Copyright notes

Once again from Donna Wentworh’s Copyfight: EFF Georgia has is collecting comment from Georgia legislators on that state’s pending super-DMCA law.

I’d also like to note that I’ve received a very encouraging reply to my super-DMCA letter from one of my state (Illinois) Rep’s staffers. I’ll post more news as I get it.

In other self-referential news, I’m reposting here my comments from this discussion at Matt Rolls a Hoover. More context, and the comments themselves, below.

Update: Jeff Harrell now has the last word.

Matt writes:
bq. Jeff Harrell wrote to me to say that he has a blog and he supports absolute copyright. In fact, he’s just written a post titled An Open Letter to Matthew R. Morse. I’m flattered to receive this attention.
After reading Jeff’s letter, and previous comments in the thread, I weighed in with:
bq. I think Jeff deserves a lot of credit for forthrightly arguing for his views in a forum where he knows that his arguments are likely to get, shall we say, a very close reading.
bq. Although I disagree with Jeff, strongly, I do have sympathy for the authors’ viewpoint. I have a natural proprietary instinct towards the software that I write, and I’ve licensed my blog posts under a CC license that allows redistribution only for non-commercial purposes. I don’t want unscrupulous publishers making money off of my work, unless they give me a cut; and I don’t want unscrupulous programmers modifying my software, unless they promise to give me back the changes they make and distribute. Those constraints on others’ usage of my work would be impossible without some copyright protection.
bq. But: am I right to call that work “mine”? Jeff’s mistake, as I see it, is giving too much credence to those natural proprietary instincts. The things that I write, words or code, are not sui generis. They build, consciously or not, on the work of others. My authorial instinct may be that I own the whole product, but from a broader perspective I’m clearly just a compiler, adding a bit of myself in the choice of things compiled and in the very occasional bit of originality. My rights in my work don’t supercede the rights of those others upon whom I build. One consequence of recognizing that is accepting that my proprietary instincts are misplaced, and that “my” work belongs to the public to the same degree as the work I built it on. I am only the author of the moment, and am not entitled to special protection against some future author building on top of me.
Jeff responded, in part:
bq. Jason: another reader emailed me earlier this week to make that same basic point. The difference between artist-as-creator and artist-as-compiler is, to me, plain as day. I compare Jackson Pollack to a two-year-old. Both spatter paint on canvases to produce results that aren’t obviously different. One is art and the other error. Why? Because we recognize that artistic creations are more than merely the sum of the parts that went into constructing them.
bq. I have to say, right up front, that the very implication that anything a person creates with his own hands and mind belongs rightfully to “the public” bewilders and disappoints me. It belongs to the creator until the creator cedes it over to this imaginary thing that we call the “public domain.”
So far (6pm central, 6/13), I have the last word:
bq. “The difference between artist-as-creator and artist-as-compiler is, to me, plain as day.”
bq. I think that may be one central point of disagreement from which many little disagreements radiate. I don’t see this distinction as black-and-white at all. There is a continuum between, say, a Cliffs Notes author, on the one hand, and James Joyce on the other. But in either case, the author is not creating out of nothing. He owes a debt to his predecessors; a debt he pays by giving to his successors the same thing he got: the freedom to take a piece from the work that came before, and create something new with it.
It’s always good to butt rhetorical heads with a smart opponent who holds strong views opposed to one’s own, so I’d like to thank Jeff again for starting the discussion, and Matt for encouraging it, and hope it continues.
Here’s an email I got from Jeff today, posted with permission:
bq. On the subject of degrees of originality, I think we’re mostly saying
the same basic thing, but going in a different direction with it. My
point is this: some works are devoid of the creation act. An example I
used elsewhere was the two-year-old who splatters paint at random
because it’s fun to do so. The resulting object might look a bit like a
Jackson Pollack, but it’s not a work of art. It’s not the product of an
act of creation. It’s a by-product, an incidental.
bq. Setting aside for a moment those works that do not result from the
creation act, any given work is going to have a degree of originality.
The degree may be relatively high (“Ulysses”) or somewhat less so (“The
Magnificent Seven,” which was a retelling of “The Seven Samurai”), but
every work that is deliberately created has an aspect of originality to
it.
bq. I say that the degree of originality is irrelevant to the creator’s
dominion over the work. If somebody sits down and writes a play about a
prince who attempts to avenge his father’s death and comes to a tragic
end, he’s got just as much right over that creation as Shakespeare had
over “Hamlet.” Because that plot is an idea, and as any writer,
amateur or professional, knows, ideas come from outside. Nobody knows
where ideas come from, exactly, but they do not come from within.
Anybody who believes he actually comes up with his own ideas is guilty
of hubris, and is, as they say, Asking For It.
bq. But between idea and work itself is expression. Taking an idea—be it a
plot, or a melody, or an emotion—and transforming it into a work is an
act of creation, and the end result of that act is an expression of the
idea or ideas that went into it.
bq. Ideas cannot be owned. They flit around our heads like invisible
sprites. They enter and exit our brains at will, their will, not
ours. You can no more own an idea than you can own a butterfly.
bq. But works works are sacrosanct.
bq. Does a creator owe a debt of gratitude to those who have aided,
instructed, and inspired him? Of course! Must that debt be settled
through indentured servitude? I say no. When I write a book that
inspires someone to go off and write his own book, that individual owes
me nothing. I welcome his acknowledgment. I accept his gratitude. I do
not demand anything, and neither should anyone else. And most
especially nor should “society,” this polite fiction we endure solely
because it momentarily suits our purposes to.
bq. In this discussion, we must not confuse inspiration with exploitation.
If you read my words and are inspired by them, that makes me happy, a
bit, but ultimately doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. But if
you read my words and then take them and claim them to be your own, you
have stolen something from me as surely as if you had come into my
house and taken the gold from my purse.
bq. To appropriate a character, or a piece of dialogue, or a descriptive
passage these things are wrong. To reproduce a work without
permission, whether or profit or whimsy or to satisfy your own
avarice these things are wrong. They are acts of theft, pure and
simple.
Lots there to ponder, so I think Jeff will have the last word for a while.
(Jeff’s comments belong to Jeff, and Matt’s to Matt, and are not included in the Creative Commons license that covers the rest of this site)

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