User created content: The copyright skirmish

Really great post and a really good lecture over at RandomC. It’s a lecture by a law professor about user created content and the contribution to creativity amongst youth, as well as the effects of rapidly evolving and prevalent technology that allows people to edit music and video.

Check out the video and post here

I made a pretty long winded and rambling comment as well. Watch the lecture and read the original post before reading this. Heres the text:

Great find, I thought the lecture was really insightful and fast paced. I love how he used a really avant-garde “rant” from John Phillip Sousa as one of the bases for his thesis.

One thing I wish he had addressed, however, is how the original content in his examples where acquired in the first place, i.e. was it legitimately bought as a DVD/CD and ripped, or was it obtained illegal through, for example, a file sharing program or as a torrent? I want to assume that when Prof. Lessig talked about the “revival of our vocal chords” he means doing so by using original content, such as songs and videos, that where obtained through legal means, but I wish he would have been more specific. Maybe he just didn’t want to deal directly with things like file sharing and stealing original content, as it wasn’t the point of his lecture, which I don’t think anyone could really blame him for.

This also stuck out at me when he was making the social commentary about how the “instinct” created by new technology can only be criminalized, driven underground, and a form of piracy, etc. Illegal downloads of music, movies and video games are already in this state, but these are obviously not forms of creativity.

Also, I thought his point about achieving balance through competition was just brilliant. I’ve never been in the music industry, but it seems that the music industry, especially record labels and the RIAA, feel threatened by the internet and file sharing as much due to the fact that it gives artists the ability to distribute content without their vast distribution infrastructure as due to the fact that it is a medium that facilitates piracy. If artists could eliminate the “middleman”, as they say and as Lessig seems to hint at, the amount of income going to the artists themselves would increase dramatically, possibly to the point that they will not have to try to squeeze every cent they possibly can from end users, viewers, and listeners. This applies very much to the television and movie industries as well, with the prevalence of internet TV and such.

Response to Natrone:
“it’s okay to protect your cash cow but not by killing all the other cows on the pasture so that all the grass can only be eaten by your cow.”
Lol and bravo.

I haven’t the slightest idea what that Nico Nico thing is, but I did read the article about the take-down. I’ll agree that it’s pretty ridiculous given the nature of what they wanted taken down, but I really don’t understand why they where threatened by this content in the first place. Then again, I’ve never seen the content so I can’t really say much about it. As far as fans complaining about the loss of a source of this free entertainment, the users who made the videos are technically doing it for free, so the issue of entitlement would probably depend on 1.) whether or not said users bought the original content through legal means and 2.) if the viewers themselves have or will have contributed in some way to the creators of the ORIGINAL content portrayed in the user created content. That gets really really muddy, in a legal sense.

The scope of copyright law seems to get really sticky when it comes to reinterpreting content and distributing it. I honestly think for now that artists should try to embrace new technology as a means to distribute their work, start cutting out record companies from the equation, and just crossing their fingers in hopes that user generated content will bring them more good then bad. Maybe in the future purchased content will come with some sort of key that is required to view user created content containing the original content? *shudder*

Response to Lelanger:
The lecture did seem a little bit elitist, maybe he was referring to the “kids” of the audience members, who would most likely come from a middle to upper socio-economic class? Still, I think that the realm of being “creative” and “contributing” does and will always correlate very closely to socio-economic class, but if that where to change or if the real and scope where to expand, their would have to be social change, not change in the copyright laws. I don’t think that was one of his points, though.

Response to blind_assassin:
Judging the quality and creativity of things like this is very subjective, and I think thing will rarely be quiet as black and white as the examples you give. But yeah, I’d like it as well if everything user generated was intelligent, well thought out, and unique, and I’m getting pretty sick of hearing “In the End” to every death scene in every Anime ever while looking for AMVs. Still, wouldn’t the more creative content simply be more popular and get more attention than the mashing of “5 minutes of Naruto clips and…Linkin Park”? It seems like competition could do this area good as well.

Really interesting points and some good debate.

~ by pansquared on July 6, 2008.