Re: <nettime> Re: <.nettime> Terror in Tune Town - part 2

[Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>]

"jen Hui Bon Hoa" <epistrophy@yifan.net> writes:

> My question: Is the formula really ‘patent or be patented’?
> Could your work really be copyrighted by someone else? Perhaps this
> is why ted byfield copyrights his texts (is that right, ted?). This
> is why I would consider copyrighting my own production.

It's not "patent or be patented".  Publication of an invention is
enough to stop others from patenting it later.  Patents also must not
be common knowledge, or elementary extrapolations thereof.  Obviously
this is of limited use when the invention is already known as folk
knowledge, or when someone like ADM or <insert gigant agribusines
conglomerate wants control of a crop.  The patent office is going to
be searching agribusiness journals, not sending some overheated suit
to dodge water buffalo and ask the farmers to breafily summarize their
knowledge of agriculture.  And perhaps most importantly, I have a hard
time seeing the Indian government, let alone some poor farmers,
getting in the way of the soybean nazis.

With copyrights, any work you produce is automagically copyrighted.
You need not apply, register, or do anything, not even write
"Copyrighted by Craig Brozefsky" on it.  If you don't want it
copyrighted you must explicitely put it into the public domain, or die
and then wait 70 years.  Obviously the latter solution is not going to
be practical for a prolific artist seeking to avoid the taint of the
IP regime.

> Even if I leave my work uncopyrighted and I manage to escape this
> sort of wholesale appropriation (well, there would be no commercial
> incentive to take away the rights to my work: I have seen nothing to
> show that it is particularly lucrative, ahem), I still want to be
> able to monitor how my work is used. I do not want it to be
> appropriated by and for causes to which I am personally in
> ideological opposition.

In the U.S. at least the copyright regime recognizes no such
priveledge for the artist.  You're granted a monopoly on the
reproduction of your work soley because it gives you an economic
incentive to release it to the public and advance the sciences and the
arts.  No magical connection between author and work is recognized.

I don't think you intended this desire of yours to be codified in law
anyways.

> All this does not answer at all definitively the question of how to 
> avoid one’s art from appropriation by the dominant order. It is a 
> question that perennially bugs me when I come to theorise or distribute 
> my own artistic production.  Any ideas?

Whatever you do, don't let fear of being appropriated in the future
stop you from fullfilling your needs and desires today, otherwise
you've let the most important part of your work, the process of it's
creation, be appropriated.

-- 
Craig Brozefsky               <craig@red-bean.com>
Lisp Web Dev List  http://www.red-bean.com/lispweb
---  The only good lisper is a coding lisper.  ---

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