From: email suppressed
Date: Wed Jun 15 2005 - 11:26:26 PDT
A few words on this topic, if I may --
Artists' rights are a complex issue. It makes some sense that artists can
control the circumstances in and around which their work is exhibited, but
it also makes sense that we now inhabit a remixed world where we all borrow
from and build upon one another's work. In Europe there are moral rights
laws, which provide a legal framework for artists to assert and defend
certain rights, and which probably render appropriation, remixing and even
some kinds of quotation illegal, even in some cases where copyright doesn't
apply.
I suspect that U.S. folks are lucky because we can ride the tension between
artists' rights and remixability rather than run straight on into
inflexible laws. I once asked my friend Howard Besser, who knows more than
I do about these issues, what he thought about moral rights. He said:
"When I'm in a country where they don't have moral rights laws, I'm for
them, and when I'm somewhere where they do, I'm against them." I think
that's a fair summation.
On the issue of bootlegs, rentals, authorized copies, DVDs, etc., etc.: I
made an undistributable piece last year, originally intending for it to be
shown once. After the first showing I decided to work on it more and it
showed a few more places. Later it gained traction and it's now shown at
about 25 venues. At those screenings probably 1500 people have seen it.
Soon after finishing it I posted it on the Internet Archive site, at
http://www.archive.org/details/panorama_ephemera2004. From there it's been
downloaded in various formats, including DVD-quality MPEG-2, over 16,000
times. It's also available via BitTorrent, and though it's really hard to
count how many people have downloaded it as a .torrent file, it seems as if
there have been over 20,000 additional downloads this way. I consider this
number of downloads to be amazing reach for a film that would otherwise
have been seen by very few people. Incidentally, the programmer who
selected it for Rotterdam said that he first became aware of it because of
its online presence.
Giving things away doesn't put food on the table, but how much do most
makers earn from conventional distribution? What we stand to gain from the
ready availability of our work -- things such as festival invites, lecture
and screening gigs, funding opportunities, and (last but not least) more
viewers and fans -- can often outweigh the pennies that come in from rental
fees. There can be great benefits from the gift economy.
And now for the compulsory disclaimers: (1) whether or not to give
something away should always be up to the individual who made it, at least
for a reasonable number of years; (2) I'm not advocating that the Canal St
bootleggers should be selling avant-garde/experimental work.
Rick
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