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Remember we were the volunteers
Aug. 7th, 2010 06:06 pmI am polite enough that I'm cheerful on the phone with strangers, but I'm probably in shock and probably have been for a few days. I'm never warm, I move very slowly, and I can't make decisions. I can do mechanical tasks, but I have to be certain there are triggers to remind of the task and to remind me to stop. Otherwise I wash the same dish for 30 minutes.
I tend to be respectful of copyright law, as an ethical matter. I buy CDs; I've never downloaded music. I don't pirate cable or steal video games. If somebody's charging too much for an event, I simply don't go. As an artist, I understand fair use and I stay on the right side of it. I don't see a difference between copyright infringement and shoplifting. If I think IP law is wrong, which I often do, I write briefs for people in Congress. I was of course pleased by recent decisions by the Library of Congress. In my own work, I tend to use creative commons licenses, because heck yes I want you to riff on the same stuff I think is cool. A relatively substantial motivator behind my creation of new content or my collaboration with the artistic community around me is because if we make something new together I don't have to track down who owns it.
In other words, copyright law is an intellectual conversation that's constantly active for me, and I'm always surprised to run into artists for whom it isn't. It's sort of like the idea of meeting a waiter who doesn't have an opinion on appropriate tipping. Maybe you think people should tip 20%; maybe you think tipping should be abolished entirely. But you have to have thought about it.
This week has been painful not only because I've been plagiarized
(which is a horrible thing. It's a horrible thing for someone to tell you that something you've made is worth enough for them to charge other people for it, but you're not worth enough to get even a fraction of it. It's a horrible thing to be told by someone who is making money off your work that you should be paying them, because you should be grateful that they paid any attention to the fact you existed)
and counterfeited
(and it is another horrible thing to be told by someone you trusted that the same work they think is worth showing, the work that you did and are proud of, is not yours and didn't have connection with the decisions you made, that your choices about angles and rhythms were merely mechanistic and that you had not been creating art, that perhaps "director" is an honorary title, signifying nothing, and the role should be eliminated)
but because it's come from people who define themselves as artists, who surround themselves with artists, and who should know better. And if they don't -- if they don't instinctively -- I can't tell them otherwise; I am obviously not someone they respect. All I can do is spend a lot of time being angry and disliked and legalistic. Because somehow it's socially unreasonable that I want people to acknowledge my ownership of the things I made, and offer me maybe a hundredth of what they get from showing my work. (If it's not worth anything -- if I'm not worth anything -- why show it? Someone somewhere is lying.) I'm tired of having to fight this fight, and I'm doubly tired because the bulk of community support seems to go to the people who steal from me, who just want everyone (everyone?) to have a good time. In my house.
I tend to be respectful of copyright law, as an ethical matter. I buy CDs; I've never downloaded music. I don't pirate cable or steal video games. If somebody's charging too much for an event, I simply don't go. As an artist, I understand fair use and I stay on the right side of it. I don't see a difference between copyright infringement and shoplifting. If I think IP law is wrong, which I often do, I write briefs for people in Congress. I was of course pleased by recent decisions by the Library of Congress. In my own work, I tend to use creative commons licenses, because heck yes I want you to riff on the same stuff I think is cool. A relatively substantial motivator behind my creation of new content or my collaboration with the artistic community around me is because if we make something new together I don't have to track down who owns it.
In other words, copyright law is an intellectual conversation that's constantly active for me, and I'm always surprised to run into artists for whom it isn't. It's sort of like the idea of meeting a waiter who doesn't have an opinion on appropriate tipping. Maybe you think people should tip 20%; maybe you think tipping should be abolished entirely. But you have to have thought about it.
This week has been painful not only because I've been plagiarized
(which is a horrible thing. It's a horrible thing for someone to tell you that something you've made is worth enough for them to charge other people for it, but you're not worth enough to get even a fraction of it. It's a horrible thing to be told by someone who is making money off your work that you should be paying them, because you should be grateful that they paid any attention to the fact you existed)
and counterfeited
(and it is another horrible thing to be told by someone you trusted that the same work they think is worth showing, the work that you did and are proud of, is not yours and didn't have connection with the decisions you made, that your choices about angles and rhythms were merely mechanistic and that you had not been creating art, that perhaps "director" is an honorary title, signifying nothing, and the role should be eliminated)
but because it's come from people who define themselves as artists, who surround themselves with artists, and who should know better. And if they don't -- if they don't instinctively -- I can't tell them otherwise; I am obviously not someone they respect. All I can do is spend a lot of time being angry and disliked and legalistic. Because somehow it's socially unreasonable that I want people to acknowledge my ownership of the things I made, and offer me maybe a hundredth of what they get from showing my work. (If it's not worth anything -- if I'm not worth anything -- why show it? Someone somewhere is lying.) I'm tired of having to fight this fight, and I'm doubly tired because the bulk of community support seems to go to the people who steal from me, who just want everyone (everyone?) to have a good time. In my house.
