Practical Reflections on Derivative Works

I recently enabled adding audio to one of my virtual communities, expecting users to upload voice message and become engaged in audio blogging...

It was quite a surprise to me when one of the users started to post her poems accompanied by commercial music.

Although I believe that no limitations should be imposed upon knowledge and content distribution, I have always been very careful about the content that's posted on my websites and on-line of projects, since it truly makes no sense to become a target of corporate media lawyers and risk losing the work of 10 years.

But this time it was different. If MySpace.com and YouTube.com are doing it, why shouldn't we do it? Note that this is one of the main reasons such a clunky site as MySpace.com ranks among the top 10 most visited websites according to Alexa.

So when I contacted the user, I requested her to make sure not to reproduce the complete music pieces or songs and to indicate proper ownership/authorship of the piece.

This would give us some minimal room to claim "fair use" coverage, but it is very unlikely that this would hold in court or legal disputes, given the status-quo biases and lobby influences of the media industry.

At least, this would keep my virtual community from becoming a distribution hub for pirated music.

The thing is that when I told the user not to post the entire song or music piece and she agreed, I was thinking she would put maybe 30 seconds, perhaps 40, enough to convey a mood... But she's been consistently adding fragments of over one minute to her posts...

Blog de FortunataTake a peek at her blog: Fortunata's Blog.

This has generated some concern in me, since her posts are of course visible as part of the community posts at the front page of my CiudadesVirtuales.com community.

But I've allowed it so far, since this is actually another area of intense discussion:

Regulating Derivative Work

While current legislation and media corporation biased controls prevents any practical legal creation of derivative work, the media giants of today built their empires on these very same practice.

Disney copied Mickey and his first story from a contemporary comedian of the silent movies. Not to mention all the fairy tales based on previous literary work.

Sony built its fortune by selling walkmans (portable audio tape players) to reproduce "pirated" music and was pioneer in selling devices (remember betamax?) that triggered the distribution of ilegally reproduced video content.

Cable TV companies delivered for years copyright protected content without paying royalties or any kind of licensing, until the US government settled the case and regulated their operations...

The thing is that this sensible and creative girl from Spain, who found my virtual community by chance one day is now creating derivative work by following a simple formula that suits her artistic preferences:

1. She writes a poem of her own inspiration.
2. She adds a small reproduction of classic painting (kandinsky, Picasso, etc.)
3. She then adds a fragment of a music piece that renders the mood of her post (from new age to folk music from around the world).

And that is how she chooses to present her work...

But this innocent practice has immense legal implications and greatly upsets media corporations and copyright holders...

The issues at stake relate to the very core of innovation, evolution of culture and progressive creation of new content and knowledge based on existing content and knowledge...

I, myself, still don't have a definitive position regarding these matters since I strongly oppose plagiarism. But this is not plagiarism from many people's perspective, in particular since due credit is given to the creators of the content included in the multimedia result and the point could be made that this is the equivalent of a multimedia quote...

This is one of the issues that haunts me at night, just like that asfixiating notion of living forever vs. the fear of stop existing altogether one day...

Perhaps the answer is one and the same and one day someone will make a pirate copy of me so I don't disappear while the original me moves to another dimension or dies into oblivion nonetheless...

Hmmm, better go watch some hienas eating tender cubs in Animal Planet to better grasp the nature of life and death....

(sorry for the creepy end -- pls comment on the derivative work implications and issues)