From: Beth Capper (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Oct 14 2010 - 18:52:52 PDT
I think you nailed it right there Fred. As I suggested earlier, we are
talking about work that for the most part is intrinsically bound to
political ideas and moments, and not making those works and the ideas they
contain accessible to those who don't live in cities to watch them at MOMA
is like saying that only university kids should be allowed to read Adorno,
or Foucault or Marx, or bell hooks or whoever. Actually, there is a similar
issue with books, since Verso put out all these great political works and
charge a fair whack for them, and are always trying to put the kobosh on
those who give them out for free. As a friend of mine says, the ACTUP
movement was made up of all kinds of people, many of whom had a copy of
"History of Sexuality" in their back pocket. Perhaps those people now have a
pdf. of it instead?
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Fred Camper <email suppressed> wrote:
> I heard a talk by copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig that's quote a propos
> here.
>
> When he saw that the copyright to Mickey Mouse et al. was going to get
> extended yet again, he made a proposal: to get an extension the owner
> would have to register and pay a reasonable fee. His point is that the
> fee would be immaterial to Disney and companies like it, but that
> there are millions of objects out there, and this would include the
> old newsreels and instructional films beloved of found footage users,
> for which the copyright owner cannot even be located, or doesn't care
> and wouldn't register, and that most such things could then become
> public domain. The mad dog right wing corporate whores who are our US
> congresspeople would not buy it.
>
> Unfortunately the mad dog Bush right wingers on the Supreme Court
> ignore the "original intent" of the Constitution that they say they
> follow when it comes to the rights of corporations. It's a pretty good
> guess that the framers' idea of "limited" times for copyrights did NOT
> extend to 95 years!
>
> By the way, I don't exactly think of myself as a "leftie" either. It
> just simply isn't rational to make copyrights this long, and it's
> contrary to the intent of the framers, who never intended them to
> support grandchildren.
>
> An interesting fact: if you are a publication who wants to run Martin
> Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech, you have to pay
> thousands of dollars to his estate. Thus the speech is not reproduced
> as often as it might be otherwise. WHAT???
>
> Fred Camper
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> FrameWorks mailing list
> email suppressed
> http://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
>
_______________________________________________
FrameWorks mailing list
email suppressed
http://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks