The more I think and read about copyrights and artists, the more I feel something desperately needs to be done.
I was listening to a podcast on that discussed the merits and drawbacks of "fan edits" of films (made popular by the so-called "Phantom Edit" of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace"). Even though the idea of a "fan" re-editing someone else's film to suit their tastes could sound disrespectful, these sorts of projects are undertaken usually because the person cares so much about the original work in the first place. (I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone willing to spend the time to re-edit a film if they didn't care about it.) Even if they seek to "improve" it, they're only doing so because they want to love that film more.
The podcast [The Hollywood Saloon - highly recommended for fellow film geeks] really made me think just how positive such things are, and what the people involved might be able to teach themselves about editing and filmmaking, and also what they might create from such endevours. They might actually improve on the original. Even George Lucas, if I recall correctly, was very impressed with the idea that someone could create their own version of his blockbuster using household technology (the Lucas-Lawyers stepped in afterwards and said, "What Mr. Lucas meant to say was..." you can guess the rest).
I've seen fans of computer games take it upon themselves to create updates, remakes and even entire sequels to games they've loved. Small groups of people taking on masses of work, normally reserved for teams of professionals, and on top of their normal jobs, just because they love the original so much.
You might see them as ultra-geeks, but imagine the amount of passion that must be required to sustain the energy needed to create such projects.
One of my all time favourite websites, and one that helped lead me to my career as a graphic designer, was one that allowed fans of films share their own alternate covers for their DVD collections. The people on the site re-designed existing artwork in an attempt to improve what they saw as inferior packaging for a film. Sometimes it was a techinical exercise, sometimes it was an experiment, and but most of the time it was because they loved the films so much, they couldn't sit idle while their favourite films looked so ugly on their shelves.
These projects were inspired from a healthy, wholesome desire to create and driven by passion to share something with others... and completely for free, I might add. They weren't created with profit in mind. Nobody did marketing to try and find out what people "wanted" and then set about trying to create it for sale. It was done because the people involved had an idea that they wanted to see come to light, and then share it with like-minded individuals who could also hopefully appreciate it.
It's sad to say that nearly all of such projects that I've seen have been shut down by the copyright holders (including the website I loved). Not because they posed any real threat, but because, by law, a copyright holder must be seen to protect their property at all times. If they don't, then when a real threat does come along, it can be used against the copyright holder to prove that they have sent a message out that they weren't pursuing a particular copyright, and as such, that others may use it.
It's so sad that such a system exists that pretty much forces copyright holders to pursue non-threatening and non-profit projects that may infringe on their property.
Of course, I'm sure many of these projects could have been considered sub-standard when compared to the original work, thanks to limited resources and the fact that passion doesn't always equal skill. Because of this, it could be argued that some projects could be seen as a threat to the quality of the original brand. In my experience, everything from the "Phantom Edit" through to tweaks to games, are always clearly labelled by the people who made them as being what they are: Produced by and for fans. Indeed most people are proud that their work is "fan" created, and declare it loudly, leaving no confusion to those they share it with (what would be the profit in deception unless they were selling something?).
I know that this probably doesn't affect most people who read this, and the things I've talked about are probably considered "lower" forms of art, but they're examples of how something positive and creative can be ruined by law, and that saddens me :(
The desperate and modern need for "originality" and the subsequent hate for anything deemed a "rip off" (read: copy) is something that's been created by marketing people and sustained by lawyers. This attitude can be seen in other things besides art, which only goes to highlight how it can strangulate creativity. For example, who wants "rip off" Nike trainers? Ask a child and they'll tell you that they want the original! The real thing. People have been held up and robbed, sometimes even killed, for their trainers. Why? Who benefits from getting people to spend over-the-odds on such things and creating a desire, nay need, to own them? Not the original artists, but the copyright holders, of course.
Friday, 30 March 2007
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
Civilization III Conquests/Gold "Code 28 Error" FIXED
I've read many solutions to this problem, and the most ridiculous one, and the "official" one put forward by Atari/Infrogrammes is to delete all Lucida Sans font files from your Windows/Fonts folder! Unbelievable that this could ever be considered a "solution".
Update: This solution works with Civilization 3 GOLD, too! (Thanks to 'gravegoul' for the tip!)
The REAL solution to the Civ3 Code 28 error is this:
- Go to your Civilization III folder on your harddrive (mine is 'C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive', for example. Yours could be 'C:\Program Files\Sid Mier's Civilization III', for example.)
- Next, go into the Conquests\ folder and look for a file named LSANS.FOT (not LSANS.TTF!)
- Rename the file LSANS.FOT to _LSANS.FOT (or indeed, anything you like, so long as it isn't LSANS.FOT!)
- You can now play Civ 3 Conquests, on ME, XP, Vista, Windows 7, whatever!
By removing the LSANS.FOT file (or by simply renaming it) the game simply looks for the font file elsewhere, and finds it!
I wanted to post this on a Civ3 forum somewhere, but I couldn't find an active thread about the problem, so at least here it should be here for good. Hope it helps somebody!
BONUS!
Play Civilization 3 in widescreen/high-resolution
To play Civ III in your monitor's native resolution (so the game looks better) simply add the following line to the bottom of your Conquest.ini file:KeepRes=1
Where do you find your conquest.ini file?
If you're on XP or running Vista/Windows 7 without UAC enabled, then you'll find it in your Civilization III folder (see above). If you're running Vista/Windows 7 with UAC enabled (which you should be, if you're using those operating systems) you'll find it in:
C:\Users\[YOUR USERNAME]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Conquests
Enjoy!
Sunday, 25 February 2007
Oscar reactions
Well the most overblown, self-aggrandizing and, ultimately, meaningless, award ceremony is over for another year, and I have to say I really enjoyed this one! There was a bunch of really great nominees to choose from, even if the Academy didn't always pick the best ones.Best film: Should have probably been Babel. The Departed (the actual winner) was not really "Best Picture" quality. Considering that the original film, Infernal Affairs, which it is so closely followed, didn't even get a Best Foreign Film nomination, just shows that this award was probably more for Martin Scorsese than Graham King (the producer who won it).
Directing: Martin Scorsese for The Departed, as predicted by everyone, took this award even though it was for a film that wasn't even his best work. Alejandro González Iñárritu did a better job with Babel, and although I haven't seen it, apparently Paul Greengrass was the one who should have won this award for United 93. Of course, this award was really an acknowledgement of the brilliant films Scorsese has made throughout his career, and that's something Greengrass couldn't really compete with.
Best male lead: Forest Whitaker took this one with no surprises. Peter O'Toole could have been awarded it for the 8 previous nominations he had, but sometimes it just goes to the best of that year. Who knows, if something had been made of O'Toole's other work, leading up to the Oscars, he could have possibly got this the same way Scorsese did.
Best female lead: Helen Mirren took this one, again, no surprises. I haven't seen her performance, but I doubt it could have been better than Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal.
Best supporting male: Thank god that Marky bloody Mark didn't win this one. His performance wasn't even the best in The Departed, never mind the rest of the films this year. Alan Arkin took this award, which no-one seemed sure which way was going to go. I don't see why Jack Nicholson got overlooked, though, his performance in The Departed was masterful.
Best supporting female: Adriana Barraza should have got this one, easily. If it wasn't her, then it should have been Rinko Kikuchi. Instead, Jennifer Hudson got this one, although to be fair, I missed Dreamgirls. She better have been damned good to beat Barraza!
Original screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine got this one, congrats to those guys. There was no obvious winner in this category.
Screenplay from other: The Departed, got this, god knows why, especially when you consider how close it was to the completely non-Academy recognised original. Notes on a Scandal was excellent, and probably deserved to win. Haven't seen the other nominations, though.
Cinematography: Pan's Labyrinth's Guillermo Navarro took this one home, although Children of Men's Emmanuel Lubezki seem to do a stunning job.
Editing: The Departed's Thelma Schoonmaker took this one, her third Oscar. I thought that Babel's Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione possibly deserved it, but there's no doubting Schoonmaker's talent.
Best Foreign Film: The very popular Pan's Labyrinth surprisingly didn't get this one, instead it went to The Lives of Others, which thoroughly deserved it (definitely the best film of the year).
So in all it was Scorsese's year. Highlights included; Ellen DeGeneres, Ennio Morricone, Jerry Seinfeld (did a great bit that showed he was a little more comfortable on that big stage than DeGeneres, perhaps a contender as next year's host?), Jack Black, John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell's song, Helen Mirren's acceptance speech, but the best moment was worth waiting for: Coppolla, Speilberg and Lucas getting together to award their contemporary, Scorsese, with his Oscar.I've probably forgotten some of the best bits, but like I said, it was a good year for Oscar overall!
The importance of plagiarism
I've been reading Eddie Campbell's brilliant blog and not so long ago he had an interesting post on Lichtenstein, which was followed up by even more interesting post on plagiarism and its merits.
"Merits of plagiarism?", I hear you cry. That's what I said, too, but it seems that there is actually a growing belief that the current trend of severely punishing those who copy other's work is unnecessary, damaging to our culture and, indeed, that the need for absolute "originality" in art is a modern obsession.
Right now there are websites set up "exposing" so called plagiarists, and they have a lot of public support and sympathy. You Thought We Wouldn't Notice is one such site, and inside you can find lots of examples plagiarism, ranging from questionable influence to outright theft. The idea behind sites like these is to help protect an artist's ideas and intellectual rights, by "naming and shaming" those caught stealing. It sounds like a good idea, but others are beginning to argue that we are taking the idea of intellectual properly too far, and the explosion of easily copyable digital media looks like it must just push this debate to boiling point.
Roy Lichtenstein has been accused of stealing from other artists from a "lower art-form" during the creation of his famous "pop-art" paintings; taking comic book panels and blowing them up to fill a canvas. It was an action that still raises ethical questions today; Did Lichtenstein owe all his success to the uncredited authors of the original comics? Comic book artist Dave Gibbons has hinted that he is less than impressed with Lichtenstein's work, "Roy Lichtenstein's copies of the work of Irv Novick and Russ Heath are flat, uncomprehending tracings of quite sophisticated images".
Art teacher David Barsalou, has created a website that allows people to see the original comic book panels, side-by-side with their Lichtenstein appropriations. Deconstructing Lichtenstein [go look at it!] gives us a unique view into Lichtenstein's process of creation, and Barsalou is not impressed with his findings; "The critics are of one mind that [Lichtenstein] made major changes, but if you look at the work, he copied them almost verbatim. Only a few were original." Looking at the comparisons, it's difficult to argue with Barsalou or Gibbons, Lichtenstein clearly did copy, often with technical inferiority, exactly what he saw.
So does this mean that one of the most influential and revered artists in recent times was a fraud?
"Consider this tale: a cultivated man of middle age looks back on the story of an amour fou, one beginning when, travelling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a pre-teen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator—marked by her forever—remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.
The author of the story I've described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale of Lolita in 1916, forty years before Vladimir Nabokov's novel. "
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is considered one of the most important novels of the 20th century.
Even fans of Indiana Jones and Star Wars must be aware that both these classic pieces of pop-culture borrowed heavily from earlier works. Without Haggard's hero, Alain Quatermain from King Solomon's Mines, there would be, ultimately, no Indiana Jones, and despite George Lucas's claims, Star Wars owes more to Flash Gordon than to inspiration drawn from Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
"If nostalgic cartoonists had never borrowed from Fritz the Cat, there would be no Ren & Stimpy Show; without the Rankin/Bass and Charlie Brown Christmas Specials, there would be no South Park; and without The Flintstones—more or less The Honeymooners in cartoon loincloths—The Simpsons would cease to exist. If those don't strike you as essential losses, then consider the remarkable series of “plagiarisms” that links Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, or Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra, copied nearly verbatim from Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony and also later nicked by T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land. If these are examples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism."
What does all this mean, then? Is plagiarism really a good thing? The above quotes are taken from Jonatham Lethem's article The Ecstasy of Influence, which cleverly constructs an excellent argument for the importance of plagiarism and ultimately the need for a change in public opinion on the subject.
For most, this is a concept that is hard to swallow, but if we return to Roy Lichtenstein again, and take another look a David Barsolou's Deconstructing Lichtenstein, we find that although copied verbatim, you have to remember that these works of art are removed from their original context; most likely an image the size of a postage stamp sandwiched between pages of trashy, teenage melodrama. Lichtenstein realised that by taking these solitary panels out of context, he could change their meaning, and that alone, they could have impact far greater than they had originally.
By taking what was seen as a "lower art-form" and forcing people to stop and look at it, it became clear that art was all around us, if we were prepared to look at it in a particular way.
If we look at Drowning Girl (1963) we can see that although, technically Lichtenstein's copy is nearly identical technically, that, in the context of a comic book story, the panel would lose all power. Taken away from its origins, shown by itself, and blown up, it evokes totally different feelings in the viewer. We see a girl drowning; an image of emotional suffocation, refusing to ask for help. It evokes feelings of a woman trapped in a male dominated world. It's a much more powerful image.
Lichtenstein took the original work, altered it (by changing its context and cropping it) and changed it into something much better, way beyond the technical limitations of the original.
Great artists don't always come up with something completely original, but rather they can take something existing and show it to us in a new way, or re-work it so it improves on the original.
The idealist, R. G. Collingwood, has some pretty far out ideas when it comes to art and ownership, but they open the doors to new ideas:
"To begin by developing a general point already made in the preceding chapter: we must get rid of the conception of artistic ownership. We try to secure a livelihood for our artists (and God knows they need it) by copyright laws protecting them against plagiarism; but the reason why our artists are in such a poor way is because of that very individualism which these laws enforce. If an artist may say nothing except what he has invented by his own sole efforts, it stands to reason he will be poor in ideas. If he could take what he wants wherever he could find it, as Euripides and Dante and Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Bach were free, his larder would always be full, and his cookery might be worth tasting.
This is a simple matter, and one in which artists can act for themselves without asking help (which I am afraid they would ask in vain) from lawyers and legislators. Let every artist make a vow, and here among artists I include all such as write or speak on scientific or learned subjects, never to prosecute or lend himself to a prosecution under the law of copyright. Let any artist who appeals to that law be cut by his friends, asked to resign from his clubs, and cold-shouldered by any society in which right-thinking artists have influence. It would not be many years before the law was a dead letter, and the strangle-hold of artistic individualism in this one respect a thing of the past.
This, however, will not be enough unless the freedom so won is used. Let all such artists as understand one another, therefore, plagiarize each other's work like men. Let each borrow his friends' best ideas, and try to improve on them. If A thinks himself a better poet than B, let him stop hinting it in the pages of an essay; let him re-write B's poems and publish his own improved version. If X is dissatisfied with Y's this-year Academy picture, let him paint one caricaturing it; not a sketch in Punch, but a full-sized picture for next year's Academy. I will not rely upon the hanging committee's sense of humour to the extent of guaranteeing that they would exhibit it; but if they did, we should get brighter Academy exhibitions. Or if he cannot improve on his friends' ideas, at least let him borrow them; it will do him good to try fitting them into works of his own, and it will be an advertisement for the creditor. An absurd suggestion? Well, I am only proposing that modern artists should treat each other as Greek dramatists or Renaissance painters or Elizabethan poets did. If any one thinks that the law of copyright has fostered better art than those barbarous times could produce, I will not try to convert them."
It's hard to imagine how this could be applied to today in a practical sense, how the public's perception of "artistic theft" could be changed, but Collingwood and Lethem are far from alone in their view that things need to change. A respected US judge, Richard A. Posner, recently published The Little Book of Plagiarism, which examines how we look at the hot-potato that is copyright ownership. From the LA Times review:
"Ever the controversialist, Posner is willing to entertain the idea that plagiarism is hardly the high crime that moralists in the media and the academy advertise it as…
...he complains about "the absurd idea that 'copying' is inherently bad" and the "growing belief that literary, artistic, and other intellectual goods are not really 'creative' unless they are 'original.' "
Or as Posner puts it in his book:
"The vagueness of the concept of plagiarism should be acknowledged and thus a gray area recognized in which creative imitation produces value that should undercut a judgment of plagiarism - indeed an imitator may produce greater value than an originator, once 'originality' is understood, as it should be if we are to understand plagiarism in properly relativistic terms, just to mean difference, not necessarily creativity. In modern commercial society, which places the stamp of personality on goods both physical and intellectual for economic reasons unrelated to high culture, a verdict of plagiarism is pronounced without regard to the quality of the plagiarized original or, for that matter, of the plagiarizing copy."
It seems that money, quite typically, is the reason for this modern change in thought; The original authors are not always the ones most upset at finding their work "plagiarised", indeed it is the publishers who will most likely sue if they feel someone has stolen parts of their intellectual property, and indeed the law encourages them to do so. For if a copyright owner is not seen to attempt to protect their intellectual property at all times, this can be held against them in court the next time they cry thief.
Posner seems to be saying that it is the law, not just public opinion, that needs to change. Accusations of plagiarism should be judged individually, taking into account the actual damage done to the original author and current copyright holder, and whether or not the alleged theft actually has any artistic merits in its own right. In short, plagiarism isn't always bad and if we don't change our perceptions soon, our high-culture will continue to suffer in ways we aren't even seeing.
The next Shakespeare may have already been persecuted and branded a thief.
"Merits of plagiarism?", I hear you cry. That's what I said, too, but it seems that there is actually a growing belief that the current trend of severely punishing those who copy other's work is unnecessary, damaging to our culture and, indeed, that the need for absolute "originality" in art is a modern obsession.
Right now there are websites set up "exposing" so called plagiarists, and they have a lot of public support and sympathy. You Thought We Wouldn't Notice is one such site, and inside you can find lots of examples plagiarism, ranging from questionable influence to outright theft. The idea behind sites like these is to help protect an artist's ideas and intellectual rights, by "naming and shaming" those caught stealing. It sounds like a good idea, but others are beginning to argue that we are taking the idea of intellectual properly too far, and the explosion of easily copyable digital media looks like it must just push this debate to boiling point.
Roy Lichtenstein has been accused of stealing from other artists from a "lower art-form" during the creation of his famous "pop-art" paintings; taking comic book panels and blowing them up to fill a canvas. It was an action that still raises ethical questions today; Did Lichtenstein owe all his success to the uncredited authors of the original comics? Comic book artist Dave Gibbons has hinted that he is less than impressed with Lichtenstein's work, "Roy Lichtenstein's copies of the work of Irv Novick and Russ Heath are flat, uncomprehending tracings of quite sophisticated images".Art teacher David Barsalou, has created a website that allows people to see the original comic book panels, side-by-side with their Lichtenstein appropriations. Deconstructing Lichtenstein [go look at it!] gives us a unique view into Lichtenstein's process of creation, and Barsalou is not impressed with his findings; "The critics are of one mind that [Lichtenstein] made major changes, but if you look at the work, he copied them almost verbatim. Only a few were original." Looking at the comparisons, it's difficult to argue with Barsalou or Gibbons, Lichtenstein clearly did copy, often with technical inferiority, exactly what he saw.
So does this mean that one of the most influential and revered artists in recent times was a fraud?
"Consider this tale: a cultivated man of middle age looks back on the story of an amour fou, one beginning when, travelling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a pre-teen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator—marked by her forever—remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.
The author of the story I've described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale of Lolita in 1916, forty years before Vladimir Nabokov's novel. "
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is considered one of the most important novels of the 20th century.
Even fans of Indiana Jones and Star Wars must be aware that both these classic pieces of pop-culture borrowed heavily from earlier works. Without Haggard's hero, Alain Quatermain from King Solomon's Mines, there would be, ultimately, no Indiana Jones, and despite George Lucas's claims, Star Wars owes more to Flash Gordon than to inspiration drawn from Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
"If nostalgic cartoonists had never borrowed from Fritz the Cat, there would be no Ren & Stimpy Show; without the Rankin/Bass and Charlie Brown Christmas Specials, there would be no South Park; and without The Flintstones—more or less The Honeymooners in cartoon loincloths—The Simpsons would cease to exist. If those don't strike you as essential losses, then consider the remarkable series of “plagiarisms” that links Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, or Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra, copied nearly verbatim from Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony and also later nicked by T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land. If these are examples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism."What does all this mean, then? Is plagiarism really a good thing? The above quotes are taken from Jonatham Lethem's article The Ecstasy of Influence, which cleverly constructs an excellent argument for the importance of plagiarism and ultimately the need for a change in public opinion on the subject.
For most, this is a concept that is hard to swallow, but if we return to Roy Lichtenstein again, and take another look a David Barsolou's Deconstructing Lichtenstein, we find that although copied verbatim, you have to remember that these works of art are removed from their original context; most likely an image the size of a postage stamp sandwiched between pages of trashy, teenage melodrama. Lichtenstein realised that by taking these solitary panels out of context, he could change their meaning, and that alone, they could have impact far greater than they had originally.
By taking what was seen as a "lower art-form" and forcing people to stop and look at it, it became clear that art was all around us, if we were prepared to look at it in a particular way.
If we look at Drowning Girl (1963) we can see that although, technically Lichtenstein's copy is nearly identical technically, that, in the context of a comic book story, the panel would lose all power. Taken away from its origins, shown by itself, and blown up, it evokes totally different feelings in the viewer. We see a girl drowning; an image of emotional suffocation, refusing to ask for help. It evokes feelings of a woman trapped in a male dominated world. It's a much more powerful image.
Lichtenstein took the original work, altered it (by changing its context and cropping it) and changed it into something much better, way beyond the technical limitations of the original.
Great artists don't always come up with something completely original, but rather they can take something existing and show it to us in a new way, or re-work it so it improves on the original.
The idealist, R. G. Collingwood, has some pretty far out ideas when it comes to art and ownership, but they open the doors to new ideas:
"To begin by developing a general point already made in the preceding chapter: we must get rid of the conception of artistic ownership. We try to secure a livelihood for our artists (and God knows they need it) by copyright laws protecting them against plagiarism; but the reason why our artists are in such a poor way is because of that very individualism which these laws enforce. If an artist may say nothing except what he has invented by his own sole efforts, it stands to reason he will be poor in ideas. If he could take what he wants wherever he could find it, as Euripides and Dante and Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Bach were free, his larder would always be full, and his cookery might be worth tasting.
This is a simple matter, and one in which artists can act for themselves without asking help (which I am afraid they would ask in vain) from lawyers and legislators. Let every artist make a vow, and here among artists I include all such as write or speak on scientific or learned subjects, never to prosecute or lend himself to a prosecution under the law of copyright. Let any artist who appeals to that law be cut by his friends, asked to resign from his clubs, and cold-shouldered by any society in which right-thinking artists have influence. It would not be many years before the law was a dead letter, and the strangle-hold of artistic individualism in this one respect a thing of the past.
This, however, will not be enough unless the freedom so won is used. Let all such artists as understand one another, therefore, plagiarize each other's work like men. Let each borrow his friends' best ideas, and try to improve on them. If A thinks himself a better poet than B, let him stop hinting it in the pages of an essay; let him re-write B's poems and publish his own improved version. If X is dissatisfied with Y's this-year Academy picture, let him paint one caricaturing it; not a sketch in Punch, but a full-sized picture for next year's Academy. I will not rely upon the hanging committee's sense of humour to the extent of guaranteeing that they would exhibit it; but if they did, we should get brighter Academy exhibitions. Or if he cannot improve on his friends' ideas, at least let him borrow them; it will do him good to try fitting them into works of his own, and it will be an advertisement for the creditor. An absurd suggestion? Well, I am only proposing that modern artists should treat each other as Greek dramatists or Renaissance painters or Elizabethan poets did. If any one thinks that the law of copyright has fostered better art than those barbarous times could produce, I will not try to convert them."
It's hard to imagine how this could be applied to today in a practical sense, how the public's perception of "artistic theft" could be changed, but Collingwood and Lethem are far from alone in their view that things need to change. A respected US judge, Richard A. Posner, recently published The Little Book of Plagiarism, which examines how we look at the hot-potato that is copyright ownership. From the LA Times review:
"Ever the controversialist, Posner is willing to entertain the idea that plagiarism is hardly the high crime that moralists in the media and the academy advertise it as…
...he complains about "the absurd idea that 'copying' is inherently bad" and the "growing belief that literary, artistic, and other intellectual goods are not really 'creative' unless they are 'original.' "
Or as Posner puts it in his book:
"The vagueness of the concept of plagiarism should be acknowledged and thus a gray area recognized in which creative imitation produces value that should undercut a judgment of plagiarism - indeed an imitator may produce greater value than an originator, once 'originality' is understood, as it should be if we are to understand plagiarism in properly relativistic terms, just to mean difference, not necessarily creativity. In modern commercial society, which places the stamp of personality on goods both physical and intellectual for economic reasons unrelated to high culture, a verdict of plagiarism is pronounced without regard to the quality of the plagiarized original or, for that matter, of the plagiarizing copy."
It seems that money, quite typically, is the reason for this modern change in thought; The original authors are not always the ones most upset at finding their work "plagiarised", indeed it is the publishers who will most likely sue if they feel someone has stolen parts of their intellectual property, and indeed the law encourages them to do so. For if a copyright owner is not seen to attempt to protect their intellectual property at all times, this can be held against them in court the next time they cry thief.
Posner seems to be saying that it is the law, not just public opinion, that needs to change. Accusations of plagiarism should be judged individually, taking into account the actual damage done to the original author and current copyright holder, and whether or not the alleged theft actually has any artistic merits in its own right. In short, plagiarism isn't always bad and if we don't change our perceptions soon, our high-culture will continue to suffer in ways we aren't even seeing.
The next Shakespeare may have already been persecuted and branded a thief.
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