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Let a Thousand Edits Bloom |
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The Village Voice has recently published an excellent piece on the Clean Flicks case by technology journalist Peter Rojas (The Blessed Version). Unlike many mainstream publications, the Village Voice gets that this is not about censorship, but about creative freedom for the masses, for the average citizen, a freedom that does not detract from the incentive to create for artists:
Should CleanFlicks prevail, an interesting precedent could be established in which anyone can do what they want with somebody else's film or song and sell it to the public as long as there is one paid copy extant for each copy manipulated. The myth of creative control would be shattered, something that would legitimize the creative output of thousands who use the films and music of others as raw material for their own work....a win for CleanFlicks, which would initially appear to be a victory for censorship, may actually have the unintended effect of striking a blow for a far more radicalized notion of creative freedom.
As Prof. Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of Culture and Communication at New York University (and sometime contributor to LawMeme), puts it, We're seeing massive empowerment at the ground level, the sort of empowerment that frightens the elite. It messes with artistic integrity, but allowing people to make their own artistic decisions in their homes can only help to deflate the artistic pretensions that guide too much of our gut reactions to copyright. Paul Weiler, Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at some law school in Cambridge, is as sceptical of the DGA's legal position as LawMeme:
There is a qualitative difference between someone making a whole host of free copies from the original, and someone making changes in a whole host of originals they've bought. [CleanFlicks] bought these copies, and if consumers want to use their computers to edit out something, clearly they have the right to do that.
See also, this article by Rojas in the Guardian (Hollywood: the people's cut).
Previous LawMeme articles on or related to Clean Flicks:
Silly Things Directors Say
DGA Pres to Duchamp: You Scoundrel!
Rewind to the Future
The MST3K Syndrome - Coming Soon to a Home Near You?
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