The Warholian Dichotomy To Intellectual Property
from the does-that-make-sense? dept
Larry Lessig has an article in the latest issue of Wired Magazine where he discusses how amazed he is that the foundation established following Andy Warhol’s death has a semi-enlightened policy towards people using Warhol’s work. How “enlightened?” Basically, if you’re an artist or a “scholar” they don’t bug you very much. For commercial users, however, they are extremely strict. This is enlightened? Wasn’t that exactly part of what fair use was supposed to protect in the first place? It’s a pretty sad statement when such a policy is considered so surprising that it’s worth writing about.
Comments on “The Warholian Dichotomy To Intellectual Property”
No Subject Given
What’s the problem here? I would say that that is quite enlightened. Fair use is about individual use, not corporate.
The corporations would try to make money by using images of those artists and their work. Look at the shameless campaign that Apple did using Einstein and Warhol.
Individuals wouldn’t do that.
No Subject Given
I wrote the above before even reading the article. After I read it, I learned that it isn’t even about fair-use at all.
Maybe you mean public-domain? Which Warhol’s work isn’t considered part of yet. A lot of Disney’s is though. Well it isn’t but should be.
I think the author of the article was just expressing what a “breath of fresh air” it is to see permission being granted free of censorship in this litigious age of content and intellectual property.
Re: Fair Use
This is actually about fair use. Or at least what fair use used to be.
Mike seems to be pointing out how sad it is that the warhol foundation’s stance on use of his work is seen as enlightened. The stance they take is exactly what fair use was before the corporate financed changes to copyright laws. Anyone could use copyrighted material for noncommercial purposes.
I agree it is a nice thing to see fair use from the warhol foundation since they don’t have to grant it. However, it’s pretty sad copyright holders have the power to kill ANY use of their material, commercial or not.
Re: Re: Fair Use
Right. Thomas is correct. My point is that it’s sad that this level of permission is seen as englightened. It shows just how far we’ve come (in a bad way). This kind of thing should be normal fair use — not some special stance by one “enlightened” group.