How creative is "produse" anyway?
I recently picked up Copyfight (2015), a collection of Australian essays on copyright edited by Phillipa McGuinness. Most of the essays are sympathetic to copyright and the plight of artists who feel that infringement shows a lack of respect, but a few — such as Dan Hunter and Nic Suzor — celebrate so-called remix culture and fear that the copyright industries threaten the ability of "produsers" to copy-paste music and video into mash-ups.
My first reaction was to wonder: so, where are all these produsers? I've never heard of the heroes of Hunter and Suzor's essay; infringement apologists are overwhelmingly complaining about the cost and availability of major label music and Hollywood blockbusters, not a shortage of prodused video clips; and none of my friends are sending me amusing mash-ups. I've heard plenty of remixes and samples on the radio and on the "bonus tracks" at the end of albums, but in the vast majority of cases I've felt that the original mix was the only one worth listening to. Nor can I think of a remix achieving any sort of lasting popularity or repute (though there are some classic cover versions).
Maybe I don't hang around the right people or the right places, leaving me in some elitist bubble that pays attention only to serious professional art — though I enjoy the company of plenty of people who take their own photographs, play their own music, build their own mediaeval costumes and cook their own treats. Or maybe I'm not of the new generation — though I know and teach many people who would have been in nappies when people like Lawrence Lessig, Yochai Benkler and Clay Shirky began celebrating this stuff, not to mention that Lessig et al. themselves are all older than me as far as I know.
Whether or not I see much of it, and whatever I think of what I do see, some more thought got me wondering: might complaining that copyright is making it difficult to re-use existing recordings actually be proving copyright's worth, if it is forcing people to go out and create new recordings instead of re-using old ones? And, faced with the "time-critical participant" defence of infringement of the copyright of popular television series, might not one ask: wouldn't a really active participant in culture have friends and adventures of their own to talk about, rather than needing to download them from some giant television studio?
That's not suggest that there's no place for making use of existing art: I often use quotes when I'm writing, many of my musician friends play music that was written by someone else, and I follow recipes when I cook. But let's not pretend that the stuff we're building upon is manna from heaven, or that we're helpless without it: much of it was funded by copyright, and we have the choice to go elsewhere if we don't want to pay the going price. And, speaking of cooking, does anyone suggest that having to pay for ingredients inhibits the creativity of cooks anyway?
