Copyrite Quotes

GLOBE EDITORIAL Copyright shifts format

“What the bill does not build on is the long-standing principle of fair dealing: A writer can quote another writer, not so as to effectively republish someone else’s work without paying for it, but rather to report, criticize or comment, by embedding a quotation in a genuinely new piece of writing.

This principle should be extended and adapted. A hundred years ago, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso began to use collage in their paintings, around the same time that they invented cubism. Photomontage followed. Later, William Burroughs applied to literature the cut-up technique he had learned from Brion Gysin, an artist who grew up in Edmonton.

New technology has made possible “digital sampling” of music. One currently conspicuous example is Feed the Animals, the fourth album of Girl Talk, the performance name of Gregg Gillis, an American laptop DJ – issued by the legally provocative label Illegal Art.

In light of all this, the “moral rights” that protect a work’s integrity should be rethought. In 1982, the artist Michael Snow brought a lawsuit that prevented the Eaton Centre in Toronto from putting Christmas ribbons on the necks in his Canada geese mobile. But artists, as distinct from shopping centres, should be in a position to make works of art that include, like quotes, parts of other works of art.

Bill C-61, in short, is a work that stands in need of some growth and some refinement.”

Thiru Balasubramaniam  thiru@keionline.org