On 02/10/11 20:16, Jeremy Pilcher wrote:
>
> The lack of opposition from the United Kingdom to the recent
> extension by the European Union of copyright on sound recordings
> (from 50 to 70 years) has once again brought into question whether
> there is the political will to update the UK’s labyrinthine
> intellectual property environment. It is just one of the more recent
> examples of the increased scope of intellectual property rights
> (IPRs) around the globe.
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html ;-) )
This week the UK courts ruled that football matches (soccer games) are
not subject to copyright, but implied that UK copyright law should be
changed so that they can be:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2045029/Pub-landlady-Karen-Murphy-wins-EU-fight-screen-Premier-League-football.html
This illustrates the arbitrary nature of copyright and its relationship
to vectorialist power (to use McKenzie Wark's term for the controllers
of media distribution channels from "A Hacker Manifesto"). It is not
footballers who will gain collective copyright over their suddenly
Duchampian creative acts but the television broadcasters.
Copyright is a legal answer to the philosophical question of what is and
isn't art. It is legal form determining artistic form, a kind of
aesthetic. Art like Carey Young's disclaimers and forms of resistance to
"intellectual property" like copyleft ironise this form into art and
into politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
Even artists who have experienced the censorious power of copyright
themselves are unfortunately willing to wield it against others:
http://boingboing.net/2011/01/11/jeff-koons-claims-to.html
This is why new media art should embrace copyleft as a way of protecting
against copyright abuses and promoting its creation, distribution and
critique:
http://www.furtherfield.org/projects/balloon-dog-rob-myers
- Rob.
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