Posts Tagged ‘copyright law’

Silverwolf’s Unorthodox View on Copyright

December 24, 2008

Silverwolf believes that, when it comes to artistic creations such as writings, conventional music, photography and film, and virtually any other medium, there should be no such thing as intellectual copyright.

First, let’s examine the worst reason for this view: the often bandied about Leftist “solidarity” of so many artists with “The People”. Anyone who adopts a Communistic attitude towards material goods should surely support such a Communistic view towards copyright. So, Silverwolf must wonder why, after so many decades, he still sees those little circled “c”s on so many artistic products emanating from Stage Left. Surely, such individuals should believe that they owe their all to the proletariat, and certainly forcing the prolls to have to purchase artistic creations is one of the most hypocritical activities a Leftist could undertake, in Silverwolf’s view.

But now let’s examine the actual reasons for why virtually all artistic Copyright is a fraud.

Firstly, all the components used in these creations are themselves creations of others, who are not receiving one iota of credit or material compensation for having their creations used currently. Do Shakespeare, or the Hathaway descendants, receive one penny in royalties when someone uses a word first coined by Shakespeare in one of their verbal compositions? Literally, every word we use is the creation of an individual, or a collective society which spread the use of a word (and probably a word created by someone long forgotten). When contemporary writers use these inventions of others, do they ever bother to annotate each word with a reference, or even a word of thanks, to the first person listed as having used it in the Oxford English (Unabridged) Dictionary? Silverwolf has never seen it. Are not these writers committing flagrant theft? Yet, they then have the gall to claim that their arrangement of these creations of others deserves some kind of special treatment, and even belongs to them, and that people should have to pay money for their arrangement of these words, for a very long time indeed.

Music presents a very similar situation. The notes were invented long ago, as were the instruments used to reproduce them. Anyone claiming copyright on music, should actually have to pay copyright to the inventors of notes and silence, and the inventors of musical instruments. Likewise, virtually all musical ideas are based on previous musical ideas, often created by a forgotten musician at a fraternity beerbash, or created hundreds of years back by some drunken Renaissance man. Monteverdi and Frescobaldi are probably at the root of all modern music, but who ever gives them a cheer, or even a word of thanks, at the rock concert? Such ingratitude!

Of course, photography and film also fall into this category. Since all photons are created by Providence, and the photographer or film maker is certainly not creating the light but rather the Process of G-d, it really is a bit much to have people claim that a photograph is “theirs”.  And Cinema presents us with merely a more complex art which is at core made up of the other arts we are discussing: writing, music, the capture of photons. Actors, as Hitchcock realized, are merely cattle, conditioned to deflect the photons in whatever pattern the director chooses to choose (and then claim as his own).

(And here we digress to record an actual conversation that took place, so legend goes, on the old Hollywood trail.

Billy: Mornin, Hitch. Sure is a fine lookin herd of actors we got us here.

Hitch: Yep, they ought to make some fine prime sirloin, once we drive em in to Hollywood.

Billy: Man, they sure are dumb critters, aint they?

Hitch: Yep, jes give em a little of that buttered flattery, and they’s is tame as a caponed rabbit. Then you can move em around, just so, so that the photons hit there faces just right. And voila, you got another hit.

Billy: Whats vowala mean Hitch?

Hitch: I dunno? Say, you and the boys are certainly gettin a reputation out in these parts. They’s startin to call you the Wilder Bunch.

Billy: Hitch, one day the names of Billy and the Wilder Bunch will be known from coast to coast.

Hitch: Well, you jes make sure it’s for the right reasons, or they’ll be no shortages of witnesses for the prosecution.

Billy: You sure got a strange sense of humor, Hitch.

Hitch: Yeh, and you got what they call “Prisoner’s Ears”. Well, Billy, I’d say it’s goin to get dark pretty soon round here.

Billy: You sure know your lighting, Hitch.

Hitch: Yep, I sure do, don’t I. Better get them doggies bedded down for the night, Billy, and pronto.

Billy: Aw, Hitch, you know it dun’t take more than a minute or two to get an actor and them heifers bedded down together.)

 In fact, the Copyright notion is so ridiculous when it comes to film, that filmmakers have often given a sop to their collaborators by endlessly listing their names at the end or the beginnings of “their” films. The Collectivist nature of filmmaking must be overlooked, and the fiction maintained that it is a film by “so and so”. But you’ll notice that the Producer, the fellow who writes the check that sets the whole process in motion, is the one who usually gets the last credit. In his mind “He” is the real maker of the film. Yet, none of these will admit that it is the photons, the ancient words, the long-ago created notes, the previously discovered technical effects, and the hit-and-miss theatricals of quondam films, that brings about the latest “creation”? Kinda like saying the cook made the meal, when it was the farmer who actually grew the food, and the trucker who hauled it to town, and the boxboy who unpacked it onto the shelf, and the gas company that supplied the cooking fuel. Nor do they ever point to the creators and the manufacturers of cameras as the real creators of photography and film. Have you ever seen a film created by “Bolex” with the assistance of a lot of so-and-sos?

Moving on to a completely different class (apparently), we come to that of “inventions”, those devilishly ingenious gizmos that eccentric American grumpy old men have been developing in their “shops” for a good century now. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”, is the ubiquitous response when readers come across these gems in some popular mechanical magazine. Up to that moment, no one had ever thought of that, but when presented to the mind of the non-inventor, the first question is “That’s so obvious, why did that never strike me?”  Well, the obvious and existential answer is that  it never struck you because you were not bright enough to ever have it cross your mind.

The famous “grapefruit squirter shield spoon cum juice wiper” is a prime example. What enterprising mind came up with the idea of a grapefruit spoon with an attached shield to protect the devourer from those nasty spits of acid juice that have wreck so many a suit? It was bad enough to not have thought of such an obvious one. But to not transcend this very obvious improvement with the further refinement of a battery operated shield wiper, so that the devourer could continue to make sure he wasn’t swallowing any seeds, shows the non-inventor the poverty of his imagination.

But in this case, has the inventor really invented something new, or merely taken two old ideas, the windshield, and the windshield wiper, and applied them to the necessity of FED officials who have to attend early morning prayer breakfasts, in which the main prayer is that the world will continue to believe in the US Dollar, before they attend Congressional hearings ,where the entire financial nation will be watching every bead of sweat on their beaded brows?  To have grapefruit juice stains on their FED official ties could seriously undermine the international stability of the Dollar, and therefore there was a huge market for these spoons, at whatever price one could unload them to the FED for, certainly many times their actual value, as is permitted now. When the penny dropped, and it finally dawned on the Democrats that it could also be used to keep egg off their ties, before they questioned the FED officials on television, it’s use spread to the Liberal halls of congress. Some of the Congressional Women even used it to keep egg off their coiffures.

The point being, inventions follow the same pattern as so-called artistic creations. They are constructed from the tiny atoms of truth found by earlier scientists, and then re-arranged into new patterns, but certainly not created from scratch. (The exception being when there is a scientific revolution that completely sweeps away all the former misbeliefs, like the abandonment of the “ether” and “phlogiston” theories. Or the discovery of sub-atomic particles, which look more and more like patterns of energy without substance, save for that energy. And does this prove that Bishop Berkeley’s Subjectivism is perhaps the ultimately true philosophy?)

So lets away with the fraud of Copyright, of invention, of creation! There is only the tired repetition of the artistic maxims,  ad nauseum ad infinitum, over and over, and occasionally a new arrangement which the artistically starved pounce on as “the latest creation”.

G-d created everything long ago. All Copyright is is the malappropriation of G-d’s creations under the guise of the ego.

Silverwolf’s blogs were created a billion years ago. All he is doing is manifesting ancient atoms of axioms. There is no creation involved. Why, Silverwolf’s so-called “creations”  are as determined by the laws of physics, as much as a black hole, or the start of combustion in the old potbellied stove. So if you don’t like them, don’t put the blame on him. It’s not his fault, and he really had nothing to do with it.

Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwww! — Silverwolf