New Research Suggests Digital Economy Act & ACTA Will Stifle Creativity
from the understanding-creativity dept
Glyn Moody points us to some research coming out of the University of Leicester which suggests that highly restrictive copyright laws and enforcement regimes actually serve to harm creative output and the creative industries. This is a point that we’ve discussed in the past, so it’s nice to see more research being done in this area. Basically, what the research is finding is that these legislative efforts are serving to limit the technologies that are used to create new works today.
Of particular concern is that it will “stifle the creative opportunities for youngsters with tough regulation on digital media restricting young peoples? ability to transform copyrighted material for their own personal and, more importantly, educational uses.” Now, I can already hear the copyright system defenders claiming that transforming copyright materials for their own uses is not a “creative opportunity,” but that’s wrong. The way young people learn to create is initially through emulation. You learn to draw what you see. You learn to play the music that others wrote. And as you start to play around, you transform it in your own way. That’s the very basis of young creative expression.
The issue is that new digital technologies allow for a modern version of that in things like digital mashups and remixes. People who don’t recognize that these are the modern day equivalents to creating new artworks by attempting to copy what others have done will scoff, but they are mostly demonstrating the myopic view that modern technology used for creativity and creative learning simply “isn’t like it used to be.” Creativity comes in all forms, and what young people learn today through transforming the creative works of others is what will lead to the great artwork and creative output of tomorrow… if the legacy industries and our politicians don’t stamp out such creative opportunities.
Filed Under: acta, copyright, creativity, dea
Comments on “New Research Suggests Digital Economy Act & ACTA Will Stifle Creativity”
Fair Use
The specific point the research raises, I think, is that it’s unclear how fair use plays into ACTA and the Digital Economy Act.
Legally, I think the bigger problem with copyright legislation is not that it’s getting “tougher” on infringement, but that the fair use exceptions are so vaguely defined. To figure out fair use in America, you have to use this indeterminate 4-factor balancing test. That gives courts and lawyers lots of room to maneuver, but it’s confusing as heck for consumers and content producers. This, combined with the costs of being sued, has a substantial chilling effect on a lot of speech that would (should?) probably be considered fair use.
Tossing in a bright line or two into fair use law would probably go a long way towards fixing copyright abuse. I’d be a lot more comfortable with a three-strikes law if fair use was fixed (and if due process was guaranteed).
Re: Fair Use
In the real world, laws are a polite fiction.
Everybody will continue to do what they’re currently doing.
; P
Re: Re: Fair Use
Not necessarily. The chilling effect is very real.
For example: A friend of mine owns a (small) record label. He was trying to press a record that contained samples on it (like in those old industrial songs). If this actually went to court, it would almost certainly be considered fair use.
But it didn’t get to court. It didn’t even make it out of the pressing plant. The pressing plant (United) refused to press the record unless my friend faxed over a written license for every sample on the recording. He couldn’t do that, so they wouldn’t press the record (and, in fact, refused to return the master plates, or his deposit).
Details:
http://www.urpressing.com/tips.php
Why are they doing this? Since they’re in no position to determine what is “fair use” and what isn’t, they put a blanket ban on all unlicensed use. “Just to be safe.”
If one wants to learn how creativity works in this modern world then they just need to go to law school and certainly not art school, where the only thing they’re likely to learn is how to copy things, which is wrong and illegal.
Re: Re:
I call Poe’s Law.
Re: Re:
Dear e e trollings:
Why the emphasis on the authority of lawyers?
The lawyers only present the points of contention, and the evidence. They do not actually decide. A judge or jury decides.
Emphasizing the false viewpoint that “a lawyer has to decide” detracts from the real point, which is that copyright is suppressing creative works, and political speech and whistle-blowing speech.
Also, you’re wrong about “copying things” being wrong and illegal. “Copying things” is how every creative person gets their start. There’s no contesting this, it’s a facet of human nature. We all learn by emulating, we don’t all start from nothing. No creative work appears ex nihilo.
About the best you can say about a “copy” is that if the original was created on or after 1923, you might have more problems with copyright enforcement than if your original was created before 1923.
Lawyers don’t get to decide the outcome of an accusation of copyright enfringement, a judge or jury does.
Re: Re: Re:
It really was a case of Poe’s Law.
A simple example of such creativity
A simple example of such creativity would be “image macros” done by gluing a caption to an image, perhaps with a small amount of photoshopping. Simple to do, and the juxtaposition of the image and the caption conveys a new message.
Re: A simple example of such creativity
If sufficiently transformitive that can even make the new work copyrightable. Though that is a hard thing to prove.
Sorry to bring up TAM but..
i can’t help noticing that he/she hasn’t commented on these last 2 posts. So can i guess that he/she is british and has finished up for the night?
Sleep well TAM, you can start clogging up the comments again on monday.
Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
i thought these last two were such obvious bunk that it did not matter if i posted or not.
Re: Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
You’re right! It really does not matter if you post or not.
Re: Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
Did you just acknowledge being the anti-mike? Why not just post under your old profile? You were a lot nicer and more level headed back then….
Your current iteration makes dark helmets everywhere cry. Well, not actually cry, as our tear duct genes were patented by a South African biotech firm, but you get the idea….
Re: Re: Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
He is scared he will be out of a job if people start being nice to each other instead of using the courts LoL
Re: Re: Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
You were a lot nicer and more level headed back then….
Desperate times call for desperate voices filled with a desperate measure.
Re: Re: Re:2 Sorry to bring up TAM but..
But not, I note, reason, logic, clearheadedness, or rationale. You have none of those things.
Re: Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
It matters if you want to actually discuss something instead of throwing poorly worded and moronic attacks on someone you disagree with but never really confirm out why. You could start by pointing out why they’re bunk and what you think the University Of Leicester’s study should have found. Maybe you could address the flaws you perceive in their methodology and other problems with their research? Perhaps give a reason why you think that ACTA will not have any affect on creativity for young artists.
No, who am I kidding? You’ll just dive into threads for a couple of hours then mysteriously stop posting after your theories have been thoroughly debunked (then pretend in the next thread that it wasn’t you), because that’s your M.O.
Re: Re: Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
you did a fabulous job of addressing the post rather than attacking me personally. kudos to you.
Re: Re: Re:2 Sorry to bring up TAM but..
It really is your M.O.!
Re: Re: Re:3 Sorry to bring up TAM but..
did it ever occur to you that someone besides this TAM person could be using lowercase letters to troll people just to get a reaction?
Re: Re: Re:4 Sorry to bring up TAM but..
That’s why accounts are useful, for others but not for me, obviously. Or, more to the point, don’t act like a dick and then maybe others won’t act like that dick for you.
Re: Re: Re:4 Sorry to bring up TAM but..
Well, considering TAM’s entire purpose was to troll people just to get a reaction…
Re: Re: Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
Real artists or the rip-off “artists” blogs like this favor? You need to be more specific.
“Inspired by” and “derivative of” are not the same thing and never will be.
Re: Re: Re:2 Sorry to bring up TAM but..
In the same way that physical property and imaginary property are not the same thing and never will be.
Re: Re: Re:2 Sorry to bring up TAM but..
Nice use of quotes on the word artists.
Re: Re: Re:2 Sorry to bring up TAM but..
I notice you didn’t give any reason.
Perhaps you need to ask a “real” creative person, since apparently you are “not.”
Re: Sorry to bring up TAM but..
“i can’t help noticing that he/she hasn’t commented on these last 2 posts. So can i guess that he/she is british and has finished up for the night?
Sleep well TAM, you can start clogging up the comments again on monday.”
Eh? I’m British and it’s 1:25AM right now. I’ve often been up posting until past 2am and I don’t even work odd hours.
How much money has the university “donated” to political campaign funds? Because unless they’re donating millions, this report is nothing more than toilet paper for the governments of the world.
Wrong premise, and misplaced optimism.
Remove the assumption that ACTA is at all intended to do good, and you won’t need a university study to come up with nothing but ill effects.
Then: “what young people learn today through transforming the creative works of others is what will lead to the great artwork and creative output of tomorrow…” — We’ve *already* been promised this, 30 years ago at least, was supposed to be here by *now*, but instead we’ve got “Lady Gaga”. — Anyway, it’s easy to show that isolation is good for creativity, one isn’t distracted by commercialized CRAP.
Re: Wrong premise, and misplaced optimism.
So, Lady Gaga is the only musician working today?
There’s thousands of talented and innovative musicians working right now. Your problem is with the way they’re marketed and sold (lowest common denominator crap gets the biggest push from the majors), not with the musicians themselves. Turn off your ClearChannel controlled top 40 radio and use Pandora/last.fm/Jamendo/whatever to find some quality stuff you enjoy.
On Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and others
Creativity runs opposite of accepted norms. Johan Sebastian Bach, Vincent van Gogh, Gregor Mendel all received appreciation during their lifetimes while Freud, Darwin, Galleleo, Tesla, and Keynes received copious amounts of ridicule.
Imagine if all “creative works”, inventions, discoveries, and products have to be catalogued and run through a master database to determine it’s origin and royalties must be paid out.
Indeed, by our very nature, humans are mutations derived from two parents. Is this type of creativity subject to a type of parental royalties? If so, my kin of several generations past should still own a majority of Northern Europe.
It is said that creativity tends to follow the views of intellegence, but by a lag of about 50 years.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recently gave a TED Talk about creativity where he presented that Creativity is emergent from three key needs:
1. The individual.
The individual mastered some discipline
2. The cultural domain.
The individual works with items around them or near them.
3. The Socializing ability.
The individual shares their creation with others that ultimately pass judgment on the creation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXIeFJCqsPs
Each part should be mutually important, and strengthening one over the other only serves to benefit fewer people. Think of it as a triangle.
The problem as I see it is that the Social ability has increased several fold while the cultural domain is restricted via lawsuits and efforts such as ACTA. Additionally, you have to ask if current copyright interests have properly contributed to the Creative Commons or Public Domain to ensure marketable products continue to be created, and brought to market and ultimately incent commerce. Of course, the answer to this is probably a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. In fact, the music industry looked down upon being creative with their business model until fairly recently, which is odd considering that they are a creative industry themselves.
As people’s ability to share will increase using (and increasing) Social Ability. So when you draw this triangle, you’ll be able to see that commercial works that rely on IP will be controlled by a small, small minority of people who will probably scavenge themselves trough the creative commons and public domain at their own will.
All of this is just as Thomas Jefferson intended when he created the USPTO. (Sarcasm)
Re: On Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and others
Vincent van Gogh may have “received appreciation” during his lifetime but he didn’t receive any money. He sold one painting in his “career” and ended up dying dirt poor alongside numerous other examples.
I don’t think very many artists want to go back to a patronage-based system.
Thomas Jefferson signed the Copyright Clause into effect along with everyone else. He understood the necessity. He understood that the free market is not infallible and that content creators would need protection against free market parasites for the betterment of all but they. Deal with it.
Re: Re: On Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and others
We still have a patronage-based system. They’re called fans.
Re: Re: On Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and others
Thomas Jefferson signed the Copyright Clause into effect along with everyone else. He understood the necessity. He understood that the free market is not infallible and that content creators would need protection against free market parasites for the betterment of all but they. Deal with it.
Jefferson was actually out of the country at the time, but he was also very, very concerned about where that clause would lead us. You are right that he accepted it, but he clearly warned against letting it be abused. Comparing copyright today to what it was when it was put in the Constitution would almost certainly make him gag. The two are not even in the same ballpark.
Saying “deal with it” without admitting those differences suggests a pretty big ignorance of basic history.
On Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and others
Creativity runs opposite of accepted norms. Johan Sebastian Bach, Vincent van Gogh, Gregor Mendel all received appreciation during their lifetimes while Freud, Darwin, Galleleo, Tesla, and Keynes received copious amounts of ridicule.
Imagine if all “creative works”, inventions, discoveries, and products have to be catalogued and run through a master database to determine it’s origin and royalties must be paid out.
Indeed, by our very nature, humans are mutations derived from two parents. Is this type of creativity subject to a type of parental royalties? If so, my kin of several generations past should still own a majority of Northern Europe.
It is said that creativity tends to follow the views of intelligence, but by a lag of about 50 years. Now imagine what ownership will have value in 50 years. It won’t necessarily be real property, but of imaginary property.
Most interesting to me was the recent research of Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He recently gave a TED Talk about creativity where he presented that Creativity is emergent from three key needs:
1. The individual.
The individual mastered some discipline
2. The cultural domain.
The individual works with items around them or near them.
3. The Socializing ability.
The individual shares their creation with others that ultimately pass judgment on the creation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXIeFJCqsPs
Each part should be mutually important, and strengthening one over the other only serves to benefit fewer people. Think of it as a triangle.
The problem as I see it is that the Social ability has increased several fold while the cultural domain is restricted via lawsuits and efforts such as ACTA. Additionally, you have to ask if current copyright interests have properly contributed to the Creative Commons or Public Domain to ensure marketable products continue to be created, and brought to market and ultimately incent commerce. Of course, the answer to this is probably a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. In fact, the music industry looked down upon being creative with their business model until fairly recently, which is odd considering that they are a creative industry themselves.
As people’s ability to share will increase using (and increasing) Social Ability. So when you draw this triangle, you’ll be able to see that commercial works that rely on IP will be controlled by a small, small minority of people who will probably scavenge themselves trough the creative commons and public domain at their own will.
All of this is just as Thomas Jefferson intended when he created the USPTO. (Sarcasm)
On Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and others
Creativity runs opposite of accepted norms. Johan Sebastian Bach, Vincent van Gogh, Gregor Mendel all received appreciation during their lifetimes while Freud, Darwin, Galleleo, Tesla, and Keynes received copious amounts of ridicule.
Imagine if all “creative works”, inventions, discoveries, and products have to be catalogued and run through a master database to determine it’s origin and royalties must be paid out.
Indeed, by our very nature, humans are mutations derived from two parents. Is this type of creativity subject to a type of parental royalties? If so, my kin of several generations past should still own a majority of Northern Europe.
It is said that creativity tends to follow the views of intelligence, but by a lag of about 50 years. Now imagine what ownership will have value in 50 years. It won’t necessarily be real property, but of imaginary property, and your silly to think this isn’t what amounts to a landgrab, or even a war, through the methodological use of law rather than with weapons.
Most interesting to me was the recent research of Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He recently gave a TED Talk about creativity where he presented that Creativity is emergent from three key needs:
1. The individual.
The individual mastered some discipline
2. The cultural domain.
The individual works with items around them or near them.
3. The Socializing ability.
The individual shares their creation with others that ultimately pass judgment on the creation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXIeFJCqsPs
Each part should be mutually important, and strengthening one over the other only serves to benefit fewer people. Think of it as a triangle.
The problem as I see it is that the Social ability has increased several fold while the cultural domain is restricted via lawsuits and efforts such as ACTA. Additionally, you have to ask if current copyright interests have properly contributed to the Creative Commons or Public Domain to ensure marketable products continue to be created, and brought to market and ultimately incent commerce. Of course, the answer to this is probably a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. In fact, the music industry looked down upon being creative with their business model until fairly recently, which is odd considering that they are a creative industry themselves.
As people’s ability to share will increase using (and increasing) Social Ability. So when you draw this triangle, you’ll be able to see that commercial works that rely on IP will be controlled by a small, small minority of people who will probably scavenge themselves trough the creative commons and public domain at their own will.
All of this is just as Thomas Jefferson intended when he created the USPTO. (Sarcasm)
“Now, I can already hear the copyright system defenders claiming that transforming copyright materials for their own uses is not a “creative opportunity,” but that’s wrong. The way young people learn to create is initially through emulation. You learn to draw what you see. You learn to play the music that others wrote. And as you start to play around, you transform it in your own way. That’s the very basis of young creative expression. ” – yes, and they will still be able to emulate, just not to disseminate their replica works. nothing is changing here, no real news. this is the ultimate straw man, because nothing is changing from how it was before.
heck, if they pay a license, they can even perform in public or release the songs if they like. nobody is stopping anyone from anything. total bullshit strawman.
Re: Re:
Yeah, just pay the totally unreasonable licensing fee or consult a high-priced lawyer if you want to make and share artistic work in the 21st century; it makes perfect sense.
Re: Re: Re:
the license fees are not unreasonable. the point is that all of the examples mike used are examples that would not create any issue, because the material would not be shared outside of the classroom.
he beats around the bush, but what he really wants is for remix artists to have unlimited access to others works without fees, license or restriction, someone confusing this sort of stuff with progress of the arts.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“the license fees are not unreasonable.”
Cool, now TAM is an expert on licensing and financing and totally never makes absolute declarations like “the license fees are not unreasonable.”
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You should really learn about art, it’s some fascinating stuff! And that’s a lovely strawman about what Mike really wants. Do you also happen to know what he really desires as well?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Not unreasonable? Are you SURE you’re not a part of “those guys”? Ya know… the ones that are supposedly losing money but are making killer profits even in the recession?
I’m talking about ASCAP, BMI, and the other enforcement agencies that make the IRS in the 90s look like total newbies compared to the extortion rackets they have now.
Let’s see if those fees aren’t exorbitant…
2009 closing due to fees
2007 suings fee relief
I mean, seriously… You try making heads or tails of their need to supposedly collect every dollar that a business can make, then tell me that they aren’t killing their goose by heavy enforcement. Oh, and on top of the enforcement, they don’t even give all of the money to the artists that the song may allude to. There’s no collective fund for live performances. That just goes into the coffers of ASCAP until further notice.
Re: Re: Re:2 mistakes to fix...
fee relief
You try making heads or tails of their need to supposedly collect every dollar that a musician makes
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
jay, you pretty much fail here. first off, we are talking about student use of music for learning purposes. do they even have to pay a license to just play with music? remember, they arent performing it or publishing it, just playing with it in the classroom. likely the school pays a very small usage fee.
as for the two cases you note, honestly, you need to read further. the ascap fees didnt kill the warehouse, it killed itself. “Dodge said there isn’t room in the budget for that because after expenses in 2008, the Warehouse actually lost money.” regardless of the fees, the business was losing money. even in a room that brings in only 100 people a night, 2 nights a week (friday saturday), you are looking at a net cost (at $3500) of about 33 cents per person for the feature entertainment. holy crap, come on. they probably spill more beer than that.
sorry, but your arguments just dont hold water in the slightest. blaming fees for someone shutting down your favorite club is incredibly misleading, the business model was dead before the bill even showed up.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
You’re asking if the fees are exorbitant, which is what I’m alluding to. When ASCAP, BMI or any of the organizations go to court, then they go for the maximum amount that their government granted license will allow.
Perhaps if there were more leeway with the license (I’m aware that the Jamendo license is only $185) then perhaps it would have given them more room to do other things. As it stands, when you start to look at the fixed costs, paying that much for a license is ludicrous IMO. It’s almost like the concept of rent control in NY. It just doesn’t work because no matter how much you pay, it will never be enough. Not enough to fix everything wrong with the license in the first place.
Just to drive the point home that they are really out of date with their fees… they sued the girl scouts for 1200 per camp. Now, they license the music for 1$ a day but still. Why would you sue the girl scouts in the first place? The point still stands that any one of these nonprofits will sue for maximum profit if they can get away with it.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
sorry, but your arguments just dont hold water in the slightest. blaming PIRACY for someone shutting down your favorite RECORDING LABEL is incredibly misleading, the business model was dead before the bill even showed up.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You need a music history lesson. So I’ll give you a quick one. Every classical music composer and performer BEFORE copyright utliized EVERY other composer and performer to which they he was exposed. If you think for one minute that Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, or any of the other masters created their works in a vacuum, you are WILDLY mistaken. They were all influenced by (and often copied from) past composers as well as contemperaries.
Every creative artist copies from others. Every one of them.
Re: Re: FIXED
Re: Re: Re: FIXED
All art is derivative. Deal with it.
Sorry to bring up TAM but..
doh!
(though relieved to know we’re not to blame)
And in other news
New Research Suggests Digital Economy Act & ACTA Will Stifle Creativity
And in other news, shit stinks, glue is sticky and the ocean is wet.
Copyright measures and the future of the creative industries
In response to the suggestion of this research that copyright measures serve to harm creative output and the creative industries, I’d like to offer another perspective on why measures such as the Digital Economy Act are important for the future of the creative industries.
It’s a shame that these steps are needed, however, with so much content from across the creative industries being shared illegally online, the problem of copyright theft has a real impact on the income of those whose hard work and time goes into creating them.
For the Film and Television industry (who I work with), the perception is often that copyright theft doesn’t really matter because the large companies can afford to lose some of their profits. However, it’s an industry alll about reinvestment, so all lost money means less money to make future films, and therefore less jobs for those that make them.
Ultimately, production companies will have to choose to make only the sort of content they know they will get a big return from, so we risk getting a much more narrow, less diverse choice of films and TV shows.
Re: Copyright measures and the future of the creative industries
What about the amateurs, or doesn’t their work count? And copyright infringement is not theft. Rookie mistake!
Re: Re: Copyright measures and the future of the creative industries
He was talking about professionals, not amateurs. Rookie mistake!
Re: Re: Re: Copyright measures and the future of the creative industries
Reread that last sentence of his again:
so we risk getting a much more narrow, less diverse choice of films and TV shows.
From professionals. But that doesn’t mean we will have a less diverse choice of films and TV shows, because not only professionals make films and TV shows. Rookie mistake!
Re: Re: Re:2 Copyright measures and the future of the creative industries
Your point will be valid the moment torrent top 10 lists are filled with the work of hobbyists.
Don’t hold your breath.
creativity
?Creativity and the van Gogh Legacy? 14 minutes
hold down Ctrl key and double click:
http://cas.umkc.edu/Chemistry/kcacs/Creativity%20and%20the%20van%20Gogh%20legacy/index.html
after program opens, select ?Full Screen? under the ?View? menu.
Alternatively, the internet address may be copied and then pasted in ?open? in your browser.