James Gannon, a Canadian IP lawyer who works closely with the recording industry, recently place up a advertise on Facebook in which he tries to <a href=”http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=113965195314667&topic=113″ target=”_blank”>separate the earth outside into consumers who desire freedom and creators who desire control</a>. The difficulty is that this is a really fake dichotomy. These aren’t two separate groups. Most human beings are both creators and consumers at the same age. The lines separating the two are also somewhat porous and meaningless. Yet, by setting up this fake “us vs. them” dichotomy, Gannon can effectively brush aside those who are against things like DRM as simply not appreciating art and to appeal to everyone’s innate desire to be creative and artistic to constitute them feel like being against DRM is somehow dirty. Let’s dig in a bit:
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Human beings who oppose protection for digital locks tend to see art and culture in the same blaze as they see mass-produced consumer goods.
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Notice how Gannon lumps together all of the folks who don’t like digital locks and tries to “classify” them. And he does so in a path that makes them sound like Philistines. They gaze down on art. It’s just a “mass-produced consumer excellent.” Except, of direction, that’s not much close to fair. Many of those opposed to laws giving overriding control to digital locks are content creators ourselves, who deeply value creativity and the content creation action. We just realize that digital locks often get in the path of that action. Gannon then goes on to basically repeat his first sentence over and over again in different forms, all with the intent of suggesting that human beings who don’t like digital locks don’t get art. They’re dull engineers who like to (gasp!) tinker with things.
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Artists tend to disagree with this view. Most musicians reckon their of their albums as more than a collection of grooves on a plastic disc. It’s art, and it’s an vital part of our culture.
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Ah, and here is the pure and gorgeous artist, living above such petty worldly concerns about technology and how things employment.
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The difficulty, of direction, is that these two “groups” are works of fiction. The simple circumstance is that nearly everyone today is both a creator and a consumer, often at the same age. In circumstance, nearly everyone I know who is seriously against DRM or mandating digital locks is a well-established content creator. However, at the same age, they’re also vast “consumers” of content as well. That’s since the best path to be a content creator is to also joyfully consume what others are doing — to familiarity that overall culture and (perhaps, sometimes) to gain inspiration, motivation and revelation from those works. Pretending these are two separate groups of human beings does a disservice to the actual issues at play.
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I can’t reckon of anyone I know who is against DRM who looks at art as just some piece of plastic or “a toaster” as Gannon claims. Instead, I tend to see the opposite. I see human beings of all kinds who find inspiration from that creative employment and desire to <i>share that inspiration</i> with others, and build a <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100208/0032528072.shtml”>cultural connections</a> encircling those works. If the human beings against DRM didn’t value the artwork itself, this wouldn’t be an issue, since they wouldn’t attention so much.
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The thought for copyright came outside of that second border of thinking.
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Well, no, really, it didn’t. The thought for copyright came from an attempt to really grant more ability to middlemen to limit certain forms of creativity. Gannon, it appears, is not familiar with the history of copyright. Of direction, more modern copyright code was designed to “promote progress” for society as a whole. That still has nothing to do with recognizing the beauty of art over plastic goods and toasters. Copyright was never intended to be a one-sided tool for artists, however it was designed to benefit society as a whole. In circumstance, early copyright laws focused on improved <i>learning</i> and <i>education</i>, and often left outside such wasteful things as pure artwork.
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Quite honestly, human beings in that first collection will probably never know or support the notion of digital locks since they essentially don’t see the mark of any copyright at all. To them, an artist asking them not to copy their CD is no different than Ford telling them not to place their automobile in reverse.
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No. It is not since we see it as no different from Ford trying to stop us from going in reverse, however since we recognize how it’s really limiting art and creativity, by limiting the cultural relevance and the ability to be inspired and to build off of that inspiration.
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The thought of restrictions, any restrictions, on their employ of something they bought is an unrivalled affront to their rights as consumers.
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No, it’s an unrivaled affront to the ability to constitute and build and share and familiarity culture which we appreciate and like.
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Digital locks were developed as a response to this phenomenon. As more technologies were developed that allowed human beings to copy works on a massive scale, publishers, large and small, started coming outside with digital locks to protect their artists’ works and prevent unauthorized uses of their art.
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Except, of direction, this ignores the truth. Digital locks have never worked and will never employment. They did absolutely nothing to “protect the artists’ works” or to prevent unauthorized uses of their employment. That’s since once the lock was picked — and it <i>always</i> gets picked — it was available to everyone. What digital locks really <i>do</i> harm, are the many legitimate users of that content who familiarity it and wish to do more with it, including building shared cultural experiences encircling it.
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Remember, if there’s one body they despise, it’s an artist who tries to control how her art might be used.
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Uh, no. No one despises an artist since they try to control their employment. They despise it when they are unable to really do something useful or valuable with a piece of artwork, such as building their own artwork.
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The laws you’ve been hearing about really don’t really concern themselves directly with digital locks themselves. Rather, it’s those other technologies, the hacks and the cracks, that the administration’s bill is trying to outlaw. Just like copyright code makes it illegal to copy or modify a creative employment, the bill would constitute it illegal to hack the digital locks that an artist may employ to protect these rights.
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If that were <i>really</i> the condition, then the code would allow for exemptions for cases of honest employ/honest dealing or when the circumvention occurs for really non-infringing cause (such as archiving, transformative uses, security purposes, etc.).
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It all comes back to the art-as-a-toaster mark of view: laws that prevent human beings from doing whatever they desire with creative works they bought are fundamentally incorrect, no exception.
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Well, yes, laws that prevent human beings from doing things like that are fundamentally incorrect. However it’s not since of any “art-as-a-toaster” viewpoint. It’s the opposite. It’s since content creators know that they are both creators and consumers, and when part of that overall action is blocked, it harms the creativity side quite a bit.
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So, what kind of consumer or creative works do you consider yourselves to be? Should artists be able to retain some control on how their works are copied or modified, much once they’re sold?
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And this is the crux of the article. He sets up this “gorgeous pure artist vs. philistine tinkerer consumer” myth to constitute human beings identify with art, since, really, who doesn’t like art? However, that very mark is the cause why Gannon is so very, very incorrect. Presenting those who are opposed to digital locks as being unappreciative of art has it backwards. If they didn’t appreciate and value the art this wouldn’t be an issue. They wouldn’t attention, since they wouldn’t value it enough to attention. They’d be off doing something else.
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It’s a shame that the recording industry and its lawyers desire to turn this into an us vs. them situation. It’s not. Plenty of human beings desire to constitute a situation where there are wider opportunities for everyone acting as both creators and consumers, to really allow creativity to flourish. However you don’t do that by locking up creativity and pretending that many of those creators don’t appreciate art.<br /><br /><a href=”http://techdirt.com/articles/20100804/04590010493.shtml”>Permalink</a> | <a href=”http://techdirt.com/articles/20100804/04590010493.shtml#comments”>Comments</a> | <a href=”http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20100804/04590010493&op=sharethis”>Email This Tale</a><br />
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