Re: [microsound] Intellectual Property

[Bill Ashline <bashline@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Michal <mis@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

> Have you ever seen a "magic" show?  How much would you appreciate it if you
> knew all the tricks the illusionist is doing?  You know that he's tricking 
> you
> but you're not always sure how.  I think that a composer/performer is that 
> kind
> of a magician.  Creativity is one thing but the secret of your craft is
> another.  On another hand, not all experimental music is written/performed 
> for
> musicians only.

When one goes to a restaurant, the chef doesn't necessarily want to give all 
his secrets away either.  Not even the chef on TV.  On the other hand, have 
you listened to painters talking?  They're always discussing the minutiae of 
their craft and manner of execution.  Painters steal ideas from each other 
all the time (as do writers), but such theft is rarely fatal to the 
originator.  On the other hand, something seems different with digital 
equipment--a new kind of ethics is in play, and it suggests a different 
situation with regard to the ownership of the media and the sharing of 
ideas.

<<I find it disturbing that people still pimp
knowledge that comes from nature's sentences,
information should not only be harnessed by an
elite group of the world's population.>>

<>I'm aware that this Napsteresque critique of
intellectual property is all the vogue, but I
happen to think it's quite naive.  First, everything
comes from "nature's sentences," that doesn't mean
we should toss out the notions of private property or
intellectual property.  Your "elite group" is the
artists themselves.  We should respect the wishes of
the artist.  If the artist makes his or her processes
public, that's their option.  But if they don't,
chances are they feel the artwork is self-complete.
In fact, a popular school of thought in the middle of
this century felt that the artist's intentions and
methods are completely irrelevant to the evaluation
of an artwork (promulgated in 1948's "The Intentional
Fallacy" by Wimsatt and Beardsley).  The art, like the
cheese, stands alone.  Must we all whine whenever an
artist doesn't reveal his or her bedroom secrets to
us?  Can't we just be happy we have their art?<>

You're overstating the case.  Beardsley and Wimsatt argued against a kind of 
psychological interpretation that depended wholly on the artist's intentions 
for deriving the meaning of a literary work.  This was to pave the way for 
formalism, which bracket everything out that wasn't inscribed directly in 
the text.  The point was that the artist doesn't always even know her own 
intentions, so why should such intentions be the final arbiter of 
interpretation, and moreover, intentions were often indeterminant anyway.  A 
nonsequitur as applied here.  A friend of mine who doesn't like electronic 
music often argues that it too often aligns with conservative values and 
runs in contrast to more politically charged movements like punk, reggae, 
and even some forms of rock.  When we get too carried away at looking for 
leverage from intellectual property protection (an oxymoron if there ever 
was one), I'm almost tempted to agree with him, no matter how often we trot 
out Deleuzian platitudes.  But this whole question really gets away from 
Kim's original question which was...

> > working in an IP (intellectual property) rich environment I have come to
> > understand why a software developer/artist/etc does not want their
> > "process" exposed...although I am more than willing to share some ideas on
> > an abstract level I tend to be rather guarded when it comes to the
> > details...I like knowing the general concept of an artists work and
> > guessing as to how it was implemented...


         to which Xavier writes:
> From: "Xavier Madrid" <madridxavier@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> For a society and/or culture to grow and progress, we must not cling to
> and/or protect knowledge of a craft from others, but rather share, teach 
> and
> communicate with others, thus enabling a network of information, moving
> toward advancement a culture and/or society's future.  There are people all
> over the world whose musical genius cannot be expressed for so much of an
> insignificant reason as not knowing how to harness a certain tool properly
> or improperly.

I agree with your point, but I don't think that Kim disagrees.  His question 
was addressed to something else.  It wasn't that he was necessarily 
endorsing intellectual property as such (in my deep reading of him) but that 
the climate of "intellectual property" as such has made people paranoid 
about disclosing.  In the best of all worlds, your idea is true.  
Unfortunately, in this not very best of worlds one is likely to find 
culprits who steal your generosity, patent it, and sell it back to you--much 
like how the biotech industries have operated in India and elsewhere with 
such products as neem and genetically modified food foisted on third world 
farmers.  And in the process of selling it back to you will insure that you 
don't use it without paying the royalty on a product or technique that you 
invented.  Moreover, I think all artists keep secrets, be they your guitar 
teacher or your graduate printmaking instructor.  If they don't, the copies 
sometimes end up becoming better than the original, and the society rewards 
in kind.  The real world of artists is a slimy, competitive one (present 
company excluded).



B. Ashline

"Intellectual alienation is a creation of middle class society.  What I call 
middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined 
forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery.  I 
call middle class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the 
air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt....I am not a prisoner of 
history.  I should not seek there for the meaning of my destiny. I should 
constantly remind myself that the real "leap" consists of introducing 
invention into existence.  In the world through which I travel, I am 
endlessly creating myself."--Frantz Fanon


_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at 
http://profiles.msn.com.