A Reading Road Trip Around Copyright: An Annotated Tour of Copyright Resources
As copyright has become a part of the nation’s mainstream discourse, more publications are devoting time and space to the topic. This has lead to an interesting evolution in publication and viewpoint. Where once copyright was discussed only in expensive, exclusive, and (mostly) print publications and forums, today copyright commentary is readily available in many daily newspapers and for free on several Web sites. Further, where the tone in the exclusive publications discussed copyright mostly in terms of identifying and protecting copyrights held by large corporate institutions, more recent discussions about copyright tend to emphasize either copyright’s potential as a barrier to personal creativity, or the lack of copyright as a potential threat to the national economy.
In reality, copyright really is at neither end of that spectrum. Instead, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. What I’ve decided to do this month is to introduce Online readers to some of the best resources that effectively and accurately represent that middle ground, where copyright is a delicate balance between consumer and creator.
These materials, together and individually, clearly and fairly explain to information professionals what copyright law is, how it works, and what role copyright should play in an environment that is hurtling toward wholesale adoption of content sharing, “clip culture,” and resources that are born digital.
An Online exclusive.
K. Matthew Dames. A Reading Road Trip Around Copyright: An Annotated Tour of Copyright Resources. Online. January/February 2007.
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Plagiarism Is The New “Piracy”
Ohio University is the oldest public university in the state of Ohio, an institution whose enrollment hovers around 20,000 students. For the past year, Ohio University has been besieged by a crippling plagiarism scandal. Based on an alumnus’ allegations that more than 30 students in the school’s mechanical engineering department have plagiarized substantial or core portions of their graduate theses, the Athens, Ohio institution has ordered those students to address the allegations or risk having their degrees revoked. Some of the theses are 20 years old.
This story, which The Wall Street Journal placed on its front page in mid-August, was the latest in a series of plagiarism stories that seem to be destined for headline news. In May, the board of directors at defense contractor Raytheon Co. decided it would withhold a salary raise and reduce incentive stock-compensation to chief executive officer William Swanson after it was revealed that a booklet he authored (entitled “Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management”) contained almost verbatim passages from a 1944 book by W.J. King entitled “The Unwritten Rules of Engineering.”
A few weeks earlier, publisher Little, Brown took the extraordinary step of removing the novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life from retail shelves after the Harvard Crimson published a story accusing author Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard undergraduate student, of pilfering significant portions of two teen novels written by Megan McCafferty.
Based on these developments, plagiarism has become the new piracy. Like “piracy” was a few years ago, plagiarism has become the hot, new “crime du jour,” an act that suggests immorality and often scandal at once. What’s more, plagiarism allegations feed into our society’s “Candid Camera” mentality, our seemingly insatiable need to uncover wrongdoing. This month’s column compares plagiarism and copyright, and the role of information professionals in raising the collective level of citation savvy.
An Information Today exclusive.
K. Matthew Dames. Plagiarism Is The New “Piracy.” Information Today. November 2006.
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Sampling, Registration, and a Broken Copyright System
Remember this name: Armen Boladian. According to Columbia law professor Tim Wu, Boladian is the sole owner of Bridgeport Music, Inc., a one-man company that just happens to control the copyrights to most of George Clinton’s song catalog. Clinton is the mastermind musician and producer behind the monstrous Parliament-Funkadelic bands that ruled soul music during the seventies and eighties. Along with both bands, Clinton is a 1997 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and his works remain popular today because they are sampled widely by contemporary hip hop artists.
Boladian also is the plaintiff in the stunningly stupid and ill-conceived 2004 case Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films. The Bridgeport decision effectively has illegalized musical sampling within the Sixth Circuit (which includes the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee), a holding that runs counter to longstanding doctrine in other judicial circuits about fair and “de minimis” use of protected works.
Following the Bridgeport precedent, a federal jury earlier this year found that producer Sean “Diddy” Combs illegally used an Ohio Players sample on a track of Notorious B.I.G.’s epic 1994 album Ready to Die. The jury awarded Bridgeport a $4 million judgment, and the judge in that case ordered the album off the shelves. The injunction means a work that Rolling Stone magazine considers one of the 500 greatest albums of all time is no longer available.
And last month, Bridgeport sued rapper Jay-Z, alleging he illegally used a sample of a song in the Bridgeport catalog in the 2003 single “Justify My Thug.” Wu’s November article in Slate characterizes Boladian as a “copyright troll.”
On the surface, this month’s column is about music sampling, but the fundamental issues in the Bridgeport cases – including questions of ownership, lack of identifying information about protected work, and the narrowing of fair use – affect all types of information and creative information.
An Information Today exclusive.
K. Matthew Dames. Sampling, Registration, and a Broken Copyright System. Information Today. January 2007.
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Framing Redux
We love — love — the radio show “Fresh Air,” hosted by the razor sharp Terry Gross, and yesterday’s show provided another shining example. She interviewed Frank Luntz, name partner in the Luntz Research Companies (now Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research), and widely regarded as one of the nation’s most influential pollsters. Luntz’s clientele traditionally has leaned toward big business and Republican causes, which has led some to suggest that his work and research is overtly politicized.
The interview centered on Luntz’s practice of using and crafting position-oriented language to sway public opinion. Hidden beneath the surface of this entire interview was the issue of framing. Luntz talked not only about language use, but also about how to use language to frame entire conversations or debates. What was notable about Gross’ interview was her consistent, incisive challenge of Luntz’s language choices and shading, which he denied was euphemistic.
For an analysis of how framing applies within the copyright debate, see K. Matthew Dames’ article “Framing the Copyright Debate,” which appears in the September 2006 edition of Information Today magazine.
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Joke’s On Whom?
So now Jay Leno alleges that printing his jokes in a book compilation amounts to copyright infringement. (No, that’s not the opening to a joke.) Forget the fundamental question of whether or not these (or any other) jokes have been fixed in a tangible medium of expression. That such a lawsuit is being heard at all in federal court merely points to how ludicrously unbalanced copyright law has become.
Leslie Simmons. Comedians Allege Joke Compilations Infringe. The Hollywood Reporter. Nov. 30, 2006.
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A Music World Without DRM?
Might Big Music finally be ready to release product without any electronic locks, viruses, or “crippleware”? Billboard seems to think so. We’re not totally convinced; in fact, we’re trying to figure out what the labels might do to compensate for lost revenue.
We have been hearing that new Big Music contracts have begun calling for artists to surrender a portion of their live performance and merchandising revenue, which traditionally has been unheard of. Perhaps that is an indication of things to come.
So much for the labels’ claim about trying to protect the artists.
Antony Bruno. Ailing Music Biz Set to Relax Digital Restrictions. Billboard (via Reuters). Jan. 2, 2007.
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Mongrel Music
James Joe Brown Jr., May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006.
(Photo: Associated Press)
How do you write about a sound words can’t describe? A bodily spasm that cannot be characterized? An unintelligible grunt?
It seems stupid to even try to explain Brother James’ sound in words, because words – no matter the writer, no matter how descriptive – are insufficient. In an ideal world, under the best of circumstances, I’d just play an unending loop of Brother James and that insistent, unapologetic, even violent sound. Let you hear it, feel it, snort it up your nose, inject it in a vein. Let your lips curl into a sneer behind it, get your pelvis all loose and hyphy.
But then some lawyer would send us a cease and desist letter that talks about various and sundry violations of Title 17, how such a tribute could result in a maximum penalty of $100,000 per infringement, yadda, yadda, yadda. So for the sake of legally protecting this publication and the company that owns it from overly aggressive copyright enforcement, I can’t sample the most sampled musician of all time.
My admittedly selfish grief aside, that sucks. Instead, I’m left with words.
Let me make it plain: Brother James played gutter, mongrel music. It was scientific and methodological in its jagged, raw, filthy nature. I respected Motown; I felt Brother James. Most of Brother James’ music, if you reduced it to “proper” notation, you’d see two, maybe three chords, tops. But from those two chords, the gutter would rise. Two chords, twenty minutes. Damn.
And with gutter as conduit, that sound made us think things, say things, do things we otherwise would not – could not – express. That sound was the coffee can of chicken grease on a still smoldering stove, burnt flour crisps swimming on the bottom. It was a mangy dog stopping to piss on a pair of expensive loafers. It was hocking a loogie in the street, the phlegmatic byproduct of lungs coated with virus.
That sound was the pre-orgasmic ugly face; swollen ankles when your sugar is too high; Omar and Brother Mouzon blasting away Stringer Bell; and the stench of Katrina.
And while making us get down and dirty in the in the gutter, Brother James allowed us the freedom to rejoice, exclaim, testify, liberate. Stripped of pretense, manner, and all that bourgie bourgie nonsense, we could shout as he shouted, squeal as he squealed, grunt as he grunted. Shit felt good, too.
“We gonna take it HiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiYA!!”
Given the impact of that sound, the title “Godfather of Soul” somehow seems wanting. Sure that sound was soulful, but to me, “soul” doesn’t get your face all scrunched up and make your body do things in public you’ll later deny, deny, deny.
And this is but one of many dichotomies of Brother James and his sound of music. His sound wasn’t processed, yet his ‘do was. The songs seemed embarrassingly simple, yet were meticulously and elaborately orchestrated. Easily, he was as integral to modern music as Elvis Presley or the Beatles, yet his records never earned nearly the same level of “popular” success. He was from the South, but his was the soundtrack for Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit, and D.C.
And despite my complaints about copyright restricting access to Brother James’ sound for the purposes of this article, few artists’ work (and sound) have been as blatantly copied as his. None has been sampled more: it would not be exaggeration to claim that Clyde Stubblefield’s sinful backbeat on “Funky Drummer” has been sampled whole (and reinterpreted in smaller, less decipherable pieces) more than any other song ever recorded. Brown – and Stubblefield – should have earned millions on that track alone. It is reasonable to argue that copyright should have protected Brother James’ work more aggressively that it seemed to, and ensured greater compensation to him while he was alive.
Yet much of what Brother James provided us goes far beyond copyright’s protection of creativity. The Web is sure to be filled with tributes, remembrances, and replays; in most circumstances, the copyright to those materials will be held by people and institutions other those who are creating and posting the clips. Certainly, the copyright owners have a right to restrict access to and use of Brother James’ sound clips, video clips, his image and likeness. But I hope such owners can, now and in the future, acknowledge Brother James’ unique place in America’s cultural pantheon, and refrain from the sort of selective and crassly commercial protection that has restricted access to the works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
But in the end, that sound was – and will remain – the thing that keeps Brother James relevant for me. Not even the performances do it for me like that sound does it. And ever the showman, Brother James went out like a star: he left us on Christmas Day, bowing down with the cape draped over his shoulders for the last time as folks opened presents.
Having left us, Brother James takes the show even higher, elevating the gutter so spirits and ancestors can ponder that most fundamental of questions: ain’t it funky? Now Jesus Christ Himself can hear, feel, and smell that sound, getting down in D, funky D, dog D.
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