“‘Animation is built on plagiarism!” declares the show’s hot-tempered cartoon-producer-within-a-cartoon, Roger Meyeres Jr. ‘You take away our right to steal ideas, where are they going to come from?'”.
This quote for me is very interesting but may be looked past because of its affiliation to cartoons, which usually arent took seriously. However the theme and core of this passage are very important when analyzing copyright in my opinion. In essence, a theory regarding lots of art and music is that we draw from already created works and create our own with inspiration. This begs the question and creates a lot of issues regarding idea theft, but more importantly, will there ever be a time where no idea is unique because we draw from others? That is what I am intrigued by when it comes to this passage, and it’s almost a philosophical issue. Assuming we take inspiration from things we enjoy, how can our work be our own? In music, when artists sample or take inspiration, legal permission is simply needed by the original artist and granted freedom. Academic articles and art are more difficult because art is so much more pragmatic when looked at from an outside perspective, and writing can be professional or academic where plagiarism is basically illegal. Art in essence needs to be unique to be seen sometimes, so this theory is more difficult to navigate. However, this issue is very interesting, and I enjoyed drawing connections about it to this text. My question would be: Can ideas technically be infinite, do we have a maximum number of what unique and different ideas we can comprehend?
“In this regard, few of us question the contemporary construction of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation”.
I really enjoyed this bit about what really makes up copyright and what it is at its core. It’s very true that this “law” is so potent in our world that everyone knows about it and respects it, but it’s not as deep in my opinion. In fact like most things, copyright seems more like a construct of a society built by us in the past because someone was so proud of their ideas, that they didn’t want anyone stealing them. If this is the case, copyright is vaguer than many think. However deep down we all agree with copyright because by definition we are all somewhat self-centered, therefore we actually do care about our own great ideas and subconsciously need this law. This is interesting that aspects of society created by society can control us so much, and to compare and be similar to the law of gravity, is insane to ponder in my opinion. I really enjoy this prompt and think it would be really cool to get other opinions on this issue regarding copyright and if it really is as powerful as some think despite being a constraint created by us. My question would be: Do you think the world would be more or less advanced in all aspects if copyright wasn’t a thing and we shared our ideas.
