Research Proposal
J314 Intro to Communication Studies
Fall 2006:
Introduction: The Cowboy vs. A Bedouin
A graduate student at the English program here related to me an experience he had on a Lane County bus recently. He rides this bus to work every Friday, and every Friday a group of dressed-up Arab families enter the bus and get off together at the same stop. Another bus rider turns to our grad student and whispers, “That seemed dangerous, didn't it?” In fact, they were merely on their way to Friday prayers, a practice which for Muslims is roughly equitable with the Christian or Jewish Sabbath or Roman Catholic mass.
Islam has become the target in the west for a lot of disassociated fears, economic and bodily, and the extent of this fear has grown at an accelerated pace since the attack in September 2001. It is often the case that we fear what we don't understand, but we should certainly try, especially when human lives are at stake. From George W. Bush's including Iran in his “axis of evil” to his response to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 18 page letter (there wasn't any), to the regular shouts of “Death to America!” at various Friday religious gatherings in Iran, it is clear that these ideas we have about one another are so strong that our leaders are more prepared to make trouble than to make peace.
The study of culture comes from the study of oneself: from the moment each child recognizes itself as separate from its surroundings, we compare ourselves to the rest of the world. A student of journalism at a major state university is bound to come in contact with a certain amount of news, and even likely to encounter it through more than one or two sources. Different sources offer different versions of the same events, depending on their different perspectives. It is very interesting to compare these sources to determine what their ways of presenting events can tell us about their underlying perspective.
Because news sources (and most other cultural texts) are “locatable” in space, time, and culture, studying those sources occurring in our own times, spaces, and cultures can help us check our own point of view. These ideologies, which underlie the representation of certain aspects of human experience, dominate ways of understanding events within their sphere of influence. They also have a hand in the creation of actualities, such as harmony and conflict. Collectively, dominant (hegemonic) ways of reading texts set into motion the forces that create the actualities of the world at large.
How are these dominant readings created? When and how do differing readings occur? Texts which are generated a large physical distance from one another are likely to represent different “hegemonics,” as are texts which are generated during different times in history. It could be argued that “epic” events (wars, major terrorist acts, and so on) also change these ideologies within the affected milieu. A recent example of 9-11 changed the dominant reading in America of certain symbols in a way that has had direct political, military (thus human), and social consequences. One of the affected symbols is Islam, the religion which in Arabic means “submission to God.”
This paper would seek to examine through several threads the way Islam is understood in self-relevant conditions of time, space, and culture: here and now. Popular representations such as “all Muslims as Arabs,” “all Arabs as terrorists,” or the “monolithic evil Arab” (Merskin, 374) “the religion of the sword” (Aslan, 79) simultaneously contribute to/feed from stereotypes about the religion and everything related to it. For the guy on the bus who thought the families of Muslims traveling together was 'dangerous,' and for many others in the west, these associations are so deeply engrained that it is impossible for them to see Muslims or Arabs, even American ones, without thinking about planes crashing into buildings and at least unconsciously placing blame.
"Of no other religion or cultural grouping can it be said so assertively as it is now said of Islam that it represents a threat to Western civilization" (Said, xxi); while this sentence was published in 1981, long before 9/11, it is still very relevant. The news is full of stories related to Islam, as we continue on with this "war on terror" and while the world watches the difficult proposition of the installation of a representative democracy (a major symbol of Western civilization) in Iraq, a predominantly Muslim country. Resistance to this new form of government and complications in the process will inevitably be perceived as related or associated with the religion, if not the direct causes. The gap between Civilization as it has been known and Islam in the western mind grows so long as this goal to “spread democracy” continues to meet difficulty.
Researching these representations and comparing them to one another can help us understand how stereotypes are formed, and how fear can grow and manifest itself into large scale discrimination, misunderstanding, antagonizing, and oppositional politics. How does systematic content (in this case, about Islam) affect audiences' systematic bias (stereotyping) in day-to-day life? The goal of this project would be to map the development of this “Islam vs. Civilization” idea, from both sides as much as possible, and relate it to everyday ideas and feelings of westerners and Muslims. Perhaps if we are compared in the right way, we can see that we are more alike than we are different.
Background/Literature Review: Islam in English
The ideological treatment of Islam in the West is not a new subject. Edward Said published a whole book on the subject in 1981, Covering Islam. Following in the footsteps of Foucault and contemplating the affiliation of knowledge and power, he examines the way Islam is "covered" by western media, saying "in no really significant way is there a direct correspondence between the 'Islam' in common Western usage and the enormously varied life that goes on within the world of Islam, with its more than 800,000,000 people, its millions of square miles of territory... it's dozens of societies, states, histories, geographies, [and] cultures" (Said, x). Covering Islam examines how the common Western usage developed by examining representations of Islam within their respective contexts.
For an English-speaking person in the west, indeed for any non- Arabic speaker, the only way to access the Qu'ran is by reading a translation. The linguistic differences between modern English and Qu'ranic Arabic cause serious problems for any translator. “Qu'ran limits of translatability have been discussed with numerous examples… style, stylistic mechanism of stress, word order, cultural voids, problems of literal translation, syntactic and semantic ambiguity problems, emotive Qu'ranic expressions…different exegetical analyses, morphological patterns, semantico-syntactic interrelation, semantic functions of conjunctives, semantico-stylistic effects, prosodic and acoustic features, and most importantly the shackles imposed by the thorny problem of linguistic and rhetorical Qu'ran specific texture,” lists one commentator in his book Qu'ran Translation: Discourse, Texture, and Exegesis (Abdul-Raof, 1).
The view that the Qu'ran is essentially untranslatable has been asserted left and right. To illustrate the problem of using one translation over another, Reza Aslan offers these two versions of the same passage, the first from the Princeton edition translated by Ahmed Ali, and the second from New York University published Majid Fakhry's translation.
“'Men are the support of women as God gives some more than others, and because they spend of their wealth (to provide for them)… As for women you feel are averse, talk to them suasively; then leave them in alone in bed (without molesting them) and go to bed with them (when they are willing)' (4:34)
'Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made some of them excel the others, and because they spend some of their wealth… And for those [women] who you fear might rebel, admonish them and abandon them in their beds and beat them.' (4:34)”
Aslan is quick to note that “Because of the variability of the Arabic language, both are grammatically, syntactically, and definitionally correct… if one views the Qu'ran as empowering women,” one would look at the first translation, while “if one views the Qu'ran as justifying violence against women,” (Aslan, 70) then the second.
For some time it was (and for some, still is) considered a grave sin in the Islamic world to translate the Qu'ran at all, given that they believe it to be literally God's words. Early translations into European languages were done by Christians, and many deliberately tried to paint Islam in a bad light. "Maracci... produced in 1689 A.C. a Latin version of the Qu'ran with the Arabic Text and quotations from various Arabic Commentaries, carefully selected and garbled, so as to give the worst possible impression of Islam to Europe... he introduces it by way of an introductory volume he calls a 'Refutation of the Qu'ran'" (Ali, .xix).
This Latin version (through another French one) was apparently also the source material for two of the first English versions. It's hard to imagine any translation which used such biased sources to escape free from the biases and make an accurate reading of the original. This misrepresentation led Muslims to make their own translations, while it is interesting that Ali for example is reluctant to call his translation "THE Holy Qu'ran," settling his anxieties with the disclaimer, "The meaning of...." Any translation will contain a good deal of the translator's personal interpretation and viewpoint; it is only a version of the original, not the original itself.
As well engrained generalizations (i.e. stereotypes) about Islam take precedent in the West, some Muslims try to expand awareness of their own culture and religion, to promote dialogue and hopefully understanding between Islam and the West. Reza Aslan's No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam is just such an attempt, presenting the story of Mohammad and the history of Islam to a western audience and simultaneously attempting to explain the turmoil in various Islamic countries in terms of a sort of Islamic Reformation like the Christian Reformation which happened in Europe.
Aslan's account of the way Islam is represented in the west aligns with Said's; he finds it grossly inaccurate. "Ever since the attacks of September 11... pundits, politicians, and preachers throughout the U.S. and Europe have argued that the world is embroiled in a 'clash of civilizations...' between the modern, enlightened, democratic societies of the west and the archaic, barbarous, autocratic societies of the Middle East... a few...suggesting that the failure for democracy to emerge in the Muslim world is due in large part to Muslim culture, which they claim is intrinsically incompatible with Enlightenment values such as liberalism, pluralism, individualism, and human rights" (Aslan, .xxiii).
An article published in Cultural Diversity and Islam explores further this compatibility of Muslim (and Western) cultures with pluralism, specifically. "We are finally in a position to distinguish between true and false pluralism," writes Khuri, "False pluralism prevails when there are several choices to be made within a supreme framework that predefines and delimits the range of values and choices. This is not pluralism... No one dares criticize democracy or capitalism in the United States...Nothing illustrates the preponderance of false pluralism more poignantly." (Khuri, 65). By this argument, 'true' pluralism exists neither in the west nor the Muslim world; in the west, economic/governmental pluralism is "false," and in the Muslim world, religious pluralism is "false."
Discussion of what would be studied/methods: removing the backwards telescope
This project would seek to make a connection by first exploring the way that Islam is represented systematically in cultural texts in the 'west,' specifically the United States, and second exploring the ways that average Westerners, again Americans in particular, interact with those systematic representations to form their own ideas about what Islam is and what it means to be a Muslim.
From these goals, academic literature is not the most useful source, but popular literature, because popular literature is widespread and its' images and representations reach vast audiences and exert tremendous influence. This includes movies, news, television, advertising, and the like. It will be useful to collect these representations from different sources, to consider the contexts in which they are presented, and to compare them with similar representations (or in the case of news, other stories about the same events). How do these images fit in with their contexts? What kind of general portrait do colors like these paint?
From there, it will be necessary to interview a range of Americans whose background does not afford them any special perspective on Islam than the common media sources, to see what they think of how it is represented, and how that compares with what they themselves think about it. Do most of us just accept the images we are shown? What level of Cartesian doubt do most of us apply when we see something foreign or unfamiliar represented in media?
The other side of this project would be to study representations of America in the Muslim world, with the same media-to-audience approach. While it may be difficult to access some information on this side of things without speaking Arabic, much of the relevant information is available: it is a simple matter to take news events which were discussed in the first part and find articles about them which were published in Tehran or Damascus. Many Muslims at this time in history feel that their religion is challenged, and would perhaps be interested in talking about how their own views on their faith.
This method would take into account both semiotics (as it examines the building up of associative imagery systematically though media like pictures and words) and phenomenology, as it tries to connect these representations with the way Islam is built up within a certain context in the west and how this context manifests itself in the consciousness of Americans.
Potential Findings
I expect that this study would find that 'Terrorism' has been quite successful at stirring up terror in the west and the United States, and that for many people, this directionless threat has been associated time and time again with Islam. Most of the news published in the West will sensationalize violence and strife in these countries in such a way that makes an implicit connection between Islam and disharmony. The fact that violent Jihad (“religious struggle” c.f. Crusade) is an idea upheld only by a few isolated extremist groups in the world will make no difference in the everyday consciousness of most westerners, such as the man on the bus, for whom the Muslim families riding public transit to their Mosque for Friday prayers is a suspicious and 'dangerous' event.
I expect also that in the Muslim world western misunderstanding and snubbing has led to negative opinions, especially U.S. support for Israel, which is seen as a colonizing power by many in Palestine, Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East in general. Economic woes and the inability to find solutions to the vast development gap between some Muslim countries and the West will be associated (and implicitly blamed) upon America and the West in the same way that terrorism is associated (and implicitly blamed) upon Islam.
Conclusion
The process of preparing this proposal has brought me into contact with a great deal of shocking media “content,” which is clearly biased in a way that makes 'reconciliation' between these two 'entirely different' (and thus incompatible) civilizations seem impossible. I am also certain that, in preparing this project, I would be able to find examples of news and media with these representations that are so current that the events they discuss would have happened during the research, and not before. An example I'd cite in the case of preparing this proposal would be the situation in November in which 6 Imams ('prayer leaders') were removed from a plane in Minneapolis after they performed evening prayers in the terminal.
If I were to start preparing this proposal today, I would have spent more time researching the counterpoint (representations of America in the Middle East and the Muslim world), because if we were to lay out the bricks of American stereotypes about Islam besides the bricks of Islamic, Middle Eastern (perhaps Iranian specifically) stereotypes about America, I expect we'd find the architecture to be very similar. If the ways in which we've come to distrust one another are the same, then can we not reverse the process in such a way that both sides could come to coexist comfortably?
Bibliography
Abdul-Raof, Hussein. Qu'ran Translation: Discourse, Texture, and Exegesis. Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001.
Ali, 'Abdullah Yusuf. The Meaning of The Holy Qu'ran. Beltsville: Amana Corperation, 2001.
Aslan, Reza. No god but God: The Evolutions, Origins, and Future of Islam. New York: Random House, 2005.
Cleary, Thomas. The Qu'ran: A New Translation. Starlatch Press, 2004.
Cragg, Kenneth. The Qu'ran and the West. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005.
Habeck, Mary R. Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Haleem, M.A.S. Abdel. The Qur'an. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Khuri, Richard K. "'True' and 'False' Pluralism in the West and Islam." Cultural Diversity and Islam. Lanham: University Press of America Inc, 2003.
Lewis, Jeff. Cultural Studies: The Basics. London: Sage Oaks, 2002.
Merskin, Debra. “Making enemies in George W. Bush's Post-9/11 Speeches.” Peace Review: a Journal of Social Justice, 17 (2005): 373-381.
Said, Edward. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.
Showing posts with label communication studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication studies. Show all posts
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Cheat Commercial
Communication Theory + Criticism
5/23/06
Narrative Analysis
“Cheat” Commercial
Seymour Chatman’s approach to narrative analysis divides it in two parts: story, or content; and discourse, or expression. While these are tied together, separating them helps understand the structure of the narrative. Story is not the same thing as plot. In the Guess “Cheat” commercial, the plot is simple, but parts of the story are left out. These are the parts told by subtext, by the “how” of the plot.
From the very first image in the commercial, we are given the impression of an upper class setting. While the rudimentary plot is being presented by the “girlfriend” character, she & the detective sit in a spotless looking futuristic house on a hill, with a view of the city in the background. It’s definitely the type of house that gives one the impression of wealth. We can even see a maid or nanny walking outside with a child, which we may not necessarily assume belongs to this couple until seeing the commercial more than once. These bits of story create expression or discourse about a perceived upper class.
In another scene, the detective describes the man he’s supposed to be testing for relationship fidelity. “He’s got it all – looks, money, likes blondes,” the narration says, and we see the image of another beautiful woman, the detective’s employee. She’s looking at the photos of this guy with apparent interest and calls him “Mr. All America.” This is the story – but the expression or discourse tells us that this upper class guy is living out the American dream, and that this dream consists of money, good looks, and blondes.
When the detective presents this employee of his to the audience, the woman who will attempt to seduce, he tells us she “was just trying to get through college” as we see her sitting in a diner, “and I’m going to make sure she does it”. The expression here is to say that: this is a working (lower or middle) class girl who’s going to make something of herself one day by going to college.
The story then continues to show how she can pay for it: by flaunting her sexuality. “I try not to think about it- I mean, it’s a scary situation,” this working-class girl says, as her boss pins a microphone to her bra. “But it’s a job and the money’s great,” she finishes, shaking her bosom in the mirror and looking satisfied. This expresses to us that for the working-class girl, flaunting sexuality is not shameful, and that she should derive her confidence from men’s attraction to her body.
When a little later the upper class “Mr. All America” man meets the working-class girl in a bar situation, and the two flirt in a booth. She asks him a series of questions as we watch either the two of them in the bar, or his girlfriend listening in. Asked if he’s married, he says “No,” pauses, and then says “The relationship just didn’t work out.” So now, the expression is that this upper class all American man can’t resist the lure of an attractive woman in a bar, even if he has a girlfriend back home.
As the commercial closes, the detective tells us “my girls look so good that people ask me: ‘is it fair?’ and I have to tell them no.” This is the conclusion of the commercial; it quickly flashes the Guess jeans logo. The expression of this detective’s speech at the end is more than what he says: the discourse is that it is perfectly alright and expected for this All American upper-class man to not be faithful. On a whole the commercial presents the “upper class” as a place where everyone is white, men have all the power and women are their to use to their ends (the upper-class girlfriend at home with the baby worried, and the working-girl being used for her sexuality by the detective as a part of his business.
5/23/06
Narrative Analysis
“Cheat” Commercial
Seymour Chatman’s approach to narrative analysis divides it in two parts: story, or content; and discourse, or expression. While these are tied together, separating them helps understand the structure of the narrative. Story is not the same thing as plot. In the Guess “Cheat” commercial, the plot is simple, but parts of the story are left out. These are the parts told by subtext, by the “how” of the plot.
From the very first image in the commercial, we are given the impression of an upper class setting. While the rudimentary plot is being presented by the “girlfriend” character, she & the detective sit in a spotless looking futuristic house on a hill, with a view of the city in the background. It’s definitely the type of house that gives one the impression of wealth. We can even see a maid or nanny walking outside with a child, which we may not necessarily assume belongs to this couple until seeing the commercial more than once. These bits of story create expression or discourse about a perceived upper class.
In another scene, the detective describes the man he’s supposed to be testing for relationship fidelity. “He’s got it all – looks, money, likes blondes,” the narration says, and we see the image of another beautiful woman, the detective’s employee. She’s looking at the photos of this guy with apparent interest and calls him “Mr. All America.” This is the story – but the expression or discourse tells us that this upper class guy is living out the American dream, and that this dream consists of money, good looks, and blondes.
When the detective presents this employee of his to the audience, the woman who will attempt to seduce, he tells us she “was just trying to get through college” as we see her sitting in a diner, “and I’m going to make sure she does it”. The expression here is to say that: this is a working (lower or middle) class girl who’s going to make something of herself one day by going to college.
The story then continues to show how she can pay for it: by flaunting her sexuality. “I try not to think about it- I mean, it’s a scary situation,” this working-class girl says, as her boss pins a microphone to her bra. “But it’s a job and the money’s great,” she finishes, shaking her bosom in the mirror and looking satisfied. This expresses to us that for the working-class girl, flaunting sexuality is not shameful, and that she should derive her confidence from men’s attraction to her body.
When a little later the upper class “Mr. All America” man meets the working-class girl in a bar situation, and the two flirt in a booth. She asks him a series of questions as we watch either the two of them in the bar, or his girlfriend listening in. Asked if he’s married, he says “No,” pauses, and then says “The relationship just didn’t work out.” So now, the expression is that this upper class all American man can’t resist the lure of an attractive woman in a bar, even if he has a girlfriend back home.
As the commercial closes, the detective tells us “my girls look so good that people ask me: ‘is it fair?’ and I have to tell them no.” This is the conclusion of the commercial; it quickly flashes the Guess jeans logo. The expression of this detective’s speech at the end is more than what he says: the discourse is that it is perfectly alright and expected for this All American upper-class man to not be faithful. On a whole the commercial presents the “upper class” as a place where everyone is white, men have all the power and women are their to use to their ends (the upper-class girlfriend at home with the baby worried, and the working-girl being used for her sexuality by the detective as a part of his business.
Communication Studies: Capstone (proposal, 10 weeks earlier)
Conception & Definition of the Project
“If nature has made one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess themselves of it... no one possesses the less, because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and the improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation.”
VI WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1760-1826, at 180-81 (H.A. Washington ed., 1854) (letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813) (qouted in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 8-9 n.2 (1966)).
New technology has separated many forms of media from any kind of physical product. Instead of CDs in plastic cases, books with different sorts of bindings, paintings done on stretched canvas, or myriad other traditional forms of media which must be physically exchanged, allowing the producer(s) of the media to profit, data can be traded infinitely between any two people with internet access. Karl Marx described one of the conditions of capitalism as “the alienation of the production from consumption;” file sharing has made this a fact for all different kinds of media.
File sharing has resulted in a lot of copyright lawsuits and copyright legislation, but it has also changed the way artists view their own work. It has changed the way consumers view artists' work. The traditional industries which make a lot of profit off of media rely on the me-to-you physical exchange of the media. Either they are paid directly by the purchase of their media product or indirectly by advertisers who decide how much to pay based on the extent of that media product’s me-to-you transfer. These industries reacted initially with lawsuits, both against the people sharing files and the people producing the software which allows this sharing, they have tried various forms of Digital Rights Management technology to prevent their files from being freely shared, and lobbied for intensified copyright control.
In response to this intensified legal control within the traditional copyright idea of “all rights reserved,” a group of legal scholars and technology experts founded Creative Commons in 2001 to offer alternative forms of licensing. When licensing your work this way, you can choose which rights (commercial use, modifications, attribution, etc.) you reserve and which you do not reserve. You can also choose to license your work as “Share alike” which restricts derivative works from being published unless they are licensed in an identical way.
This form of license had it's first test in court , as a dutch court held March 6th 2006 that it was binding- a well-known ex-TV personality posted pictures of his family on a website under a "Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Sharealike" license. A dutch tabloid printed the photographs, and the TV personality sued. This type of license allows reproduction of the bit of media licensed so long as proper attribution is used crediting it's source and as long as the form of reproduction is not commercial - clearly the tabloid is commercial. The court ruled in favor of the TV personality.
Marshall McLuhlan famously described the way the changing forms of technology, especially information and media technology, change culture; how the message is not only something separate which we encode into one medium or another, but that the medium itself carries wide foundational messages no matter what message we encode into it. “Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible.”
How has the environment of facile exchange fostered by file sharing technology and fast internet connections changed ownership? How do creators of traditional media like painters, authors of novels, and musicians see their work, which was at it’s origin a statement of individuality and obviously personal and owned, now that it is distributed freely and often without accreditation?
Proposed is a critical study of the current invisible environment through which media is exchanged, and how this environment shapes ideas about ownership of that media. It is important that such a study approach the topic from several angles. Legal perspectives on the topic are important, and so are the perspectives and opinions of affected media-producers. Literature on intellectual property and copyright should be considered and examined and so should media being created in this new environment.
Some of the specific books and theorists which should start this engine have already been touched on, but they are repeated: Marshall McLuhan’s insight about how the form of communication informs the content and meaning and receiver, reader, listener, devourer of that communication, as discussed in 1967’s The Medium is the Massage.
Lawrence Lessig’s far more contemporary writings about intellectual property, 2001’s The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World are also an excellent point of entry. Incidentally, Lessig’s book is licensed in the same way as our tv-personality’s photographs from the dutch court case: it is available online for download, and you can print it out for free so long as you don’t use it for commercial purposes; this book can be used as an example as well as a source.
The first interview scheduled would be Cameron Gaut, a local musician whose 2008 release, “Six minute city” is licensed under a creative commons license and distributed mostly online. I hope to find another local artist with a recently published work that they chose to copyright in the traditional way also. Interviews with legal scholars would serve to inform the technical aspects of the specific changes going on in the realm of copyright and ownership.
The final product of this study would be to create a small publication which would present this topic in a format that could be distributed in the traditional methods (print) as well as digitally. Arranged as a guide for anyone interested in self-publishing artwork, writing, music, or other forms of media, it would explain each option from traditional “all rights reserved” copyright to the complete opposite decision, publishing in the public domain. Ideally, making this an understanding of this information easily available to new publishers of self-made media so they can understand the legal environment surrounding ownership of their work might increase the likelihood for a person to publish.
Significance
McLuhan identifies the idea of authorship as personal ownership to have come about with the advent of print technology. “The invention of printing did away with anonymity, fostering ideas of literary fame and the habit of considering intellectual effort as private property. Mechanical multiples of the same text created a public- a reading public. The rising consumer-oriented culture became concerned with labels of authenticity and protection from theft and piracy. The idea of copyright - “the exclusive right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form of a literary or artistic work” was born.”
As the capacity for technology to reproduce with a high degree of quality and accuracy and freely share media develops, the physical product of media further becomes abstracted from it’s production. It is as Jefferson described, “like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening... incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation.” How has this new abstraction from physical-product affected producers of art, media, and music, and how can they navigate this new environment to the benefit of themselves and their work?
Timetable for the project
March 4th-25th - Proposal writing, information gathering
April 1st - 1st day of class, turn in signed proposal
Week 1 - Information gathering, seek interviews
Week 2 - Research, seek/conduct interviews, identify major sections of the final product
Week 3 - Research, seek/conduct interviews, organize information
Week 4 - Research, create first outline, first graphical framework for final product (Adobe Indesign)
Week 5 - Begin to write main body, academic format first, secondary research
Week 6 - Write main body, secondary research, create graphical table of contents and introduction for the final product
Week 7 - Finish main body in academic format, turn in for feedback. Begin to fill each section of the graphical framework, in such a way as to make the topic
available to the audience, secondary research
Week 8 - Revise as needed main body, continue to make the research into the final production, print a first copy to identify formatting problems
Week 9 - Make final revisions as needed to both the academic research and the print publication. Print a final copy of the publication, license it.
Week 10 - Turn in both the academic paper and the publication in class. Print copies of the publication and distribute them around campus or wherever possible. Make the digital format freely available online.
Bibliography
Some of the books which have informed the creation of this proposal have already been referenced, but here is a list; these may or may not be referenced in the publication part of the project, but will most likely be a part of the academic paper.
Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. 2001. http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com/download/.
Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Oxford University Press: New York, 1992.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage. Bantam Books: New York, 1967.
McLuhan, Marshall and Eric. Laws of Media: The New Science. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1988.
-------Footnotes which were lost in formatting
Creative Commons. http:/creativecommons.org/about/licenses. 22 March 2008.
3 Creative Commons. http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/5822. 16 March 2008.
4 McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage (1967) Bantam Books: New York. Page 68.
5 McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage. (1967) Bantam Books: New York. Page 122.
“If nature has made one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess themselves of it... no one possesses the less, because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and the improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation.”
VI WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1760-1826, at 180-81 (H.A. Washington ed., 1854) (letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813) (qouted in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 8-9 n.2 (1966)).
New technology has separated many forms of media from any kind of physical product. Instead of CDs in plastic cases, books with different sorts of bindings, paintings done on stretched canvas, or myriad other traditional forms of media which must be physically exchanged, allowing the producer(s) of the media to profit, data can be traded infinitely between any two people with internet access. Karl Marx described one of the conditions of capitalism as “the alienation of the production from consumption;” file sharing has made this a fact for all different kinds of media.
File sharing has resulted in a lot of copyright lawsuits and copyright legislation, but it has also changed the way artists view their own work. It has changed the way consumers view artists' work. The traditional industries which make a lot of profit off of media rely on the me-to-you physical exchange of the media. Either they are paid directly by the purchase of their media product or indirectly by advertisers who decide how much to pay based on the extent of that media product’s me-to-you transfer. These industries reacted initially with lawsuits, both against the people sharing files and the people producing the software which allows this sharing, they have tried various forms of Digital Rights Management technology to prevent their files from being freely shared, and lobbied for intensified copyright control.
In response to this intensified legal control within the traditional copyright idea of “all rights reserved,” a group of legal scholars and technology experts founded Creative Commons in 2001 to offer alternative forms of licensing. When licensing your work this way, you can choose which rights (commercial use, modifications, attribution, etc.) you reserve and which you do not reserve. You can also choose to license your work as “Share alike” which restricts derivative works from being published unless they are licensed in an identical way.
This form of license had it's first test in court , as a dutch court held March 6th 2006 that it was binding- a well-known ex-TV personality posted pictures of his family on a website under a "Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Sharealike" license. A dutch tabloid printed the photographs, and the TV personality sued. This type of license allows reproduction of the bit of media licensed so long as proper attribution is used crediting it's source and as long as the form of reproduction is not commercial - clearly the tabloid is commercial. The court ruled in favor of the TV personality.
Marshall McLuhlan famously described the way the changing forms of technology, especially information and media technology, change culture; how the message is not only something separate which we encode into one medium or another, but that the medium itself carries wide foundational messages no matter what message we encode into it. “Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible.”
How has the environment of facile exchange fostered by file sharing technology and fast internet connections changed ownership? How do creators of traditional media like painters, authors of novels, and musicians see their work, which was at it’s origin a statement of individuality and obviously personal and owned, now that it is distributed freely and often without accreditation?
Proposed is a critical study of the current invisible environment through which media is exchanged, and how this environment shapes ideas about ownership of that media. It is important that such a study approach the topic from several angles. Legal perspectives on the topic are important, and so are the perspectives and opinions of affected media-producers. Literature on intellectual property and copyright should be considered and examined and so should media being created in this new environment.
Some of the specific books and theorists which should start this engine have already been touched on, but they are repeated: Marshall McLuhan’s insight about how the form of communication informs the content and meaning and receiver, reader, listener, devourer of that communication, as discussed in 1967’s The Medium is the Massage.
Lawrence Lessig’s far more contemporary writings about intellectual property, 2001’s The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World are also an excellent point of entry. Incidentally, Lessig’s book is licensed in the same way as our tv-personality’s photographs from the dutch court case: it is available online for download, and you can print it out for free so long as you don’t use it for commercial purposes; this book can be used as an example as well as a source.
The first interview scheduled would be Cameron Gaut, a local musician whose 2008 release, “Six minute city” is licensed under a creative commons license and distributed mostly online. I hope to find another local artist with a recently published work that they chose to copyright in the traditional way also. Interviews with legal scholars would serve to inform the technical aspects of the specific changes going on in the realm of copyright and ownership.
The final product of this study would be to create a small publication which would present this topic in a format that could be distributed in the traditional methods (print) as well as digitally. Arranged as a guide for anyone interested in self-publishing artwork, writing, music, or other forms of media, it would explain each option from traditional “all rights reserved” copyright to the complete opposite decision, publishing in the public domain. Ideally, making this an understanding of this information easily available to new publishers of self-made media so they can understand the legal environment surrounding ownership of their work might increase the likelihood for a person to publish.
Significance
McLuhan identifies the idea of authorship as personal ownership to have come about with the advent of print technology. “The invention of printing did away with anonymity, fostering ideas of literary fame and the habit of considering intellectual effort as private property. Mechanical multiples of the same text created a public- a reading public. The rising consumer-oriented culture became concerned with labels of authenticity and protection from theft and piracy. The idea of copyright - “the exclusive right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form of a literary or artistic work” was born.”
As the capacity for technology to reproduce with a high degree of quality and accuracy and freely share media develops, the physical product of media further becomes abstracted from it’s production. It is as Jefferson described, “like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening... incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation.” How has this new abstraction from physical-product affected producers of art, media, and music, and how can they navigate this new environment to the benefit of themselves and their work?
Timetable for the project
March 4th-25th - Proposal writing, information gathering
April 1st - 1st day of class, turn in signed proposal
Week 1 - Information gathering, seek interviews
Week 2 - Research, seek/conduct interviews, identify major sections of the final product
Week 3 - Research, seek/conduct interviews, organize information
Week 4 - Research, create first outline, first graphical framework for final product (Adobe Indesign)
Week 5 - Begin to write main body, academic format first, secondary research
Week 6 - Write main body, secondary research, create graphical table of contents and introduction for the final product
Week 7 - Finish main body in academic format, turn in for feedback. Begin to fill each section of the graphical framework, in such a way as to make the topic
available to the audience, secondary research
Week 8 - Revise as needed main body, continue to make the research into the final production, print a first copy to identify formatting problems
Week 9 - Make final revisions as needed to both the academic research and the print publication. Print a final copy of the publication, license it.
Week 10 - Turn in both the academic paper and the publication in class. Print copies of the publication and distribute them around campus or wherever possible. Make the digital format freely available online.
Bibliography
Some of the books which have informed the creation of this proposal have already been referenced, but here is a list; these may or may not be referenced in the publication part of the project, but will most likely be a part of the academic paper.
Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. 2001. http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com/download/.
Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Oxford University Press: New York, 1992.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage. Bantam Books: New York, 1967.
McLuhan, Marshall and Eric. Laws of Media: The New Science. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1988.
-------Footnotes which were lost in formatting
Creative Commons. http:/creativecommons.org/about/licenses. 22 March 2008.
3 Creative Commons. http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/5822. 16 March 2008.
4 McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage (1967) Bantam Books: New York. Page 68.
5 McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage. (1967) Bantam Books: New York. Page 122.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Communication Studies: Capstone
Digital Copyright and Creative Commons
June 2008
“If nature has made one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess themselves of it... no one possesses the less, because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and the improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation.”
(VI WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1790-1826, at 180-181 (H.A. Washington ed., 1854) (letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13 1813).
Like fire
Technology has separated many forms of media from any kind of physical product. Instead of CDs in plastic cases, books with different sorts of bindings, paintings done on stretched canvas, or myriad other traditional forms of media which must be physically exchanged, allowing the producer(s) of the media to profit, data can be traded infinitely between any two people with internet access.
The digitization of copyright property and the proliferation of file sharing interrupted the process of exchange; high-demand copyright property like entertainment media is affected the most. CDs in stores have had to compete with free illegal downloads. Legal backlash from the entertainment media industries has included lawsuits against individual downloaders, programmers who make filesharing software, fierce lobbying for stronger IP policy, and ad campaigns vilifying piracy.
But what’s happened is a fundamental change in the architecture. “Digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, where property law of all sorts has always found definition.” IP has traditionally focused on the expression of an idea; one could own “a precise turn of phrase used to convey a particular idea or the order in which facts were presented,” but the idea itself belonged to the commons. Invention (patent) and authorship (copyright) ownership was intrinsically related to physical activites: “One didn’t get paid for the ideas but the ability to deliver them into reality... the value was in the conveyance and not
the thought conveyed.”
Barlow, John Perry. “The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net.”
1993. Accessed 20 May 2008 at homes.eff.org/~barlow/EconomyOfIdeas.html
Intensive legal action and debate has sprung up around the problem of digital copyright. Some of the major stakeholder groups now lobbying IP policy include professional legal organizations, accountancy institutes, media and related industry associations, security defense organizations, and nonprofit organizations.
Calton, Jerry and Singer, Alan E. "Dissolving the Digital Dilemma: Meta-Theory and Intellec
tual property." Human Systems Management. 2001, Vol.20 Issue 1 p.19.
“There are two competing visions of the fundamentals of copyright law: a ‘private property’ vision and a ‘public policy’ vision.” The private property vision sprouts from a vision of copyright law as the “natural law property right of authors...emphasis on the private interests of authors in controlling the use of copyrighted works as their property.” The public policy vision “not[ing] that copyright has historically developed as a grant of limited monopoly,” argues that “the rights of authors must be weighed against the freedom of everyone else to use
the work.” Any potential solution to the conflict should fit three conditions: “it must accurately reflect the way people produce creative works... serve the private interests of creators... and serve the public interests of users.”
Kim, Minjeong. "The Creative Commons and Copyright Protection in the Digital Era: Uses of
Creative Commons Licenses." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 2008,
p.187-209.
Private property vision proponents favor extending the terms of copyright’s limited monopolies and finding a way to enforce these new controls digitally. Part of this movement pushes to change the fundamental nature of copyright law to cover the idea and not just the expression of the idea. “The power through property to produce a closed society - where to use an idea, to criticize a part of culture... one will need the permission of someone else” has been underplayed or ignored by these movements.
Lessig, Lawrence. "Reclaiming a Commons." Keynote address, The Berkman Center's "Build
ing a Digital Commons" 20 May 1999. Cambridge, MA.
“[T]he threat to free speech that the propertization of ideas presents” is the slow extinguishment of expression, a situation not unfamiliar to journalists and citizens living in regimes that don’t allow a free press. It has been pointed out that when the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution was written, the wording was careful: the final telling version did not suggest that congress make a law to protect the freedoms the first amendment describes. Instead, we have “Congress shall make no law...” to restrict these freedoms. “Copyrights and patents… were traditionally only supposed to confer property rights in expression and invention respectively. The layer of ideas above, and of facts below, remained in the public domain for all to draw on, to innovate anew” from a manifesto addressing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Calling the backlash of support for stronger IP policy “the maximalist rights culture,” the manifesto points out several ways in which the conversation (and thus resulting policy decisions) have been unbalanced.
Boyle, James. “A Manifesto On WIPO and the Future of Intellectual Property.” Duke Law and
Technology Review. 8 September 2004.
New laws could easily “hamper the ability of the internet to generate intellectual activity, encourage new methods of innovation, and distribute culture and education worldwide.” Boyle underlines the economic and social impact of IP policy , calling it “the sinews of the information age” and listing a broad range of effects, from “the availability and price of AIDS drugs… to the patterns of international development… to the communication architecture of the internet.”
It seems unnecessary to stress just how powerful a tool for innovation that the Internet has been since its inception. It has catalyzed intellectual growth and innovation to such rapid rates that cataloguing may never catch up; it has done so in a decentralized way, empowering wide swaths of individuals from diverse economic, social, religious, and ethnic backgrounds who had not participated in the production of media to write, sing, publish, debate, and simply be heard.
Commons
Lawrence Lessig’s 2001 primer on digital commons, The Future of Ideas describes Commons as resources held in joint use or possession, to be held and enjoyed equally by a number of people; some examples in the book are public streets, parks and beaches, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and writings in the public sphere such as the U.S. Constitution. Rivalrous (with a limited supply and non-rivalrous (with unlimited supply) resources can both be commons. Lessig calls the internet a new form of commons, an Innovation Commons: he attributes it’s unique tendancy to drive innovation to be the combination of layers which are free and not controlled.
Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. 2001:
Random House, New York. p.14
Through this lens, the physical layer (the computer, the wires, the phone lines) is quite controlled, and the content level was partially controlled (some content is accessable only with payment), but the code level was liberated; new ways to access and distribute this content could be developed without restriction.
“[A]lways and everywhere, free resources have been crucial to innovation and creativity… without them, creativity is crippled. Thus, and especially in the digital age, the central question becomes not whether government or the market should control a resource, but whether a resource should be controlled at all.” An abolishment of intellectual property isn’t being suggested; instead, a return to the balance that was lost in a way that reflects the true condition of digital life.
In January of 2008, the American Library Code of Ethics was revised from “We recognize and respect intellectual property rights” to “We recognize and advocate balance between the rights of intellectual property owners and the rights of information users.”
Skala, Matthew with Bonfield, Brett and Torpey, Mary. "Enforcing Copyright." 15 February
2008. Library Journal. Vol. 133 Issue 3, p28-30.
This change in the library code is significant; librarians and library staff often act as gatekeepers controlling access to information that may or may not be held under copyright. Founded officially in 2001 in San Francisco, Creative Commons is a chartered nonprofit organization; their stated goal is “to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules” which “aim not only to increase the sum of raw source material available online, but also to make access to that material easier and cheaper.”
"Creative Commons." Wikipedia Accessed 22 February 08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons "'Some Rights Reserved': Building a Layer of Reasonable Copyright." Creative Commons. 13 July 2007. Accessed 22 March 2008 at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/History.
Lawrence Lessig founded the organization the same year as publishing The Future of Ideas, from which a new source of creative innovation, inspiration, and a sort of cultural trust has sprouted. The first set of Creative Commons licenses was published on December 16, 2002. Traditional copyright law holds “all rights reserved;” these rights have been “expanded exponentially in breadth, scope, and term… the fundamental principle of balance between the public domain and the domain of property seems to have been lost.”
"Creative Commons." Wikipedia Accessed 22 February 08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons
Lessig, Lawrence. "Reclaiming a Commons." Keynote address, The Berkman Center's "Building a Digital Commons" 20 May 1999. Cambridge, MA.
Creative Commons seeks to counterbalance by developing a series of “some rights reserved” licenses which allow the licensee to configure what if any rights they would like to keep to themselves. Examples of rights sometimes reserved under CC licensing are the right to attribution (links to the original licensee’s webpage, or other forms of attribution chosen by the license holder), the right to produce derivative works (such as remixes), the right to commercial use (making a profit from the work), or “sharealike” which requires users of a given work license whatever they produce in the same way.
Licensing one’s own work at www.creativecommons.org is free and simple; since it’s inception, Creative Commons has expanded internationally and licenses have been developed within the systems of 46 countries (8 are currently in progress).
“Intenational.” Creative Commons. Accessed 8 June 2008 at http://creativecommons.org/international.
In 2006 the licenses met their first test in a legal court, as a celebrity whose Flickr photos were published without permission sued the tabloid. The photos were licensed under Creative Commons for non-commercial uses; the court ruled in favor of the celebrity. “The Dutch Court’s decision is especially noteworthy because it confirms that the conditions of a Creative Commons license automatically apply to the content... and bind users... even without expressingly agreeing to, or having knowledge of, the conditions of the license.”
Marson, Ingrid. “Creative Commons license upheld by court.” Cnet. 21 March 2007. Accessed 1 June 2008 at http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6052292.html.
“Some rights reserved” may not be specific to someone unfamiliar with Creative Commons licensing; but this case showed that the onus is on the user of the work to find out what rights are reserved, contacting the author if nessicary. Since it’s inception, Creative Commons has made a lot of quantifiable progress as far as the goal to “increase the sum of raw source material available online... (and) to make access to that material easier and cheaper;” Wikipedia’s list illustrating the breadth of organizations now using the licensing includes archives like Flick and DeviantArt, formal publications like the Public Library of Science, instructional materials like MIT’s famous OpenCourseWare, journalistic outlets like Blast Magazine and Democracy Now, and no less than 16 record labels.
"Creative Commons."Wikipedia Accessed 22 February 08
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons
Science Commons, a project within the Creative Commons organization, was launched in 2005 to developing flexible licensing for scientific data; the goal is to “speed the translation of data into discovery, unlocking the value of research so more people can benefit....” The value of a digital database of scientific knowledge open to all researchers everywhere with internet access is immense.
“Science Commons." Wikipedia Accessed 22 February 08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_commons
“Scientists may be justified in retaining privileged access to data that they have invested heavily in collecting... but there are also huge amounts of data that do not need to be kept behind walls... by making their data available under a Creative Commons license, they can stipulate.. rights and credits for the reuse of data, while allowing it’s uninterrupted access by machines.” It’s this uninterrupted access by machines that is so important; it would allow other researchers anywhere in the world to draw from that data.
"Let Data Speak to Data." Nature. Vol.438:7068. 1 December 2005.
When a certain work is licensed with Creative Commons, the author is given an icon representing the kind of license its published under, online with the work and the words “some rights reserved.” The icon serves to link the user who clicks to a page explaining the type of license the work is held under, and then if they like, the full legal version. It is thereby possible to find content licensed in a certain way by searching with conventional search engines for the text of the link for a given license, for example, one stipulating attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). All webpages containing works licensed in this manner should contain the text of the license; creativecommons.org also contains a search function to this effect.
Commons licensing may not be a complete solution to the dilemma of digital intellectual property, but it does help. The real cultural contribution of this type of licensing is not an end to the debate, but it’s amplification; and a pool of sources that can be drawn from freely for the generation of new expression, information, and ideas.
June 2008
“If nature has made one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess themselves of it... no one possesses the less, because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and the improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation.”
(VI WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1790-1826, at 180-181 (H.A. Washington ed., 1854) (letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13 1813).
Like fire
Technology has separated many forms of media from any kind of physical product. Instead of CDs in plastic cases, books with different sorts of bindings, paintings done on stretched canvas, or myriad other traditional forms of media which must be physically exchanged, allowing the producer(s) of the media to profit, data can be traded infinitely between any two people with internet access.
The digitization of copyright property and the proliferation of file sharing interrupted the process of exchange; high-demand copyright property like entertainment media is affected the most. CDs in stores have had to compete with free illegal downloads. Legal backlash from the entertainment media industries has included lawsuits against individual downloaders, programmers who make filesharing software, fierce lobbying for stronger IP policy, and ad campaigns vilifying piracy.
But what’s happened is a fundamental change in the architecture. “Digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, where property law of all sorts has always found definition.” IP has traditionally focused on the expression of an idea; one could own “a precise turn of phrase used to convey a particular idea or the order in which facts were presented,” but the idea itself belonged to the commons. Invention (patent) and authorship (copyright) ownership was intrinsically related to physical activites: “One didn’t get paid for the ideas but the ability to deliver them into reality... the value was in the conveyance and not
the thought conveyed.”
Barlow, John Perry. “The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net.”
1993. Accessed 20 May 2008 at homes.eff.org/~barlow/EconomyOfIdeas.html
Intensive legal action and debate has sprung up around the problem of digital copyright. Some of the major stakeholder groups now lobbying IP policy include professional legal organizations, accountancy institutes, media and related industry associations, security defense organizations, and nonprofit organizations.
Calton, Jerry and Singer, Alan E. "Dissolving the Digital Dilemma: Meta-Theory and Intellec
tual property." Human Systems Management. 2001, Vol.20 Issue 1 p.19.
“There are two competing visions of the fundamentals of copyright law: a ‘private property’ vision and a ‘public policy’ vision.” The private property vision sprouts from a vision of copyright law as the “natural law property right of authors...emphasis on the private interests of authors in controlling the use of copyrighted works as their property.” The public policy vision “not[ing] that copyright has historically developed as a grant of limited monopoly,” argues that “the rights of authors must be weighed against the freedom of everyone else to use
the work.” Any potential solution to the conflict should fit three conditions: “it must accurately reflect the way people produce creative works... serve the private interests of creators... and serve the public interests of users.”
Kim, Minjeong. "The Creative Commons and Copyright Protection in the Digital Era: Uses of
Creative Commons Licenses." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 2008,
p.187-209.
Private property vision proponents favor extending the terms of copyright’s limited monopolies and finding a way to enforce these new controls digitally. Part of this movement pushes to change the fundamental nature of copyright law to cover the idea and not just the expression of the idea. “The power through property to produce a closed society - where to use an idea, to criticize a part of culture... one will need the permission of someone else” has been underplayed or ignored by these movements.
Lessig, Lawrence. "Reclaiming a Commons." Keynote address, The Berkman Center's "Build
ing a Digital Commons" 20 May 1999. Cambridge, MA.
“[T]he threat to free speech that the propertization of ideas presents” is the slow extinguishment of expression, a situation not unfamiliar to journalists and citizens living in regimes that don’t allow a free press. It has been pointed out that when the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution was written, the wording was careful: the final telling version did not suggest that congress make a law to protect the freedoms the first amendment describes. Instead, we have “Congress shall make no law...” to restrict these freedoms. “Copyrights and patents… were traditionally only supposed to confer property rights in expression and invention respectively. The layer of ideas above, and of facts below, remained in the public domain for all to draw on, to innovate anew” from a manifesto addressing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Calling the backlash of support for stronger IP policy “the maximalist rights culture,” the manifesto points out several ways in which the conversation (and thus resulting policy decisions) have been unbalanced.
Boyle, James. “A Manifesto On WIPO and the Future of Intellectual Property.” Duke Law and
Technology Review. 8 September 2004.
New laws could easily “hamper the ability of the internet to generate intellectual activity, encourage new methods of innovation, and distribute culture and education worldwide.” Boyle underlines the economic and social impact of IP policy , calling it “the sinews of the information age” and listing a broad range of effects, from “the availability and price of AIDS drugs… to the patterns of international development… to the communication architecture of the internet.”
It seems unnecessary to stress just how powerful a tool for innovation that the Internet has been since its inception. It has catalyzed intellectual growth and innovation to such rapid rates that cataloguing may never catch up; it has done so in a decentralized way, empowering wide swaths of individuals from diverse economic, social, religious, and ethnic backgrounds who had not participated in the production of media to write, sing, publish, debate, and simply be heard.
Commons
Lawrence Lessig’s 2001 primer on digital commons, The Future of Ideas describes Commons as resources held in joint use or possession, to be held and enjoyed equally by a number of people; some examples in the book are public streets, parks and beaches, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and writings in the public sphere such as the U.S. Constitution. Rivalrous (with a limited supply and non-rivalrous (with unlimited supply) resources can both be commons. Lessig calls the internet a new form of commons, an Innovation Commons: he attributes it’s unique tendancy to drive innovation to be the combination of layers which are free and not controlled.
Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. 2001:
Random House, New York. p.14
Through this lens, the physical layer (the computer, the wires, the phone lines) is quite controlled, and the content level was partially controlled (some content is accessable only with payment), but the code level was liberated; new ways to access and distribute this content could be developed without restriction.
“[A]lways and everywhere, free resources have been crucial to innovation and creativity… without them, creativity is crippled. Thus, and especially in the digital age, the central question becomes not whether government or the market should control a resource, but whether a resource should be controlled at all.” An abolishment of intellectual property isn’t being suggested; instead, a return to the balance that was lost in a way that reflects the true condition of digital life.
In January of 2008, the American Library Code of Ethics was revised from “We recognize and respect intellectual property rights” to “We recognize and advocate balance between the rights of intellectual property owners and the rights of information users.”
Skala, Matthew with Bonfield, Brett and Torpey, Mary. "Enforcing Copyright." 15 February
2008. Library Journal. Vol. 133 Issue 3, p28-30.
This change in the library code is significant; librarians and library staff often act as gatekeepers controlling access to information that may or may not be held under copyright. Founded officially in 2001 in San Francisco, Creative Commons is a chartered nonprofit organization; their stated goal is “to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules” which “aim not only to increase the sum of raw source material available online, but also to make access to that material easier and cheaper.”
"Creative Commons." Wikipedia Accessed 22 February 08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons "'Some Rights Reserved': Building a Layer of Reasonable Copyright." Creative Commons. 13 July 2007. Accessed 22 March 2008 at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/History.
Lawrence Lessig founded the organization the same year as publishing The Future of Ideas, from which a new source of creative innovation, inspiration, and a sort of cultural trust has sprouted. The first set of Creative Commons licenses was published on December 16, 2002. Traditional copyright law holds “all rights reserved;” these rights have been “expanded exponentially in breadth, scope, and term… the fundamental principle of balance between the public domain and the domain of property seems to have been lost.”
"Creative Commons." Wikipedia Accessed 22 February 08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons
Lessig, Lawrence. "Reclaiming a Commons." Keynote address, The Berkman Center's "Building a Digital Commons" 20 May 1999. Cambridge, MA.
Creative Commons seeks to counterbalance by developing a series of “some rights reserved” licenses which allow the licensee to configure what if any rights they would like to keep to themselves. Examples of rights sometimes reserved under CC licensing are the right to attribution (links to the original licensee’s webpage, or other forms of attribution chosen by the license holder), the right to produce derivative works (such as remixes), the right to commercial use (making a profit from the work), or “sharealike” which requires users of a given work license whatever they produce in the same way.
Licensing one’s own work at www.creativecommons.org is free and simple; since it’s inception, Creative Commons has expanded internationally and licenses have been developed within the systems of 46 countries (8 are currently in progress).
“Intenational.” Creative Commons. Accessed 8 June 2008 at http://creativecommons.org/international.
In 2006 the licenses met their first test in a legal court, as a celebrity whose Flickr photos were published without permission sued the tabloid. The photos were licensed under Creative Commons for non-commercial uses; the court ruled in favor of the celebrity. “The Dutch Court’s decision is especially noteworthy because it confirms that the conditions of a Creative Commons license automatically apply to the content... and bind users... even without expressingly agreeing to, or having knowledge of, the conditions of the license.”
Marson, Ingrid. “Creative Commons license upheld by court.” Cnet. 21 March 2007. Accessed 1 June 2008 at http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6052292.html.
“Some rights reserved” may not be specific to someone unfamiliar with Creative Commons licensing; but this case showed that the onus is on the user of the work to find out what rights are reserved, contacting the author if nessicary. Since it’s inception, Creative Commons has made a lot of quantifiable progress as far as the goal to “increase the sum of raw source material available online... (and) to make access to that material easier and cheaper;” Wikipedia’s list illustrating the breadth of organizations now using the licensing includes archives like Flick and DeviantArt, formal publications like the Public Library of Science, instructional materials like MIT’s famous OpenCourseWare, journalistic outlets like Blast Magazine and Democracy Now, and no less than 16 record labels.
"Creative Commons."Wikipedia Accessed 22 February 08
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons
Science Commons, a project within the Creative Commons organization, was launched in 2005 to developing flexible licensing for scientific data; the goal is to “speed the translation of data into discovery, unlocking the value of research so more people can benefit....” The value of a digital database of scientific knowledge open to all researchers everywhere with internet access is immense.
“Science Commons." Wikipedia Accessed 22 February 08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_commons
“Scientists may be justified in retaining privileged access to data that they have invested heavily in collecting... but there are also huge amounts of data that do not need to be kept behind walls... by making their data available under a Creative Commons license, they can stipulate.. rights and credits for the reuse of data, while allowing it’s uninterrupted access by machines.” It’s this uninterrupted access by machines that is so important; it would allow other researchers anywhere in the world to draw from that data.
"Let Data Speak to Data." Nature. Vol.438:7068. 1 December 2005.
When a certain work is licensed with Creative Commons, the author is given an icon representing the kind of license its published under, online with the work and the words “some rights reserved.” The icon serves to link the user who clicks to a page explaining the type of license the work is held under, and then if they like, the full legal version. It is thereby possible to find content licensed in a certain way by searching with conventional search engines for the text of the link for a given license, for example, one stipulating attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). All webpages containing works licensed in this manner should contain the text of the license; creativecommons.org also contains a search function to this effect.
Commons licensing may not be a complete solution to the dilemma of digital intellectual property, but it does help. The real cultural contribution of this type of licensing is not an end to the debate, but it’s amplification; and a pool of sources that can be drawn from freely for the generation of new expression, information, and ideas.
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