Copyright is not only a broad issue in itself but one of those topics that could send many authors into hot water, especially those who are questioning the system, or worse, abolishing its rules. However, copyright is an important matter for everyone that works in the arts and he/she must deal with it rather often. Naturally, people's opinions on the subject differ: depending on which art medium the individual works with, the country they live in as well as their copyright-involving experiences. But no matter whether we are creators ourselves or not, collectively we all constitute the audience and culture matters to every one of us. And culture is affected by copyright as we shall see below. I think we all agree that plagiarism is a thick red line and crossing it brings only disgrace to those who have done so. But beyond that who can objectively say whether copyright is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for the artists? How about the public? And how about the publishers? Before I started researching the subject, I didn't doubt copyright - to me it equated authorship or "credits right". However, as I got deeper into the matter, I found out that the issue is far more complex than I had ever imagined. But let me tell you about Nina Paley’s story.
Nina Paley is an American cartoonist who rose to fame thanks to her film “Sita Sings the Blues”. It is important to give some details about her life prior the film. In the early 2000s, the artist followed her then-husband to India where she was introduced to the “Ramayana”. The “Ramayana” is an ancient Indian epos which could be compared to the “Iliad” although there are differencies in their plots. More specifically, the former narrates the story of the divine prince Rama and his wife Sita who was kidnapped by the demon-king Ravana, the war with the latter and Sita's rescue, and finally, Rama’s rejection of his wife. Eventually, Paley returned to the US and shortly after was abandoned by her husband. Quite naturally, she identified herself with Sita. At the time Paley was introduced to Annette Hanshaw’s songs about love and the heartache that goes with it. Everyone who has gone through break-up knows that music can be a comforting friend. So Nina started putting her pain in a movie - one that connected her own experience, Sita’s story and Hanshaw’s songs:
"Sita Sings the Blues", trailer
When I first saw the film I knew nothing of the artist’s background and found the movie unique, poignant and at the same time witty. I loved the combination of the Indian drama and the swing music. But for Paley the real battle started when she tried to release the film. Hanshaw’s songs were recorded in the 1920s and should have been in the public domain by the 1980s. However, they were protected by retroactive copyright term extentions. In fact, Annette Hanshaw’s music was so protected that although she was a popular singer back in the beginning of the 20th century, almost noone in the US played her songs anymore. Paley had to get a lawer and pay a significant amount of money to the songs’ owners in order to simply start talking to them. That must be a good busyness strategy – asking fat sums in order to begin negotiations! What is more, she found out that copyright owners are not obliged to grant licenses to noone no matter the money they are being offered. Finally, the artist went all the way and cleared Hanshaw’s songs (think six digit amount) and realeased her film for free streaming. Because of this experience, Nina Paley became a free culture activist. And her film payed off in that brought her fame and much larger income than the publishers predicted (and we can still watch "Sita Sings the Blues" for free!)
Why Paley’s story matters? Because she revived Hanshaw’s music and we got to watch a film which brings together three totally different narratives in such a smart way. There are some original films released each year but the majority of those in the mainstream are being made on the copy-paste and/or sequel principle. That formula that is known to make the masses buy tickets (but this is a whole different story). So, in this case, how did the copyright laws benefit Annette Hanshaw, who died in 1985, or Nina Paley, who managed to clear the licenses only after paying loads and loads of dollars? And what was our benefit as an audience? Sure we got to see a good movie and hear nice music. But that’s only because Paley was lucky enough to find the money and convice the publishers to sell the rights to Hanshaw’s songs to her. That is why some people maintain that copyright suppresses creativity. Here is an excerpt from one of Nina Paley’s talks - it is slightly long but every word is important:
“We are information transmitters. Information enters through our senses, like our eyes or our ears, and exists through our expressions, like our voices, our writings or drawings. And all this information going through us creates a living phenomenon called culture. In order for culture to stay alive we have to be open – transmitting and receiving information. Information is a network, like a neural network, and we are neurons in a Great mind. In an individual’s mind information flows from a neuron to neuron, and that creates a bigger phenomenon called thought, and that creates a bigger phenomenon called mind. In the Great mind, information moves from human to human and that creates a greater phenomenon called art, and that creates a greater phenomenon called culture.
There are single artists who work alone - in fact I am one of them - but the art that these individuals transmit contains all sorts of information they first received from culture. This might be language, symbols, aesthetics, references of all kinds, etc. The information has to flow between humans for art to exist, just as information has to flow through neurons for thought to exist. It’s through this flow that culture stays alive and we stay connected to each other. Ideas flow in and flow out and they change a little as they go along, and that’s called innovation or progress. But thanks to copyright, we live in a regime where some information can go in but it can’t come out. And I often hear from people engaged in creative pursuits ask: “Am I allowed to use this? I don’t want to get in trouble”. Trouble may include lawsuits, fines and even jail. And it is the thread of trouble that dictates our choices about what we express. Copyright activates our internal censors. Internal censorship is the enemy of creativity because it holds expression before it can even begin.”
Nina Paley “Copyright Is Braindamage”, TEDx Maastricht
If you'd like to watch Paley's full speech click here.
Obviously no two cases are identical therefore one cannot assume that copyright is purely ‘bad’. However, as we saw with "Sita Sings the Blues", we cannot conclude that copyright is ultimately ‘good’. No doubt there will always be people who will plagiarize despite the laws or regulations we adopt. Just as there will always be those who will attribute credits appropriately. But it is a fact that the publishing industry makes the merging of ideas difficult (if at all possible). Just how many independent artists can afford paying large amounts of money for copyrights? And does this money always go to the original authors whose works they’re quoting? As a result, creativity and innovation suffer. Moreover, publishers control what creative works come to the surface. And the outcome is more and more songs that sound the same, more and more books, films and productions that look similar. Not because these companies are ‘evil’ but because they have to make money and cannot afford investing in risky authors (i.e those who might be rejected by the public). And of course the result is a cultural decay in the mainstream. Fortunatelly though, the underground scene is flourishing. Underground artists are self-organising: they collaborate, create social platforms for communication, even small festivals. Just research the Facebook art groups. And it’s up to the public to support this blooming underground scene or not. Because we need not to be told what we like and what we don’t. It takes just a little more search around the underground platforms, and perhaps some confidence into our own taste, to discover some orginal works we wouldn’t detect otherwise. Finally, here is a quote by Karl Fogel, a historian of copyright who predicts this:
“As the stream of freely available material gets bigger, its stigma will slowly vanish. It used to be that the difference between a published author and an unpublished one was that you could obtain the former’s book, but not the latter’s. Being published meant something. It had an aura of respectability; it implied that someone had judged your work and given it an institutional stamp of approval. But now the difference between published and unpublished is narrowing. Soon, being published will mean nothing more than that an editor somewhere found your work worthy of large-scale print run, and possibly a marketing campaign. This may affect the popularity of the work, but it won’t fundamentally affect its availability; and there will be so many “unpublished” but worthwhile works, that the lack of a publishing pedigree will no longer be considered an authomatic strike against an author. Although the free stream does not use traditional copyright, it does observe, and unofficially enforce a “credit right”. Works are freaquently copied and excerpted with attribution – but attempts to steal credit are usually detected speedily, and decried publicly. The same mechanisms that make copying easy make plagiarism very difficult. It’s hard to secretly use someone else’s work when a Google search can quickly detect the original.”
Karl Fogel “The Surprising History of Copyright and the Promise of a Post-Copyright World”, 2005: 16
You could download the full artcile here.
Sources:
Nina Paley, "Copyright Is Brain Damage", TEDx Maastricht
Illinois Pioneers with Nina Paley, video interview November 20th 2014
"Power to the Pixel 2009: Nina Paley" , video
Nina Paley on "Sita Sings the Blues", the "Ramayana" and Free Culture, video
Karl Fogel, "The Surprising History of Copyright and the Promise of a Post-Copyright World", 2005