At yesterday’s panel discussion, “Who Owns Creativity? Copyright and Our Culture in a Digital Age,” hosted by CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College, panelists were more united in their opinions than the audience of students, media professionals, and self-proclaimed copyright geeks. (Click here to download a podcast of the discussion.)
Bill Goldstein, Book Reviewer for Weekend Today in New York and founding editor of the books website for nytimes.com, moderated the discussion. Panelists Michael Oreskes, Managing Editor of Associated Press; Josh Greenberg, NYPL Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship; Brian Napack, President of Macmillan; and Virginia Rutledge, lawyer and art historian explained and, at times, defended, their respective industries.
In some ways, Josh Greenberg explained, librarians are stewards of intellectual property, giving them a role in the “care and feeding” of a library’s contents, but not one in defending them.
Napack, who has taken public stands on piracy on behalf of the book industry, was unapologetic about the publisher’s interests: “We have no moral right—it’s a business. We make money off the buying and selling of IP.” He made a clear distinction between piracy and, for instance, the reselling of used books: “The used book business—I can’t stand it as a publisher, but I have no moral problem with it.” On the topic of recouping monies through advertising, he claimed that Macmillan has received a total of $10,000 in advertising fees over its three years with Google, despite millions of searches.
Oreskes and Rutledge argued about Shepard Fairey’s use of AP photographer Mannie Garcia’s iconic Obama picture, for which AP is now suing the artist over “fair use.” Rutledge claimed that modern art would not exist today under current expectations of IP, while Oreskes (who could not be too specific given the pending litigation) argued that the case isn’t a good example of what constitutes fair use. Oreskes also said—and other panelists agreed—that “most of the panic in the world right now is about business models, not about intellectual property.”
Rutledge reminded the audience that recent problems surrounding copyright have arisen because “the internet is global” while intellectual property law is applied locally—but that even enforcing what laws do exist in countries like China and India would not be enough.
When it was time for questions, a couple of students in the audience expressed hope that the iPad will be a savior for publishers, citing the success of iTunes, which has made it easier to buy music than illegally download it—and has exposed audiences to new artists. But Napack said that the music industry has shrunk by half and that the big artists get bigger, while little ones find it harder than ever to rise to the top. Midlist authors have similar difficulty breaking out. Napack said that blatant piracy (not things like mashups) is responsible for the biggest problems: “It’s the clear cases that are causing economic stress for our authors.”
When it was time for questions, a couple of students in the audience expressed hope that the iPad will be a savior for publishers, citing the success of iTunes, which has made it easier to buy music than illegally download it—and has exposed audiences to new artists. But Napack said that the music industry has shrunk by half and that the big artists get bigger, while little ones find it harder than ever to rise to the top. Midlist authors have a similarly hard time breaking out. Napack said that blatant piracy (not things like mashups) is responsible for the biggest problems: “It’s the clear cases that are causing economic stress for our authors.”
