by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/content/13844
Note: Mr Blake, of course, would be delighted if Disney took an interest in his novels. Doubtless, the sex and violence and bad language with which they are replete would need to be replaced with uplifting songs and more than a touch of Moronican sentimentality. The somewhat nasty ending of Ghosts of Athens might also need to be toned down. But even seeing a few of the characters turned into talking animals would be a price worth paying for the translation to the big screen.
And this is where Mr Blake parts company from Kevin Carson. Mr Blake will defend his copyrights to the death, and will cheer on any hard-faced politician who assists in the necessary lock down. What else, after all, are nuclear weapons and lunatic neo-conservatives for if not to protect the royalties of critically-acclaimed and best selling historical novelists? SIG
Disney’s Lucasfilm Buyout: Fighting Power with Power
Over the past couple of days, I’ve seen a lot of alarmism over Disney’s buyout of Lucasfilm. That’s to be expected, of course. As someone who hates large corporations, copyright, and copyright-enabled corporate control of information, I sympathize — believe me.
The fears of Star Wars fans — probably a majority — that Disney will kiddify Star Wars and turn Leia into Snow White are also predictable. What’s interesting, though — the dog-bites-man story — is the number of fans who are optimistic. Whatever corporate copyright lockdown Disney puts the franchise under couldn’t possibly be worse than what George Lucas has done. The Disney acquisition actually offers to breathe new life into the Star Wars universe. The fan community is awash with excited speculation about what might be in store for the third (Episodes VII-IX) trilogy, and whether the Grand Admiral Thrawn novels — an authorized part of the Lucas empire, but never yet authorized for film — might be translated into film. Heady stuff, if you’re a Star Wars fan.
The thing is, corporate mergers and acquisitions shouldn’t be necessary for this kind of stuff to happen. There’s already a huge fanfic community — operating on the barest edge of legality if at all — of Star Wars fans writing more creative stuff than Lucas ever dreamed of. In a free market, any big film company (or small indy film producer) that wanted to turn this stuff into a movie would be free to do so, without asking Lucas’s permission or paying him a single penny. If it weren’t for the dead hand of copyright wielded by George Lucas, there would probably already be Thrawn films in existence, along with every other permutation of the Star Wars fictional universe imaginable.
Historically, literature was governed by the same folk ethos as travelling blues singers playing juke joints and riffing off each other’s material. Can you imagine what the Shakespeare corpus would look like if he’d had to buy out the copyrights of Petrarch and all the other writers he mined for story ideas? Disney — a company which is now at the forefront of attempting to destroying the very idea of the public domain — was itself built on reworking (usually not for the better) public domain material originating with the Brothers Grimm, A. A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling and Hans Christian Andersen.
So the actual situation is that mergers between giant corporations, wielding totalitarian information control, are — unfortunately — necessary to artificially recreate the situation that would naturally exist without the state-enforced totalitarian “intellectual property” monopolies. Of course it would be far better to eliminate copyrights and patents altogether. But that’s going to happen with or without this particular corporate acquisition. As Cory Doctorow said, the desktop computer is a machine for copying bits instantaneously and at zero marginal cost. Any industry whose business model is based on preventing bits from being copied is too stupid to survive.
Frankly, I’m not that concerned about the merger. It’s only significant to the extent that it’s a cartel for pooling copyrights. And copyright is in the process of becoming completely and utterly unenforceable anyway — taking corporate dinosaurs like Lucasfilm and Disney into the ashheap of history along with it.
In the meantime, maybe we can expect some great films.
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Copyrights are property. Kevin Carson hates property. Ergo, Kevin Carson hates copyrights. That’s all there is, really.
The ludicrous part of these Disney-Are-Evil arguments is that all those supposedly marvellous creative souls in the fanfic community are, under current IP laws, absolutely free to write and produce the greatest movies ever made, far better than Hollywoods, with only the single proviso that those movies (or novels, comics, etc) be original work. And yet, they never do. They sit around moaning that they can’t use other people’s work.
In other words, if there were this fabulous wellspring of public domain creators, and if artworks like movies could be produced without profits (no property==no income) then they could do it now. Simply write your own science fiction story that isn’t Star Wars. Become famous! Amaze everyone! Nobody’s stopping you!
But this, in the end, is the standard malaise of the Left. They don’t want to produce. They want to “redistribute” the production of others. They can’t even be arsed to think up a story for themselves; all they can think of doing is moan that somebody else who did put in the hard craft of imagination and writing and trudging around the Tunisian Desert with fake robots falling over in the sand dunes, and promoting, and arranging the funding of it all, dares to want paying for what they have produced.
It’s really just plain pathetic, when you come down to it. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, “redistribute”.
Mr Blake wouldn’t go that far. However, he has spent many years of his life sweating over a keyboard. It isn’t simply a matter of making up a story, but also of pacing and transitions and realistic dialogue and consistency, and much else. He rewrote chapter four of /Sword of Damascus/ five times before it showed him the way into the main plot. He wrote all nine of his novels without help, and there is a large fanbase out there that is willing to pay to read them. Regardless of the argument over IP, he is determined to keep it all for himself.
This being said, the case against IP is not contemptible – and Kevin Carson has written at least three books of his own. The two of them that I’ve read are rather good. Ditto Stephan Kinsella. Though it may often boil down to that, the case is more than just the desire of the untalented to steal from the talented.
Leaving aside the IP issue, Kevin is actually correct (artistically) about George Lucas – the orignial films were improved by rewrite people (for example “Laser Sword” became “Light Saber” – Lucas has a tinear).
When Lucas got total control over the franchise (i.e. when the big corporation lost control) his “improvements” to the first films were terrible – for example he has Hans Solo fireing second (not first) in the encounter with the bounty hunter.
“So what Paul – it is fantasy anyway”.
As “Mr Blake” knows even a fictional story has to obey its own inner rules (or it is useless). Had Hans Solo waited to the bounty hunter fired he would have died (that simple). Also the fact that (in the original version) H.S. fires first establishes him as shady character (not a cardboard cutout “goodie”).
One could go on and on – but the basic point is simple, Kevin is correct Lucus is not a good artist. “Paul,you are not allowed to agree with Kevin” – yes I am, he may stake me out over an anthill one day (or I may do it to him), but if Kevin says 1+1=2 I am not going to say it does not.
As for Disney.
I hold no brief for them – both conservatives and libertarians (what Kevin would call “vulgar libertarians” i.e. actual libertarians not Occupy vermin using the word “libertarian) who have tried to work for ABC (Disney owned) have said it is a nightmare.
However, I do have some sympathy for the shareholders.
There is no way that Lucasfilm is worth billions of Dollars – the franchise has reached the end of its natural life.
This seems very much like a bunch of corporate managers trying to recapture their youth (“I have just bought Star Wars!”) with other people’s money. The little old lady in ….. Ohio who owns a few shares of Disney stock has not got a good deal.
Various interventions (in both tax law, the Death Tax and the Capital Gains Tax, and in regulations – such as the1967 Act) have tended to push power away from shareholders into the hands of corporate managers (one reason they are paid so much more than they are in Germany – where tax and regulations are different and shareowning families tend to have a lot more influence).
Basically the only option American shareowners tend to have is to sell their shares and walk away (if they own via pension funds they do not even have that option) – those who can should do consider that in this case. Time to sell Disney shares?
However, I believe that New Line is owned by Disney and the Hobbit franchise will (I believe) be a big success.
Quoth IanB,
“Copyrights are property.”
Well, no.
Even if there is such a thing as “intellectual property.” copyrights are a poor approximation of it, a pale imitation created by state fiat. If they were real property claims, they wouldn’t be limited in time and they would be limited in scope.
If I own a rocking chair or a meerschaum pipe, it doesn’t automatically revert to “the public domain” 75 years after my death — I can will it to my child and he to his in perpetuity.
Furthermore, my property claim is actually to that rocking chair or meerschaum pipe, not to any other rocking chair or meerschaum pipe that might happen to look, in some arbitrarily and capriciously government-determined way, a little more like the ones I own than I might prefer.
Yes, but Mr Blake wants his royalties. There are many other statist abominations to smash down before the copyright laws need to be repealed. Equally, he will, in due course, want his old age pension. And he’s never disclaimed free treatment on the NHS, or subsidised fillings from the dentist. It may be money stolen from the taxpayers. But we need to reason on the basis of where we are, not where we’d like to be.
Thomas, this is one of those rare times we agree. The abritrary State limitations on copyright, as regards time limits in particular, make no sense. They appear to be a fop to collectivists with their irrational beliefs in “culture” as an excuse for collectivising rights, which makes no sense in a libertarian paradigm of individual rights. That is, collectivists assert that we all have some kind of positive right to the fruits of this collective “culture” rather than, in libertarian terms, any individual only having the “right” to that which other individuals wish to freely trade with them. Of course this is of the same water as assertions that everyone has a right to bread, or an income, or land access, etc.
Still, the State’s watering down of property rights is commonplace; it is not an argument for the right’s abolition. There are currently no absolute rights, in the libertarian sense, in our societies. The State can even infringe my most basic right- my right to my own body and to do with it as I wish (subject to the negative rights of others); it can conscript me, ship me overseas, put a gun in my hand and order me to kill other men, under threat of death for “desertion” if I do not.
As a Libertarian, I believe in absolute property rights. The same is true of copyright. There is no rational reason at all that it should expire after a fixed period.
IanB,
Obviously our agreement only goes so far. As best I can tell, copyright is a “pragmatic” attempt to create a property right out of thin air where there’s no real basis for it.
The limitations in time, etc. are sort of like the improvised parts — baling wire, chewing gum, etc. that a shade tree mechanic uses to hold together an engine for a little while longer when it would otherwise fly to pieces as soon as you started it.
My apologies – as I remembered whilst asleep (“the only time your brain works Paul”) New Line is owned by Warner Brothers (the only part of Time Warner that makes real money).
So no “Hobbit gold” for Disney – and they are treating Jake Tapper (basically the only real reporter on ABC) as if was dog turd – only publishing his Bengahzi stuff (and so on) on the internet (not the evening news broadcast).
Although J.T. is moderate politically I think he will end up doing the same thing that John Stossel did – go over to FNC.
Of course ABC (Disney) could be saying to him “after the President is reelected we will put your stories on the air”, but that is a humilation for a reporter.
By the way – the Emperor has his own plans for the media.
Company employment is only freedom if companies are different – if FNC was exactly the same as ABC there would be no point in John Stossel (or anyone else) moving from one to the other.
Get rid of a few people (with IRS or FCC actions) and FNC can be made much the same as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and PBS. TThe government does not have to “shut down Fox News” (as the Progressive Zombies in the universities chant) – they can just put the pressure on (Murdoch will either cave in, and his record going all the way back to his time as a newspaper man in South Australia shows he has a yellow streak, or he can be forced out).
That will leave a few radio people (like Glenn Beck, in his Dallas bunker, and so on) – but they can be dealt with by the “localism” doctrine (“I am sorry Mr Beck we have to take your show off this radio station – you did not cover the election for dog catcher in Bismark North Dakota, nothing to do with politics you are just not covering the local news and we have FCC regulations saying that X percent of the coverage must be on local news”) and most people just listen to the mainstream news (CBS and so on) on their way to work anyway.
The weird situation where the “corporate media” is dominated by people who hate corporations (and individually owned enterprieses).
In entertainment that was not done by “copyrights” – it was done by FCC regulations back in the early 1960s.
In the 1950s any company could make a show and pay a network to put it on – for example a coal company could make an entertainment show set in a coal company saying (just by the stituations) how wonderful coal company people (managers as well as coal face people were).
The FCC rule change (ironically in the name of “creative freedom” – rather like Richard Ely’s definition of “academic freedom a century ago, i.e. the Progressives get a monopoly and their opponents get pushed out of the universities) gave a stranglehold to handful of people at ABC, CBS, NBC.
Entertainment shows do not show certain groups of people (businessmen, Christians….) as the bady guys by accident – or because people would not watch anti leftist entertainment shows (where profits are not bad and abortion is not wonderful) – people do not get the option of watching many anti leftist entertainment shows.
“What about Fox – where are shows like the Half Hour Newshour and so on?”
Yes I know – getting ratings is no good if the managers give in to political pressure.
The sad fact is that government rule changes can cost a company vastly more than any individual show can make in terms of extra advertising revenue.
Roll on pay-per-view – based on technology (decoder boxes and so on, not relying on IP anyway).
And roll on an end to the FCC.
By the way……
The film 2016 (what America will be like if the Emperor remains in power) is doing well.
In spite of the entire film establishment (and the rest of the msm) trying to sweep it into a black hole.
If people think the United States is bad….
Try Britian – no anti Barack books in the book stores (none). No matter how well they sell on-line – W.H. Smiths and Waterstones just do not put them on the shelves (now that it is a “coporate agenda” for Kevin and co to look at).
And no chance at all of anti leftist films on at the cinemas.
In the United States one may have to drive a hundred miles to find somewhere that will sreen a film (for example) on the Christain resistance to the Progressives in the 1920s and 1930s (no problem at all screeing a pro Progressive film set in Mexico) – but in Britain it will not be on at all.
“Not local Paul”.
O.K. make a film on the heroic defeat of the Communists in Malaya by British forces in the 1950s – make it modern style and with modern actors.
Still will not get on the screens – and not because people would not pay to watch it.
These days even the “Mau Mau” – people who mixed savage mystical practices (“eat the rich” with “rich” being defined in the normal collectivist way as “anyone who does not support us”) with Marxism (sort of ideal bad guys from a Ayn Rand novel – both Marxists and mystics) and murdered vast numbers of black people (yes, black, people) are treated as heros by the BBC – and everything Mau Mau people say is treated as automatically true.
The Mau Mau were banned in Kenya long after the British left (because most of the people the Mau Mau murdered were not British) – indeed they were still banned when “Dreams From My Father” was written.
But when East German trained Castro admirers come to power in Kenya (pushing “free” government education – I thought Kevin was opposed to the “Public Schools”?) the ban goes.
And do not expect to see anti Mau Mau stuff in the entertainment (or news) media. Back in the 1950s Richard Buron could make an anti Mau Mau film – but these days the “enlightened elite” would go nuts.
Bottom line – there is a problem, it just not is not the problem Kevin says there is.
The real problem is the exact opposite of the problem that Kevin claims exists.
New Line is owned by Warners
Tony
So Mr. Blake is fully willing to incinerate millions of people in his pursuit of hoped-for incremental gains from copyright? We should be told…
Tony
Tony – You do not conceive how fiercely an author will defend his royalties.
Nearly all property rights are “created out of thin air”
Tony
Giacopetti’s controversial documentary “Africa Addio” is available on Youtube.
Tony
Thomas-
As best I can tell, copyright is a “pragmatic” attempt to create a property right out of thin air where there’s no real basis for it.
All property rights are human creations “out of thin air”, since they are just agreements between people as to a framework. Robinson Crusoe needs and has no rights. When Friday arrives, they need to decide what is in common, what defines ownership, whether to own land as individuals or communally, etc. What if smoke from Friday’s cooking fire blows across into Robinson’s hut and makes him choke? And so on.
The basic point is, if you want a market, you need property rights in whatever is to be produced and bought and sold. If you don’t want a market, don’t have a property right. But then, history (and economic theory tells us) you don’t get production in a market sense. People might produce for a hobby, but that’s not the same thing.
So basically, if you want a market in movie production, people need to own the movies. It inescapably comes down to that.
Ian –
Property rights are essential to civilisation.
However intellectual property – more accurately ideas, cannot be property, once you share or use an idea, it’s in the public domain, so you can’t legitimately claim ownership of it.
Property rights are essential to civilisation.
Nope. There are many potential civilisational models. Some will be happier than others, and some wlll be more productive than others, and some will be more just than others. You have to bear in mind that property rights as considered by Libertarians have never in human history existed in an absolute form. Try arguing property rights when the Emperor or Pharaoh is conscripting you into the army and confiscating your corn to feed the army, and see how far you get.
However intellectual property – more accurately ideas, cannot be property, once you share or use an idea, it’s in the public domain, so you can’t legitimately claim ownership of it.
Of course you can, and that is why people currently do. In my experience, anti-propertarianism tends to extend only until the anti-propertarian feels that his idea, writing, etc, has been stolen by someone else and put to improper use without her permission. The recent Huffpo matter of “exploited bloggers” was a belly-laugh funny example.