The other lives of Copyright

Copyright is an exciting subject that over the last couple of years has received a great deal of attention. Unfortunately most of this attention has been a discussion on the uses and abuses of copyright in the copying of music and films of the Internet. This has had the effect of very much excluded a large part of the interesting social aspects of copyright.

The other life of copyright go beyond the questions of economics and power positions. While the latter are important they are not the only game in town. Beyond the strutting and blustering pirates and anti-pirates (please interpret these terms kindly) there are several examples of people attempting (successfully and unsuccessfully) to use copyright to protect values and positions. Some of these are attempts to control as in the more traditional form but other examples seem driven more from a need to maintain an “artistic” integrity.

The purpose of this post is to present some of the odder examples in the copyright discussion. This is not solely for shock value – even if this is worthwhile in of itself. The purpose is to promote a larger copyright discussion in order to develop a better understanding of the purpose and method of copyright.

Graffiti copyright (see Morgan 2006)

No matter if you like of dislike graffiti it is a form of artistic expression and it is protected from the moment of production. The owner of the wall owns the physical copy of the graffiti but intellectual property rights, the copyright, remains with the graffiti writers and artists.

An interesting problem to deal with is the issue of popular stencil graffiti (see for example Banksy). In part stencil graffiti is popular since it is a fast way in which to create graffiti while minimizing the risk of being caught (Banksy Wall and Piece 2005). However the question of stencil graffiti is whether or not it is copyrightable. If you ask any Banksy fan they will say that without a doubt that the work is art and naturally subject to copyright.

This means that the artist has the exclusive right of reproduction. Taking photographs of graffiti and placing them on the web (as I often do), on t-shirts, in photographic books etc is not permissible without the permission of the artist.

The moral rights of the artist (in some jurisdictions) contain the right to be associated with the work (droit à la paternité) and the right not to have the work displayed in a manner that disrespects the work or the artist (droit au respect). These latter rights ensure that the work is not reproduced anonymously or in a disrespectful way they cannot be used to protect the physical work. The owner of the wall can deface or erase the physical copy without fear of violating the moral rights of the artist.

Bodies of expression: Tattoos (Hatcher 2007)

Graffiti is, in reality, relatively easy. The only problem is that many people associate it with vandalism. But this is not a problem for copyright law. Many pieces of “bad” art are widely accepted and integral parts of our cultural heritage. Bad art is not a limitation for copyright – just look at Madonna.

A much more exciting area of copyright is tattoos. The cast of characters and the social implications of tattoos is much wider and provides for an exciting range of questions ranging from copyright to human rights.
The first question is naturally – who owns the copyrighted image?

  • The person wearing the tattoo (the client)
  • The tattoo artist
  • The tattoo studio
  • Someone else

Hatcher (2007) has an excellent slide presentation on this very topic. The claim of the client is naturally that she/he has created a work of art that is a combination of the human body and the tattoo. If this line of argument were to be drawn out fully then bodybuilders would have copyright in the bodies too? The counter-argument is that the client has done nothing other than paid (in cash and pain).

This is fascinating problem that goes to the core of the copyright question – who is the artist? Is the artist the person who physically creates or is it enough to have a conceptual model and then let someone else create? This is a fascinating question that will require more work later.

The tattoo artist has a good claim to the copyright. In much the same way as the graffiti example above the client would then own the physical copy on the body while the artist owns the intellectual rights to the image. This model would prevent copying and photography without permission. But then we may argue that the artist does nothing more than copy a stencil onto the body. If this is true then either the work is too simple to have protection under copyright or the copyright holder is someone else.

If we chose to see the artist as hired laborer then this someone else may be the owner of the tattoo studio. The work may also be the property of a third party – for example if you tattoo Pondus onto yourself the intellectual property rights still belong to Frode Øverli.

So what happens when celebrities appear in advertising campaigns prominently showing their tattoos? Is this a permissible reproduction? (Vukelj 2005) And if not would this mean that the client is not allowed to display photographs of herself/himself without the permission of the copyright holder? How can we relate this to human rights law? (see for example Ramachandran 2006)

Another question is what are the limits of tattooing? Are there tattoos that would be illegal? For example gang symbols or maybe blasphemy? This is another off-topic question that could be explored.

Another exciting thing about tattoos is that they are culturally sensitive. Is the craze for tribal tattoos a violation of the rights of the tribes or tribal artists they originate from?

Food for thought (excuse the pun)

So we have copyright in skin and wall art. Where else? Several chefs have been attempting to use IP law to protect their intellectual innovations in the kitchen. But thus far they have been unsuccessful.

Chefs have traditionally worked on an open-source model, freely borrowing and expanding on each other’s ideas and, yes, sometimes even stealing them outright. But some influential people are now talking about changing the copyright law so that chefs own their recipes the same way composers own their songs. Under this plan, anyone who wanted to borrow someone else’s recipe would have to pay a licensing fee. (Pete Wells)

Magical methods
The magician on stage presents the audience with an illusion. Once the audience knows how the magic is carried out they will no longer pay to see it. Therefore the skill and ingenuity of the magician needs to be protected from copycats (Wikipedia). Loshin (2007) argues that the community’s efforts to safeguard their IP is based upon a balance of protecting and sharing. In the case of magic the law is inadequate and the community of magicians are better served by using the internal norms that pre-exist in the community.

~~~~

This was supposed to be a much shorter post but as with all things of interest it grew as exciting questions reveal themselves. The use of copyright in untraditional forms has sometimes been granted as an obvious way to go and in other cases been prevented.

Which acts are protected by copyright and which are not is based more on historical and traditional arguments and their interpretation rather than a coherent systematic development. These “fringe” areas of copyright are important and need to be developed further in order for us to more fully understand the social purpose of maintaining and developing the copyright system.

Seafood is Politics

Eat fish, don’t eat fish, don’t eat cod, eat salmon, shellfish is bad, or good. Giant prawns help developing countries or screw up the environment.

Fish is confusing. Since I don’t eat meat or poulty fish is the main source of food confusion. It should be easier since I don’t have to worry about so may foodstuffs… its not I am confused and I have, I admit, been avoiding the issue.

Some help in this tangle of issues is the the booklet Fish Dish: Exposing the Unacceptable Face of Seafood published by the WWF (2006).

  • Illegal fishing
  • Overfishing
  • Wasteful fishing
  • Unselective fishing
  • Destructive fishing
  • Unfair fishing

The text does not make life easier but it does inform in a brutally honest way. Treat your next plate of sushi with respect – read Fish Dish.
(Via Lunkens Blog)

On the fringes of copyright

The New York Times has an article about a chef who has tried to sue a competitor for infringement of intellectual property.

The suit…charges that Edâ??s Lobster Bar copies â??each and every elementâ?? of Pearl Oyster Bar, including the white marble bar, the gray paint on the wainscoting, the chairs and bar stools with their wheat-straw backs, the packets of oyster crackers placed at each table setting and the dressing on the Caesar salad.

There has been a growth in restaurants and chefs attempting to use of intellectual property arguments (copyright trademarks, patents and trade dress) to protect their businesses. As far as I have seen they have had little success.

Copying someone else’s bar or restaurant idea or menu may be a bit tacky and sad but this cannot be used to create intellectual property rights in these areas. If we were to begin protecting restaurants in this way then why not all parts of the service industry? Why stop there when we could begin using intellectual property to prevent our peers from dressing or behaving in the same way as we do?

Restaurants, food manufacturers, wine makers etc etc regularly explore, reverse engineer and learn from their competitors. There is no intellectual property limiting their ability to conduct these activities. Despite this lack of property protection there seems to be no limit to the amounts of human ingenuity and creativeness in relation to food and drink.

Maybe intellectual property should consider limiting the scope of protection and return to free market systems as opposed to creating false monopolies.

What the world eats

Every now and then you come across a book which is just inspired. This idea fits the bill exactly. What a brilliant idea.

Photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D’Alusio have put together the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. The book is a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries.

The family snapshot shows the family with a typical week’s worth of food purchases, weekly food-intake lists with costs noted, typical family recipes and essays, such as “Diabesity,” on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes.

It is difficult not to get political when you see the amounts spent on family food for a week from $500 (for a family of 4) to $1.23 (for a family of six) weekly.

Time Magazine has done a photo essay based on the book so for a sneak preview go there.

(via Boing Boing)

Food for Fuel

Over at Owen’s Musings (via Memex 1.0) I read the following

I have just learned from DFIDâ??s Chief Economist, Tony Venables, that the grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year.

While I had not seen this nugget of information before I know that in Sweden it is cheaper to heat ones home by burning grain rather than oil. It may seem to be a bit naive of me but I do get upset when people heat their houses by burning grain since it is cheaper than oil.

OK – now that I have written this I am expecting to be set straight by Johan my resident environmentalist (and some time guilty conscious) . So Johan is the example correct, relevant and interesting?

Is it really happening?

Oh my god!!! This is the most recent strip from PhD comics. Slackerney is on his way! This is truly the end of an era.

 

For those of you who are unable to see the significance of this event then either you are hopelessly lost… or you have a wonderful experience ahead of you discovering the work of Jorge Cham. The comic strip is called Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD in case you missed it) and features the troubles of ordinary PhD students struggling with writing, conferences, self doubt, procrastination, insecurity, supervisors, food and sleep deprivation in the futile quest for a title.

The strip began in 1997 and the whole archive is available online. But beware it is not only highly amusing it is addictive and will increase your level of procrastination to new heights. I became hooked in 2002/2003 and since then I have read all the strips, bought the books, bought the t-shirt and included this strip (with permission!) in my own PhD thesis.

The significance of the strip above is that Mike Slackerney is about to pass his PhD. He has been a student since before anyone else can remember – his supervisor is embarrassed to remember the date. So this event must be seen as an evolutionary leap forward.

Personally I think it is great since I took way too long to finish writing my thesis – but remember Newtons First Law of Graduation: A grad student in procrastination tends to stay in procrastination unless an external force is applied to it. (PhD comics 3 March 2001)

London

It’s brilliant to be in London again. I made it from Heathrow to the lecture hall with just a few minutes delay. The lecture of the day was Civil Disobedience Online and I think it went down well. Now I shall go and check into the hotel and spend the day in tourism mode. Tomorrow is more lecturing both a repeat on today and then a seminar on my thesis.

It’s almost too much I don’t know what to do first. But the list includes pub, beer, food, shopping, museum (British, National Portrait), British library, bookshops, bookshops and bookshops. Actually the first thing is to check into the hotel and have a shower. Too early in the morning and too little sleep, followed by travel and then two hours lecturing have overpowered my deodorant.

This is academic travel at its best! The only drawback is that I need to leave my free wifi access to go to the hotel.

Australian Immigration Policy

This is an excerpt from a recent post on Subtopia about an Australian immigration detention center being built on Christmas Island. I was particularly attracted to the technology involved in detaining immigrants. This is not exactly pleasant reading…

Since 2005 Australiaâ??s Department of Immigration has been constructing an “Immigration Reception and Processing Centre.” 2,400 km from Perth, 360 km from Jakarta and nearly 2000 km from Darwin, this deteniton complex is at the far end of the island which, according to this dispatch, is a narrow strip 24 km long and 7 km wide.

Keep in mind, as Angela tells us, â??under Australian law it is possible to intern people extra-judicially (without trial or charge) and, since 2004, to do so indefinitely. Migration detention is, therefore, a wholly administrative matter.â??

So just what exactly are they building out there in them pristine jungles?

Well, it turns out itâ??s not just some rinky dink detention outfit with some barbed-wire fencing and ramshackle barracks cliff-side. No, this is a $396 million tropical prison paradise. Thatâ??s right. For what the government refers to as a â??deterrent to illegal immigrationâ??, it is a state of the art 800-bed prison complex, with electric fences, movement detectors, hundreds of surveillance cameras, hidden microphones in the trees, the works.


[Image: “Camp Howard” – Australia’s very own Guantanamo Bay on Christmas Island, Feb. 2007.]â??The camp on Christmas Island has CCTV linked to a RCR [Remote Control Room] so guards in Canberra can watch detainees around the clock.â?? And planners arenâ??t leaving any thing out for this rugged remote little island prison either. â??Detainees will wear electronic ID tags or cards, identifying them wherever they are.â?? While the place crawls with guards wandering in between a perimeter of checkpoint cubicles, there is a hospital, operating theatre and visiting rooms, solitary cells, and even family units and a nursery. â??Everything can be controlled remotely â?? doors, TV, radio.â??


{Image: Floor plan for the Detention Facility at Christmas Island.]In addition to developing this offshore island-chain barrier against migration, the Australian government has launched its border patrol ship, the Triton, dubbed the â??prison shipâ?? by critics. This â??98-metre trimaranâ?? is said to be capable of detaining â??30 people for up to a month” on board and is “armed with twin machine guns.â??


[Image: The ACV Triton Australian Border Patrol Ship.]While officially deployed to patrol and intercept illegal fisherman, others are more concerned what the Triton could mean for migrants stranded at sea already facing one of the most conservative immigration-tolerant nations in the world.

Update: The last line should probably read immigration-intolerant…

The academic importance of a cheese sandwich

This is the second full day at the meeting and it is actually hard to stay sharp during the meeting. It is soon six pm and my brain is grinding to a halt. My theory is that my body is suffering from a cheese sandwich deficiency. Since arriving the food has been exciting, exotic Indian food. But the problem with artificial stimulants such as these is that they do not provide a stable base for harsh academic work. Oh, the all day meeting is among the harshest of academic work. It vaguely resembles Vogon poetry*.

So I think this trip really proves the thesis that academic work requires cheese sandwiches.

This may be a controversial statement and some radical academics may claim that the results have been effected by the new experience of Mumbai, 30C heat, lack of sleep and residual jetlag, or the fact that my rss reader does not work here (proxy problems) so I have not read blogs for a week.

The fools! What do they know?

*If you donâ??t understand the reference try this

The smell of a city

Places smell. Usually the smell of a place is ignored since it is familiar to us. But the smell of places is, in part, what makes us fell comfortable or uncomfortable. This becomes more obvious when we are met with an unusual smell (either good or bad). The good/bad smell sticks out and is therefore a challenge to the norm.

But our sense of smell is also stored in our memories. Mumbai is a hot, messy city. Some of the dusty and plainly less attractive scents have reminded me of my childhood in Malta. It isnâ??t that I enjoy these smells â?? itâ??s just that they are familiar to me.

Take for example the hotel room. Our rooms at the hotel are liberally sprinkled with mothballs. No I donâ??t mean that there are one or two at the back of the cupboard â?? I mean they are everywhere: In the cupboard, on the floor (they tend to congregate in the corners of the room), in the sink and in the bath. It is not due to the fact that the manager is paranoid about moths or the fact that they probably act as repellent against other nasty creepy crawlies â?? we have been informed that the management (maybe all the staff) recognize the smell of mothballs as the smell of cleanliness.

For me the smell of mothballs takes me back to when we would by a new school blazer. The shops storeroom always smelled of mothballs. Every blazer was in a plastic cover that always contained a few of the white marbles. They fascinated me as a child and I had to be reminded often that they were poisonous.

Other nostalgic smells are things like humid heat, rotting produce and horse pee in 30-degree heat. New smells include incense, food sold in stalls, and a mixture that for me is outdoor Mumbai since there is a (not unpleasant) different smell to the place.

BBC on Nostalgic smells.