Lawrence Lessig, in his essay "In Defense of Piracy," makes a very interesting observation about modern copyright policy:
"[W]hile writers with words have had the freedom to quote since time immemorial, "writers" with digital technology have not yet earned this right."In this blog entry, I will attempt to address a few situations where this statement applies, and how the truth of it has affected me personally.
In Lessig's article, he mentions the case of Stephanie Lenz, a woman who has become involved in serious legal proceedings as an indirect result of her posting a video on Youtube. The dispute is between her and the copyright holders of a song that can be heard - was quoted, if you will - in the background of her video. While the focus of her film is not the music itself (this is a home movie), Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" can be heard, albeit briefly and indistinctly, in the background.
One may well ask, "why would anyone want to take this video down?" Due to the abbreviated nature and poor sound quality of the music, virtually no one could conceivably watch this video as an alternative to enjoying Prince's music. On the contrary, the primary effect of this movie on its audience will be to make the song more endearing, more associated with the good things in life, and therefore more successful on the music market. There is one way in which this case could improve a record company or musical artist's profits, and thus perhaps be justified. The motive here is to set a precedent... to draw the line clearly enough in favor of big media interests that cases in which the result might actually matter finds the law unquestionably on their side.
Something more along the lines of this type of situation is one case that involves me personally. This very week, one of my Youtube videos has been muted due to what may be a copyright violation. Well, I suppose it is. The song that Youtube has informed me (on behalf of WMG) "may" be in the film - "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter, is actually listed in the credits at the end! A good chunck of the song is there, and in fairly good quality, so I could see why the media company might have a good case. However, I still think that we should look at what this movie with its 1200+ views was actually doing for or against the producers of the song. Once again, we find that the song in question is placed incompletely, inconveniently, and in low enough general quality (considering how it is worked into the film) that virtually no one would consider watching my movie as an serious alternative to buying and listening to the song. Also as in the case of Ms. Lenz's film, the music is presented in a humorous manner that is more likely to increase revenue for the music industry than to damage it.
All of this begs the question, are there cases where Youtube or other media sites / databases are "quoting" audio or other digital media in such a way as to actually harm the legitimate owners of said media? To continue or motif of youtube videos and my personal experience, let's consider the latest album of the dark rock band I am Ghost. After loving their first album, Lovers' Requiem so much, I immediately wanted to preview their second one when it came out. Rather than buying it, however, I was able to use youtube to listen to complete rips of each track on the disc. Furthermore, I decided I didn't like it all that much and decided not to buy - so in a certain sense, Youtube did contribue to a loss of profit for the band or its publishers. Even so, the issue is debatable; Youtube was also a major reason that I became a fan of the band and bought their music in the first place. Thus, the availability of listening-quality music (or video for that matter) is a double-edged sword and media companies should have the ability to regulate this content if they so desire. They should take heed, however: by removing themselves from the Youtuber's line of sight, they risk a heavy loss in profit due to lowered recognition.
Getting back to the quotation from the beginning, though, let's take a quick look at remixing. This is another issue that involves me personally, as I am a huge fan of OverClocked Remix and hope to contribute to their database myself one day. It's basically a video game music arrangement community with an open-source feel. Many of the songs on this site quote directly (sample) from their source material (games), and the ones that don't are still melodically or otherwise based upon the source material from video game music composers. These composers, in turn, are credited on the web page of each song and thus gain recognition that they, the unsung heroes of the gamer's musical world, might never otherwise achieve. To my knowledge, a game company has never once taken action against any remixer. While in most (but not all cases) game soundtracks are not sold directly anyway, it would seem that the "intellectual property" of the game developers is being taken and used with just as little authorization as Prince or Universal had given Ms. Lenz. The difference in this case is that the profits come from the purchase of the games themselves, and the people in charge of these games realize that by allowing people to express their love of this media in creative and constructive ways, they are really doing themselves - and the world - a big favor.
JMA
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