Sorry I haven't weighed in on the open sourcing of intellectual property.
Been a busy time graduating and all. I have been trying to get a net
based writing project off the ground, something built on small modular
chunks of text that could be rewritten by a community of writers. The
model was Linux, butI am currently working on 3d texts.
Art does have a history of appropriation and often it is up to the viewer
to be in the know enough to point to what has been quoted. Richard
Prince got famous rephotograhing images of the Marlborough Man, easy
enough to know what he had quoted.In both the art world and music
world (sampling) appropriation became the trope of the eighties. I would
think that the main problem is one of attribution. Industry will always
find a way to quote what ever is new without attribution or
compensation.The individual can never have enough historical background to
understand the complexity of quotation, appropriation and mutation.
Did I catch all the times Parliment Funkadelic was sampled?
Text(printed, oral?) is a curious thing though, unlike a musical recording
the constituant parts are always in motion, everyone in a given society
has access to the same words (more or less). Talking book, hypertext,
printed page,the delivery systems offer only minor chanes in the content
and we see themes played out again ane again in literature.
Somebody does something to someone, then the people come.
The hero makes the journey. His mentor dies. The hero returns with new
knowledge. Society may reject this new knowledge.
Have you seen these ideas before?
About 14 years ago Kathie Acker was living in England and wrote a book
using a few large chunks of text from a novel by Harrold Robbins, a
big name Brittish writer. Kathie Acker cited the original author of the
appropriated chunks, but Robbins sued anyway.
Now Acker has a history of appropriation, often appropriating her own
texts-something that goes back to William S. Borroughs, but the Brittish
court found her a plagairist and ordered her to destroy all the copies of
that book.She was ordered to apologise to Robbins under threat of
imprisonment and was thrown out of the country.
I have been wanting to search and replace that Harrold Robbins novel.
Replace some of the names of charcters, verbs, adjectives, etc; in general
giving it the George Washington's hatchet treatment. Will he be able to
sue me? Will the work be his, mine or ours?
Richard prince has never been sued for the images and cartoons he has
reproduced.Sampling at the end of the century is an accepted practice
Kathie Acker would seem like a victum not a victumizer.
At what point do we say Ahah, you have clearly stolen my intellectual
property ? Is the aplication of any sort of copyright, copyleft, copyup,
copydown merely an attempt to controll what can no longer be controlled?
Should it be controlled?
I certainly don't want Nike using my music to make more money, but in the
end I don't think that I could afford the legal battle.
Thank you for your patience,
this got longer than I expected.
jeff knowlton www.calarts.edu/~knowlton
