Brand Name Bullies

David Bollier

Description

An impassioned, darkly amusing look at how corporations misuse copyright law to stifle creativity and free speech

If you want to make fun of Mickey or Barbie on your Web site, you may be hearing from some corporate lawyers. You should also think twice about calling something "fair and balanced" or publicly using Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. It may be illegal. Or it may be entirely legal, but the distinction doesn't matter if you can't afford a lawyer. More and more, corporations are grabbing and asserting rights over every idea and creation in our world, regardless of the law's intent or the public interest. But beyond the humorous absurdity of all this, there lies a darker problem, as David Bollier shows in this important new book. Lawsuits and legal bullying clearly prevent the creation of legitimate new software, new art and music, new literature, new businesses, and worst of all, new scientific and medical research.

David Bollier (Amherst, MA) is cofounder of Public Knowledge and Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication. His books include Silent Theft.
Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

PART ONE: Art and Culture: Use Only as Directed.

1. The Crusade to Lock Up Music.

2. Creativity and Captive Images.

3. Appropriating the People’s Culture.

PART TWO: Trademarking Public Life.

4. Trademark Owners Whine, “No Making Fun of Me!”.

5. The Corporate Privatization of Words.

6. Property Rights in Public Image.

PART THREE: The Copyright Wars against an Open Society.

7. The Theft of the Public Domain.

8. Stifling Public Dialogue through Copyright.

9. The DMCA’s Attacks on Free Speech.

PART FOUR: Absurd New Frontiers of Control.

10. The Quest for Perfect Control.

11. Intellectual Property Goes Over the Top.

12. Just Kidding or Dead Serious?

Conclusion: Reclaiming the Cultural Commons.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History
• Disney

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 21 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470323755
• Langue: English

Extrait

BRAND NAME BULLIES
BRAND NAME BULLIES
The Quest to Own and Control Culture
DAVID BOLLIER

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 2005 by David Bollier. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
Illustration credits: page 36 photo by Robert Glasgow, copyright 2000, courtesy of Creative Time; page 45 copyright 1994, courtesy of Barry Kite; page 47 copyright 2000, courtesy of Heidi Cody; page 51 copyright Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York; page 90 photo copyright 1998 by Tom Forsythe; page 149 courtesy of Andrew Baio; page 155 courtesy of Ruben Boiling; page 173 courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos; page 193 copyright 2004, courtesy of Rand Careaga; page 206 courtesy of Mike Keefe, The Denver Post .
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., Ill River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], email: [e-mail].
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Bollier, David.
Brand name bullies : the quest to own and control culture / David Bollier.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical data and index.
ISBN 0-471-67927-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Intellectual property-United States. 2. Popular culture-United States. I. Title.
KF2979.B64 2005 346.7304 8-dc22
2004015801
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Ellen
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE Art and Culture: Use Only as Directed

1 The Crusade to Lock Up Music

2 Creativity and Captive Images

3 Appropriating the People s Culture
PART TWO Trademarking Public Life

4 Trademark Owners Whine, No Making Fun of Me!

5 The Corporate Privatization of Words

6 Property Rights in Public Image
PART THREE The Copyright Wars against an Open Society

7 The Theft of the Public Domain

8 Stifling Public Dialogue through Copyright

9 The DMCA s Attacks on Free Speech
PART FOUR Absurd New Frontiers of Control

10 The Quest for Perfect Control

11 Intellectual Property Goes Over the Top

12 Just Kidding or Dead Serious?
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Cultural Commons
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
A central theme of this book is that authorship is not simply a story about originality, but about inspiration, emulation, and collaboration. It is a pleasure, therefore, to acknowledge the many friends and colleagues who played a critical role in shaping this book.
My biggest debt is to the community of thinkers and activists who believe that intellectual property law needs to take better account of the public interest. There are too many people to name here, but you know who you are. At numerous conferences, workshops, and other gatherings, I have learned a great deal that has found its way into these pages. I am especially indebted to a subset of this community, the people associated with Public Knowledge-its president, board, staff, and friends.
Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn, and Chair Laurie Racine, who is also the director of the Center for the Public Domain, helped me hatch the idea of popularizing the wacky, curious, and infamous stories of copyright and trademark law. Both immediately understood that any serious reform of this complicated branch of the law will require a broader public awareness of what is truly at stake. Both realized how urgent it is to translate the arcane, crabbed discourse of the law into something approaching the common tongue. Stories, we agreed, offer a wonderful path to understanding. As this project took shape, and throughout its nearly three-year gestation, Gigi and Laurie provided me with indispensable advice, research support, and sanity-preserving laughter. Many, many thanks.
Over the past five years, the Center for the Public Domain has been a courageous pioneer in helping to incubate the movement to protect the cultural commons. Its critical, early support for this book is yet another example of this leadership, for which I am personally grateful.
Researching dozens of stories spanning a vast intellectual landscape was no small challenge. I am grateful to have had the assistance of three resourceful legal researchers. Andrew Goldman helped clear the underbrush in the field that I set out to understand better, Richard Yu gave much of his summer in 2003 answering many research queries, and Nathan Mitchler gave me a small mountain of documents and valuable legal advice, and tenacious follow-up research about cases I was investigating.
The circle of helpful contributors reaches wider still. Mary Alice Baish, Peter Barnes, Howard Besser, Johanna Blakley, Alex Curtis, Joanna Demers, Jessica Emami, Ronald Feldman, Jennifer Jenkins, Marty Kaplan, Nancy Kranich, John Mitchell, Elizabeth Rader, Jonathan Rowe, Carrie Russell, Peter Suber, Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Donna Wentworth gave me many helpful leads, documents, and advice. Jennifer Horney prepared a useful first-time survey of stories about the public domain, which assisted my research odyssey. Ann Oliverio and Melissa Ihnat of Public Knowledge took on the formidable task of obtaining copyright permissions, a task made easier with the generous advice of Iara Pang and Daniel Katz.
Still others helped this book come together properly. Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Susan Crawford of the Cardozo School of Law, and Paul Alan Levy of the Public Citizen Litigation Group gave me thoughtful reviews of the manuscript. Any errors are, however, mine alone. Blanche Brann gave me excellent advice about the publishing industry. Once again, my editor at John Wiley Sons, Eric Nelson, showed faith in my work and helped shepherd it through a gauntlet of editorial and publishing challenges. Thank you, Eric.
My friends Norman Lear, Emily Levine, and Lewis Hyde have constantly shown me how wisdom and laughter live in the same neighborhood, a truth that I hope is reflected in the following pages. I must thank Norman in particular for sharing so much with me during the course of this book, and far beyond. Some debts can only be discharged by passing the gift along.
My wife, Ellen, has a knack for good book titles that again rescued me at a critical moment. She also helped me remember to bring some complicated abstractions back to earth, where real people live, and to enjoy life away from this project. My teenaged sons, Samuel and Thomas, were blessedly helpful in that regard too, and great fun besides.
Introduction
Mark Twain once sent a Connecticut Yankee back in time to King Arthur s court. What better way to comment on his own times than use the past as an amusing foil?
I have my own time-travel fantasies. What would happen if contemporary copyright and trademark laws were spirited back in history and applied to the output of, say, William Shakespeare, Woody Guthrie, and Albert Einstein? How would these people s creativity be affected? How might cultural history be changed?
For starters, the heirs of the first-century Roman poet Ovid would surely file the case of Estate of Ovid v. William Shakespeare . The complaint: Shakespeare, in his tremendously popular drama Romeo and Juliet , made an unauthorized use of Ovid s Metamorphoses , which is also based on two lovers from warring families. If such theft is not prosecuted, Ovid s descendants warn, there will be no incentive for new investment in future creative works. The consequences for Italy s trade deficit could be disastrous.
Shakespeare s first response, of course, is to kill all the lawyers. He then points out that Ovid himself was a thief. He filched the folktale of Pyramus and Thisbe and transformed it into Metamorphoses . In classic Freudian style, the very title discloses the appropriation!
In any case, if Ovid s heirs are going to sue (Shakespeare continues), surely they should also name Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, the creators of the film West Side Story , as codefendants. For that matter, they should also seek damages from the producers of The Fantasticks , the immensely lucrative Broadway play, and Maxwell Anderson, for his 1935 drama Winterset , which also featured star-crossed lovers from warring families. Let s not forget Franco Zeffirelli s 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet , Baz Luhrmann s 1996 version, and the thirt