premise that digital technologies have provided writers, scholars, artists, and programmers with increasingly powerful and flexible content creation tools. This book was written in 1997, so it was a little edgier back then. Aarseth explains that his approach does not divide static and digital texts, as most scholarship to that point- and since- has done, but rather, to divide these texts between whether they are linear, or nonlinear. The term Aarseth uses is “ergodic,” which is derived from two Greek words that mean “work” and “path.” While it is natural here to think merely of newer, digital texts, such as websites, electronic literature, videogames, and the like as the only sorts of artifacts that are nonlinear, and require the reader to choose a “path” through which to “work” through the text, the author is quick to point out that a text’s digitality is not the feature that makes a text ergodic or not. Aarseth explains: “The concept of cybertext focuses on the mechanical organization of the text, by positing the intricacies of the medium as an integral part of the literary exchange” (p.1). We are used to seeing “texts,” at least in the Print Age, as being largely uniform: printed on paper, and bound in a book, journal, or magazine. This explanation has a tinge of McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” vibe to be sure, but Aarseth’s explanation is clearer than McLuhan’s 50-year-old aphorism. Aarseth continues, saying, “During the cubertextual process, the user will have effectual semiotic sequence, and this selective movement is a work of physical construction that the various concepts of ‘reading’ do not account for” (p.1). In other words, ergodic texts take the idea that readers need to be active to a whole new level.

Aarseth qualifies his statements by explaining that, “hypertexts, adventure games, and so forth are not texts the way the average literary work is a text” (p. 2-3).  Cybertexts are different from traditional literary texts because they require choices on the reader’s part. When she/he views a website, and clicks on something, she/he sees some some content of the site, but not all of it. The user must negotiate the interface to find what he or she is looking for. Users engage in a similar process for other types of digital media. I think looking at this difference, not from a reader’s perspective, but from a writer/designer’s perspective, makes cybertexts inherently different.

While there’s a lot more to Aarseth’s discussion, I can’t get into it all here. Perhaps I’ll revisit it later on, when I get a chance to finish his book.

Check out Nick Montfort’s The Purpling, which was published in the Iowa Review Web last year. It’s a very cool electronic poem, and good example of ergodic literature. I tried to put up a screen shot of it, but it’s not cooperating with my screenshot application.

There has always been a discussion of whether the language of the people controls the standards of the dictionary or the standards of the dictionary control the language of the people.  This can be argued either way, up and down, and ad infinitum.  Our dictionary gives us a set of words with their agreed-upon meanings (or I should say, strongly suggested meanings), and we go about our lives happily using those words.  I can only guess that most of the time, we use them appropriately and correctly, like we have been in this blog.  It’s foolish to think that the dictionary holds all we have to use.  Our language is changing everyday, thanks largely to new things to name and new ways of naming things.  For instance, crunk is now in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Issue, as well as ginormous.  They both were two of 100 accepted entries.

Word meanings change when we want them to.

I still have trouble (and still don’t like) considering image to be text.  I simply don’t expand my definition of text to include images.  I also still consider Pluto to be a planet and I don’t consider indigo to be a rainbow color that I have to memorize.  So just because an assumed authority defines a word as such doesn’t mean the public will listen.  Still, our words have definitions.

Kress appeared to be struggling to define that ugly word of today, literacy.  What felt odd about that chapter (What is Literacy?) was that for a learned man, a professor at the University of London, he approached a definition of literacy from a surprisingly simple angle, broke down the terms, and played with them for a while.  Only images and text were discussed while many other forms of literacy were left untouched.

When I was in middle school, I thought of literacy as pertaining only to images and text.  Now I’ve entered a world in which text doesn’t just mean actual text, where the screen dominates, where everyone needs a cellphone, where watches are becoming useless, where Pluto is now just a dwarf planet, and where literacy is rocking on a fence that runs between obsolesce and useless generality.  The world has changed so much in my measly twenty five years, so why are we still clinging to this clearly abstracted term?

But can’t the same situation be said of the word animal?  It’s also an umbrella term, underneath which lies six other classifications (phylum, class, order, family, genus, species).  Through this classification, we can identify and name every living thing we encounter.  It seems to me that this scientific approach would help us with this struggle.

Linda Dubin, a reading specialist at West Bridgewater University, has on her website the most reasonable definition of literacy that I’ve been able to find:

In broad terms, literacy is the ability to make and communicate meaning from and by the use of a variety of socially contextual symbols.

I hope we can embrace the largeness of this term as something of importance while creating under it a classification system for the various literacies.

We need to gain a little control over how we name things in our world.

This is a very interesting YouTube video regarding information literacy called e-literate produced by the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies hosted on YouTube by Howard University for their freshman seminar. The video inclues some historical perspective and works its way all the way to present with information overload through the information we can access. It’s a very long one (almost 9 minutes) so be sure you have the time to view it. It is definitely worth a look