Saturday, March 05, 2005
The Semi-Pro world
I've taken a couple of off-angle whacks at this subject before, but think it deserves a more central hit....
Noticing the blogobuzz about remarks by FEC commissioner Brad Smith. The FEC, whose job is to guarantee free speech to Communists and gag everybody else, is trying to figure out how to prevent bloggers from speaking about political campaigns. This probably won't work, but they'll certainly give it the old Harvard try.
Bloggers are just one aspect of a huge phenomenon in the modern world:
Semi-pros (dilettantes, if you will) are doing much of the work that used to be restricted to professionals, and often doing it better. Look at space flight if you want the most dramatic example.
Regulators are accustomed to dealing with pros, who accept licensing and regulations in exchange for monopolistic privileges. They simply don't know what to do with semi-pros. I see the same problem in the realm of digital graphics and animation, where I'm involved as part-time pro and full-time semi-pro. (Does that make me 3/4 Pro? 27/32 Pro?) The copyright system is designed by and for pros: it gives absolute ownership to a few well-established publishing firms. Semi-pro animators who want to use pre-existing ideas or themes can get in big trouble. The worst part of the present system is the automatic granting, whereby every work is assumed to have a copyright whether it's registered or not. So if I want to use an obscure 1936 song as the basis of a cute cartoon, in theory I must clear the copyright with its owner. Of course the owner is long since dead, and there is no way to determine who might be the current inheritor of the rights. So there's no way to use this song legally.
OTOH, there's nobody alive who will start a lawsuit; but that doesn't matter in the forum where I hang out. They are deathly afraid of lawsuits (especially from that un-namable company whose icon has two big ears), so they won't allow links to any product that might contain the slightest taint of copyrightable material. Thus I can make the animation purely for my own amusement, but I can't let anyone else see it.
This is insane.
Sidebar: Against my better instincts, I have to admit that the two-ears-icon company does some fine work. I'm totally hooked on the toon series 'Brandy and Mr Whiskers', which is a modern video with an old-fashioned script. If Fibber's writers are watching from heaven, they will instantly recognize and appreciate this show. It has all the old elements: slapstick violence, sophisticated wordplay, out-of-character asides to the audience, and even (gasp) dialect characters. In fact, the dialect characters in B & Mr W are *more* stereotypical than those in the older shows.
I'm beginning to think that the Sensitivity Police have passed their peak, and humor is starting to reassert its ancient rights. Maybe the seriousness of wartime helps in this respect. ¶ 9:11 AM
Noticing the blogobuzz about remarks by FEC commissioner Brad Smith. The FEC, whose job is to guarantee free speech to Communists and gag everybody else, is trying to figure out how to prevent bloggers from speaking about political campaigns. This probably won't work, but they'll certainly give it the old Harvard try.
Bloggers are just one aspect of a huge phenomenon in the modern world:
Semi-pros (dilettantes, if you will) are doing much of the work that used to be restricted to professionals, and often doing it better. Look at space flight if you want the most dramatic example.
Regulators are accustomed to dealing with pros, who accept licensing and regulations in exchange for monopolistic privileges. They simply don't know what to do with semi-pros. I see the same problem in the realm of digital graphics and animation, where I'm involved as part-time pro and full-time semi-pro. (Does that make me 3/4 Pro? 27/32 Pro?) The copyright system is designed by and for pros: it gives absolute ownership to a few well-established publishing firms. Semi-pro animators who want to use pre-existing ideas or themes can get in big trouble. The worst part of the present system is the automatic granting, whereby every work is assumed to have a copyright whether it's registered or not. So if I want to use an obscure 1936 song as the basis of a cute cartoon, in theory I must clear the copyright with its owner. Of course the owner is long since dead, and there is no way to determine who might be the current inheritor of the rights. So there's no way to use this song legally.
OTOH, there's nobody alive who will start a lawsuit; but that doesn't matter in the forum where I hang out. They are deathly afraid of lawsuits (especially from that un-namable company whose icon has two big ears), so they won't allow links to any product that might contain the slightest taint of copyrightable material. Thus I can make the animation purely for my own amusement, but I can't let anyone else see it.
This is insane.
Sidebar: Against my better instincts, I have to admit that the two-ears-icon company does some fine work. I'm totally hooked on the toon series 'Brandy and Mr Whiskers', which is a modern video with an old-fashioned script. If Fibber's writers are watching from heaven, they will instantly recognize and appreciate this show. It has all the old elements: slapstick violence, sophisticated wordplay, out-of-character asides to the audience, and even (gasp) dialect characters. In fact, the dialect characters in B & Mr W are *more* stereotypical than those in the older shows.
I'm beginning to think that the Sensitivity Police have passed their peak, and humor is starting to reassert its ancient rights. Maybe the seriousness of wartime helps in this respect. ¶ 9:11 AM
