Case For Plagiarism In Art

Von

This is an extract from a speech by a member of an Italian writers' collective at some conference or other. What do you hopeless nerds make of it?

Stories Belong to Everyone: Narrators, Multitudes and the Refusal of Intellectual Property

[...] Nearly two decades have passed since "plagiarism" ceased being a synonym for "theft" and took its first steps as the name of a loose-knit cultural movement. It  has become trivial to state that all legislation on intellectual property is obsolete and inadequate, that culture and creation are always collective products and processes. Every minute numberless examples turn up before our very eyes, the gift  economy and sense of community implied in the advancement of open systems and free software provide the most striking examples. And yet copyright laws have never been so fierce, repressive and dumb. Patents are continually taken out for virtually everything, from commonplace actions like using a torch-light to play with your cat (US patent #5443036: "A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct." ) to living species that have existed on the planet since the dawn of times. This is nothing other than a war, capitalism vs. collective intelligence, the empire vs. the multitudes, we the third planet from the sun vs. the parasites devastating our life and environment.

I think that every brainworker should challenge the state-of-things on intellectual property, starting from their own job. I am speaking from the point of view of a narrator, I work with other people, we write fiction by using words, images, colors and sounds that we pick up from everyday life, history and the media landscape. A whole, open community writes along with us, albeit unconsciously or semi-consciously. This has always been true for *every* author and cultural artefact, not only nowadays. Homer's epic poems were actually co-written by anonymous members of ancient Mediterranean societies. Elizabethan theatre was entirely based on remakes, variations, collective improvisation and feedback from the public. Eighteenth and Nineteenth century serial novels ("feuilletons") were constantly re-shaped by the newspapers' readers.

Nowadays, the "Star Trek" series and cultural universe provide us with the best example of social co-operation aimed at telling stories: the fans (the so-called "Trekkies") keep adding fresh elements to a world made of gadgets, novels, websites, fan conventions, Klingon-English dictionaries and so on. Fan clubs even revise the screenplays, vote their approval to changes in the series etc.

Narrators (novelists, playwrights, screenwriters and film-makers etc.) re-elaborate myths, sets of symbolic references that some kind of community is aware of and may accept or put into question. Tales are necessary to any kind of community. Everybody tells tales, without tales we wouldn't be aware of our past and relationships with other people. There would be no quality of life. However, a narrator makes telling tales his or her main activity, a "specialization" which is utterly complementary to DIY. Many people can plant nails into woods, and yet not everyone is a carpenter.

Instead of posing as great artists or burying themselves in hack jobs, insted of writing self-referential crap or trivial commercial junk, instead of making fools of themselves as talk show guests or wasting their lives writing lines for talk show hosts, narrators should play such a key role in society as that of *griots* (oral historians) in African villages, bards in celtic culture or poets in the classic Greek world. Certainly to tell tales is a peculiar job, which can bring benefits and advantage to those who make it, none the less it is a job, it is no less integrated in community life than putting out fires, ploughing fields or helping people suffering handicaps. In other words, to tell tales should belong to "art & crafts", not Art. It should be a social thing, nor a completely narcissistic one, and I am not talking about contents, I am talking about mindsets. Narrators must be aware of the places, people and processes their "art" originates from. No matter how "radical", "experimental" or even "incomprehensible" their works may be: as soon as narrators realize that many other people are co-authoring their works, they stop being solipsists and become useful to someone else, then they can help other brainworkers to challenge intellectual property [...]

DadaKopf

Von, where did you get this from? Could you cite it, please?

Shinji

Oddly enough, I've just been helping out on the writing of a very similar argument over the treatment of Intellectual Property for a book on game design and publishing.

There are two angles here. The most commonly heard one is the cry of "down with copyright"; most commonly heard from those engaged in wholesale copyright theft, that is. I write for a living; if someone can copy what I've written wherever they want to, then how do I make a living? Worse again if they're passing it off as their own... Copyright is a vital element of our society, and will always be a vital element of any developed society in which writings and the arts become a central part of civilisation.

However, the concept of intellectual property protection is a different thing. Star Trek is indeed a good example; the popularity and strength of the series is promoted, not damaged by the fans who extend the "lore" surrounding the Star Trek universe through their own efforts, and possibly the stupidest thing Viacom ever did was to crack down on it. The Japanese anime industry realised this a very long time ago, and you'll find that there are entire magazines and exhibitions in Japan dedicated to fan-produced work involving characters or settings from popular anime or video games. The creators are flattered by it and the companies realise that it's become a vital part of their own PR machine - so everyone is happy. Indeed, a series or game really hasn't made it in Japan until it gets a section to itself at one of the giant twice annual Comiket conventions in Tokyo!

We've yet to come to this realisation in the West. Companies are determined to hold absolute control of their own properties - witness Warner using heavy-handed legal tactics to wrest a Harry Potter related domain off a 12 year old girl not so long ago. It's hugely damaging to their reputations, to their franchises, to the storytelling and art itself... And more than that, it's hugely damaging to the future talent that will weave the stories and draw the art of tomorrow.

In Japan, all the best artists start out working on fan publications, for the most part; drawing characters originally designed by someone else, learning the craft of storytelling, drawing and design. Even top games makers sometimes start off writing fan "doujinshi" telling new stories with pre-existing characters from games.

Here, where every fan effort is ruthlessly stamped beneath the boot of a twitchy marketing department, there is no such environment in which to nurture talent - which may not seem worrying now, but in ten years time, who is going to be telling the new stories?

DadaKopf

It's very interesting to see the transition which narration has made over the years, from communally composed and orally delivered to a highly specialised commodity used for profit. When you think that Homer composed the Iliad and Odyssey before writing arrived, people could only attribute stories to people and they were always, I suppose, open-source until someone came along and wrote them down after Homer. But Homer is interesting - he stood on the cusp of the mythological world and the classical world and, indeed, the Odyssey is seen as one man's struggle out of the darkness of superstition into the world of rationality. It's said that from then on, the enlightenment project gained momentum and brought us to our present point in time - advanced capitalism and the irreality of the Culture Industry. Art and originality is pretty much a means for maximum profits and, yes, the original communal function of storytelling has been subsumed by Western culture.

Stories are now ways of making money (which are in themselves escapes from reality, not return to it) and so intellectual property is there, not to defend the artist and his creativity, but to ensure profits. It's a shame because it's objectified art and storytelling as a zeitgeist.

I suppose, art as a unifying comprehension of the world as a larger organism of which we're part has been turned on its head - nowadays, we're simply excluded observers of a wholly separate animal. We're no longer part of our own stories because we don't own them anymore. We're able to buy them though. We're not part of our own connected history anymore, regardless of all this talk of a 'global village'.

Intellectual property should be challenged but not the ownership of the authors, all credit must go to them but, rather, the opposition should fall on the publishers to diminish their own role and to eradicate the way which they and the whole Culture Industry objectifies works of art and rips them out of the cultural stream. This is why culture feels so scattered, with alt.alt.alt.everything - culture is fractured and it needs to find a more cohesive, genuine form of existing again.