Owning one's own culture
May. 15th, 2007 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatI've just been reading a Radio Times feature in which various people give their opinion on which is the "greatest age of rock." Malcolm McLaren (svengali of the Sex Pistols) chooses the punk era, on the grounds that it was music by the people, and thus helped usher in interactive computer games, blogs and file sharing. For the first time in history, he said, we now have a generation that owns its own culture.
Really?
I have to admit that I don't know an awful lot about modern popular culture. My ignorant outsider's impression, though, is of a generation that is being conned – or is conning itself – into thinking that it owns its own culture, but is still largely paying money to enjoy a culture created by others. Yes, perhaps there are some examples of people owning at least parts of their own culture. Fan creations, such as fanfic, are arguably an example of this, and the internet has seen an explosion of such activities. However, they have existed for decades, and, besides, only involve a small minority of the population, anyway.
When it comes to wider popular culture, a lot of the so-called interactivity seems very cosmetic. You can press the red button to get "interactive" elements to a TV programme, but this is just a tiny little extra to the fact that you are still watching a programme created by others. You can phone some premium rate number to evict someone from Big Brother, but you are hardly creating your own culture. You are having a very small say in the details of someone else's concept, according to someone else's rules.
On the BBC news website, you can "have your say" on any news item, and you can express your opinion on it on your own personal blog. However, this doesn't seem to me to be much different from sitting in the pub with your friends chatting about it. All it offers is a potentially larger audience. The medium has changed, but the process is the same. Chatting to a friend is chatting to a friend, whether you do it face to face, over the phone, or through instant messaging.
When it comes to popular music, does this generation own their own culture? People can select which tracks to download, and create their own playlists, but someone else has still created the music, and it's been issued and marketed in a commercial fashion. Putting your favourite band's latest pop video up on YouTube is not creating your own culture. People still pay massive prices to go to concerts and festivals, where they are the audience, and the band is on stage, and never the twain shall meet. Some young people still form bands and create their own music, but that's nothing new – e.g. the skiffle culture in the 50s.
But enough of that. McLaren doesn't just assert that this generation owns its own culture; he also implies that no previous generation has done so. This doesn't really match what I know of folk culture in pre-Victorian Britain. It seems fair to say that these people, in part, at least, owned their own culture. At a local level, there was a huge repertoire of customs, celebrations and festivals that went on completely independent of the ruling elite – and, frequently, very much disapproved of by them.
The common people were, of course, had to go to Church, and had quite a lot of Christianity-related culture imposed on them from above. However, most people seem to have been very good at interpreting religion in their own way. Religious themes crop up in folk song in interesting ways, that bear little resemblance to anything preached in the pulpit. You just have to look at any book on calendar customs to see the vast difference between the common man's celebrations of a religious feast, and the way the establishment wanted to celebrated. Even the theology was often rather different from anything preached in the pulpit.
Each village had their own local stories, and their own local heroes and villains and superstitions. There was no television, radio or recorded music, so they would gather in the fields or the pubs to sing their own songs.
Of course, not all folk songs were written by peasants, and transmitted orally. Many songs were transmitted through writing, through broadside ballad sheets that were bought and sold. However, the broadsides were hardly an example of the elite imposing their songs on the masses. Provincial printers often wrote their own songs – murder ballads etc. – but they also collected songs from the common people, printed them, and passed them on to wandering chapmen to sell at fair. The common people who learnt songs from printed broadsides went on to interpret them in their own way. Cecil Sharp and co. often collected dozens and dozens of very different versions of a song. Although the song was traceable back to a printed ballad popular a few generations before, each community, and each singer, had made it their own.
There was, of course, a fair amount of culture imposed by above. One of the reasons given for the rapid decline of folk song in the late nineteenth century was that mass communication was improving, so the youth were singing the "new songs" from London, and no longer wanting the old-fashioned stuff their grandfather sang. Education Acts meant that more people went to school and absorbed the sort of culture that the ruling classes wanted them to absorb. Victorian middle classes didn't like the common folk's drunken revels, and "primitive" folk song, so set up community choirs to direct their musical leaning into more respectable channels.
It may well be that today's generation "own their own culture" more than people did 20 years ago. However, I find it hard to accept that they "own their own culture" more than people did back in the days before television, recorded music and mass communication, when people made their own entertainment in their own houses and pubs.
Really?
I have to admit that I don't know an awful lot about modern popular culture. My ignorant outsider's impression, though, is of a generation that is being conned – or is conning itself – into thinking that it owns its own culture, but is still largely paying money to enjoy a culture created by others. Yes, perhaps there are some examples of people owning at least parts of their own culture. Fan creations, such as fanfic, are arguably an example of this, and the internet has seen an explosion of such activities. However, they have existed for decades, and, besides, only involve a small minority of the population, anyway.
When it comes to wider popular culture, a lot of the so-called interactivity seems very cosmetic. You can press the red button to get "interactive" elements to a TV programme, but this is just a tiny little extra to the fact that you are still watching a programme created by others. You can phone some premium rate number to evict someone from Big Brother, but you are hardly creating your own culture. You are having a very small say in the details of someone else's concept, according to someone else's rules.
On the BBC news website, you can "have your say" on any news item, and you can express your opinion on it on your own personal blog. However, this doesn't seem to me to be much different from sitting in the pub with your friends chatting about it. All it offers is a potentially larger audience. The medium has changed, but the process is the same. Chatting to a friend is chatting to a friend, whether you do it face to face, over the phone, or through instant messaging.
When it comes to popular music, does this generation own their own culture? People can select which tracks to download, and create their own playlists, but someone else has still created the music, and it's been issued and marketed in a commercial fashion. Putting your favourite band's latest pop video up on YouTube is not creating your own culture. People still pay massive prices to go to concerts and festivals, where they are the audience, and the band is on stage, and never the twain shall meet. Some young people still form bands and create their own music, but that's nothing new – e.g. the skiffle culture in the 50s.
But enough of that. McLaren doesn't just assert that this generation owns its own culture; he also implies that no previous generation has done so. This doesn't really match what I know of folk culture in pre-Victorian Britain. It seems fair to say that these people, in part, at least, owned their own culture. At a local level, there was a huge repertoire of customs, celebrations and festivals that went on completely independent of the ruling elite – and, frequently, very much disapproved of by them.
The common people were, of course, had to go to Church, and had quite a lot of Christianity-related culture imposed on them from above. However, most people seem to have been very good at interpreting religion in their own way. Religious themes crop up in folk song in interesting ways, that bear little resemblance to anything preached in the pulpit. You just have to look at any book on calendar customs to see the vast difference between the common man's celebrations of a religious feast, and the way the establishment wanted to celebrated. Even the theology was often rather different from anything preached in the pulpit.
Each village had their own local stories, and their own local heroes and villains and superstitions. There was no television, radio or recorded music, so they would gather in the fields or the pubs to sing their own songs.
Of course, not all folk songs were written by peasants, and transmitted orally. Many songs were transmitted through writing, through broadside ballad sheets that were bought and sold. However, the broadsides were hardly an example of the elite imposing their songs on the masses. Provincial printers often wrote their own songs – murder ballads etc. – but they also collected songs from the common people, printed them, and passed them on to wandering chapmen to sell at fair. The common people who learnt songs from printed broadsides went on to interpret them in their own way. Cecil Sharp and co. often collected dozens and dozens of very different versions of a song. Although the song was traceable back to a printed ballad popular a few generations before, each community, and each singer, had made it their own.
There was, of course, a fair amount of culture imposed by above. One of the reasons given for the rapid decline of folk song in the late nineteenth century was that mass communication was improving, so the youth were singing the "new songs" from London, and no longer wanting the old-fashioned stuff their grandfather sang. Education Acts meant that more people went to school and absorbed the sort of culture that the ruling classes wanted them to absorb. Victorian middle classes didn't like the common folk's drunken revels, and "primitive" folk song, so set up community choirs to direct their musical leaning into more respectable channels.
It may well be that today's generation "own their own culture" more than people did 20 years ago. However, I find it hard to accept that they "own their own culture" more than people did back in the days before television, recorded music and mass communication, when people made their own entertainment in their own houses and pubs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: intellectual property
Date: 2007-05-16 09:01 am (UTC)"I'm looking at it from the other end to "Shakespeare's copyright was owned by X'; instead, my house will continue to benefit my heirs in some way after I'm dead, and their heirs, and so on. So why shouldn't my heirs get a similar benefit if I were to write, draw, compose, etc. something similarly valuable."
The crucial difference is that if I make use if your house I deny it to you. My gain is your loss. If I sing a song you wrote, you may never know: my gain does nothing to you.
The only conflict comes in opportunity cost: if I release a song on CD at the same time as you do, then I quite possibly deprive you of some sales.
So I think the creator of a work should be allowed to reap the financial rewards, or at least the bulk of them, and I think the system of granting an exclusive right to the creator does this well.
Then again, after a while a creative work seeps into society's culture. New works are inspired by or refer to older ones, and having that public domain is very important.
So if on the one hand the pubic domain is important to keep creativity going, and for the artistic healh of society, and on the other restriction of rights is important if individual people are going to be able to make a living out of being creative, a balance needs to be struck.
The system of giving the creator an exclusive licence to exploit his creation for a limited time does that. The key for me is that it should be for a limited time. Why should an old author be able to be paid for work he did as a young man? I get this year's salary for this year's work, next year I have to work again. Giving the author ten or twenty years to turn his work into cash seems entirely reasonable to me - any more is excessive.
You notice that in the more tangible world, patents last a lot less time than copyrights do.
Re: intellectual property
Date: 2007-05-16 11:47 am (UTC)What about someone who sets up a business at 20, sees it do really really well, and sells it at 25 for £100 million? Should the government come along after 20 years and say that he can no longer benefit from that money? You have to work each year to get each year's salary, but not everyone does. A lot of people are living off the fruits of work they did years ago. A lot of people are living off the fruits of the work their great-great-grandfather did.
(I'm not arguing for or against your general point, but I think your analogy has holes.)
Re: intellectual property
Date: 2007-05-16 12:17 pm (UTC)In particualr, I think there's a big difference between living off money you received years ago on the one hand, and continuing to earn money for work you finished years ago on the other. If you create something and sell it you should get to keep the money, but copyright has a large element of having your cake and eating it.
In your example, one could say that the work he did in setting up the business was presumably (ignoring bubble effects etc) to create something worth £100m. But he's clear of it now, it's done and dusted. The government can't reasonably take the money back, but equally he can't jump back in 10 years later and say "I set this business up, you should be running it like this and give me the profits".
Actually, thinking about it this chap has probably created IP: most of the £100m profit is probably goodwill and brand value. What he's doing is saying "I have IP that I could make a profit out of licensing out, but actually I think I'll sell the rights now for a lump sum". Much like recording artists seem to do - sell the rights over their songs to a record company.
What is normally recognised in business is that such IP doesn't last long. Amortising it over 25 years is quite a long time to do it (and in fact new accounting principles are suggesting that you shouldn't assume any life at all, you should revalue it every year to see if it's still worth anything). To keep the value you need to keep pumping new effort in: marketing campaigns to keep the brand value going, new research and development to keep products worth buying, and so on.
With copyright, though, you don't have to do a thing. You can sit on your rights and collect royalties automatically through PRS and so on, or you can deny anyone the right to use your IP even though you've no use for it (compare trademarks, where you have to actively use them or lose them). The right to do so currently lasts far longer than normal business IP would be expected to last.
I don't think limiting the term of copyright to a few years is like taking back money from people, it's more saying "Right, what you've created is worth something. What it's worth to you is what you can do with it in the next X years. After that, it's open to everyone".
Ideally perhaps society would say to creative people "Well done for making that, here's what it's worth. What are you going to do next?" As no-one can tell in advance what a work is worth, though, we have to approximate.
[/ramble]
Re: intellectual property
Date: 2007-05-16 04:14 pm (UTC)