It is possible to speculate that a commercial paper has more interest in board appeal or that advertisers do not want to encourage the manipulation of content, but the most likely explanation is that “mashup creators are a marginal group.
Furthermore, while Riley (2006), Fisher (2006) and Stehbens (2006) tend to frame the enforcement of copyright as something that comes from a centralized authority to affect the ordinary citizen, in discussing mashups, Skatssoon (2006) draws attention to the ambiguity of creativity, suggesting that artists are not sufficiently free to use the past to create new content. This suggests the presence of not just an economic status quo but also a creativity status quo.
According to the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, the Copyright Amendment Act (2000) emphasizes the development of two moral rights, that of attribution and the right to prevent derogatory treatment. The former is relatively straightforward and illegal copying in itself poses little threat to it.
As noted by the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) website, attribution is important because it aids research and verification. However, the latter part of moral rights presents a greater concern for those that create the new from the old. In effect, it implies that those who create the product should have control over how it is used.
If the publisher or creator (be it artist or academic) is free to veto control, then they have not really sold the product and have merely leased it to the consumer on an unclear and indefinite basis. None of the articles actively questioned this dynamic, but since a single idea has an infinite supply, the economic rights start to look questionable.
It does not require the publishers to seek out new content, nor does it require the creators to produce anything new. There is some suspicion on this issue in the words of Newhouse (2006): “Apple is spending a lot of time and money defending its profits at the expense of the music”.
According to Deckers (2001, p. 282-90) intrinsic motivation (that is, the love of the task itself) is more likely to encourage continued performance of an activity, but once an extrinsic reward like money is added (making the activity a means to an end), the quality improves slightly while frequency goes into decline. If the longer one continues practicing a task and the better the individual gets, then income dependent on creation is inclined to produce quality content in the short term but not in the long term.
Article comments
1 - methuselah
There are several flaws in current copyright laws, the result of an incremental creep toward monopoly control thru the efforts of corporations large enough to pay the high rates of lobbyists with good connections in compliant federal government.
1-the putative purpose of copyrights is to protect the intellectual, time and money investment of artists, partly to reward them for their efforts and partly to encourage successful artists to create more works, financed thru the royalty proceeds from earlier creations. This would be a reasonable plan, and it had worked in the past, protecting artists from exploitation by malevolent copying businesses and, to a lesser extent, casual pilfering by end-users. But this system was defeated by the great efficiency of large businesses that succeeded in discounting the future profits of artists by contracting them very early in their careers so that the corp would get the royalties and the artists would basically get day-wages for their efforts. The best known example of this is the rock music industry in which a $15 CD nets the artist less than a dollar. Where the recording company didn't have a prior contract with which to discount the artists earnings and capture it for themselves, they simply ignored the artist or used legal force and the superiority of resources to overwhelm the artist. Not only that, but as the royalty reward to authors of songs began, through enforcement, to produce revenue, unscrupulous individuals insisted that they be listed as co-authors to songs though they had cntributed nought to the composition. This was done under threat of exercising monopoly access to markets to browbeat artists into acquiescence.
2-copyright durations have been egregiously extended by a federal congress submissive to the demands of corporations eager to extend their de-facto monopolies far beyond the short time originally allocated to allow an artist to recoup his investment and make a reasonable profit.
3-the civil courts have shown consistent favoritism toward the Goliath companes against the David artists, either by outright findings against artists, or by allowing delaying tactics that had the same result: justice delayed is justice denied. Perhaps the judicial principle here is the belief that it is safer to harm a little artist with a wrong ruling than to harm a big company, many of whose stakeholders may be harmed.
2 - chancelucky
Jonathan,
I agree with your basic point. The operative word in "copyright" seems to be "copy" and technology has made copying so easy that the technology of enforcement really can't cope.
The Japanese system of declaring certain individuals "national treasures", encouraging them to teach+share their art/craft with others and also guaranteeing the master a comfortable living may make as much sense as anything these days.
As you point out, academic tenure works that way in some ways, but it also generally forces these individuals to teach which often can be a different skill entirely.