In defense of an (un)original aesthetic

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My Modern Met has posted a hauntingly beautiful gallery of photos that manages to tease striking originality out of a tired world of copies:

Switzerland-based Corinne Vionnet is our guide to the world’s most famous landmarks, monuments millions have visited before. Her art is created not by acrylic, oil, or watercolor, each piece is made by combining hundreds of tourist photos into one. After conducting an online keyword search and sifting through photo sharing sites, this Swiss/French artist carefully layers 200 to 300 photos on top of one another until she gets her desired result.

You really need to click over to My Modern Met to see this stuff for yourself.  Words alone doesn’t do it justice.  (Vionnet’s own website is here, if you want to look further into her work.)

I first became interested in intellectual property law as a part-time photographer.  I was intrigued by the legal implications of photographing the world around me, including the ever-encroaching restrictions that narrow the subjects “safe” from litigation threats.  Not surprisingly, then, I get pretty excited when the fields of copyright and photography intersect as explicitly as they do in Vionnet’s work.

Vionnet’s pieces — beautiful in their own right — serve as a meditation on the artist within the collective and the unique within the copies.  Her works have an ethereal and timeless aesthetic because they are composed of photos taken by hundreds of people over many years (they are literally ethereal and timeless).  The “originals” (taken by tourists) are simply copies of what everyone else takes, but her “copies” (clearly lovingly composed by Vionnet) are truly original takes on these famous landmarks.  Brilliant.

The article quotes Vionnet’s own summation of this series:

“Why do we always take the same picture, if not to interact with what already exists?,” Vionnet asks. “The photograph proves our presence. And to be true, the picture will be perfectly consistent with the pictures in our collective memory.”

Well said, Vionnet.  This is why our shared, cultural commons is so important.  Artists always have to “take the same picture” in order to “interact with what already exists”.  It is what artists do with their picture that makes them unique, not in some divine ex nihilo sense, but as mirror-holders who call our attention to a part of the larger whole and allow us to see one bit of reality in a new way.

However, artists do not “own” reality any more than their creative fore-bearers — or any of us.  In the slow passage of time, we all receive, create, and relinquish back.  Hopefully, in the words of John Locke, we relinquish “as good as” what we have ourselves received.

To be sure, copyright law is needed to allow Vionnet to enjoy the full fruits of her creative labor.  Nonetheless, take care to remember that, in a very real sense, she does not “own” her works any more than she took the underlying photographs — or than those tourists built the towers, mountains, and waterfalls they themselves copied with their cameras.  Vionnet’s pieces are “out there” now, part of our collective memory.  We can discuss them, critique them, applaud them, reject them, or even build on them.  However brilliant, Vionnet doesn’t “own” them in an absolute metaphysical sense, and she shouldn’t “own” them in an absolute legal sense.

Given the genesis of her work, I doubt that Vionnet would be overassertive with her copy-rights.  (Though one never knows.)  Unfortunately, lots of other people routinely assert “their” divine rights in “their” intellectual property.  As sad as this state of affairs is, one has to laugh a bit.  Just because they have a mirror doesn’t mean that they made the sun.

Discussing the mortgage interest deduction and how pricy (and large) a McMansion is

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One common use of the term McMansion is simply a large home. In this blog post about the mortgage interest deduction, the writer contrasts the price of McMansions to more normal-sized homes:

That means average homeowners with modest Capes and fixer-uppers are helping subsidize others stretching to keep up with the Jones and their million-dollar McMansions.

The measuring stick of a McMansion in this post is how large the mortgage is:

A close look at the interest rate deduction reveals much of its benefits go to homeowners with mortgages far larger than most in the middle of the housing pack. Check out this Forbes piece, which nicely lays out the argument for taking away this perk from the homeowners with outsized mortgages – incredibly the limit is currently $1 million…

The president’s deficit commission recommended capping the deduction’s use at $500,000 in mortgage debt, down from $1 million now, while nixing its use for vacation homes and converting what’s left to a 12.5 percent tax credit.

OK, I vote for keeping it simple and just lowering the mortgage cap to $500,000 or $600,000, while making second homes ineligible as well.

So a McMansion here would start with homes that cost $500,000 to $600,000. In most suburban communities, this buys a large home. In denser areas, not necessarily. What about older homes that cost this much – are these McMansions? It wouldn’t take too much searching online of real estate listings to translate these prices into square footage in particular areas.

Overall, this use of the term McMansion seems to refer to any large house beyond “modest Capes and fixer-uppers.” This use of the term seems quite vague: a McMansion is any (presumably larger) house above a certain price point.

Edge city Schaumburg sees growing minority population, declining white population

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The Chicago suburb of Schaumburg has attracted attention in recent decades for being an edge city. The community, full of office parks as well as Woodfield Mall, was mentioned six times in the book that defined edge cities. New 2010 Census figures suggest Schaumburg reflects larger population trends in the suburbs:

U.S. Census figures for 2010 showed that while the overall population of Schaumburg dipped 1.5 percent in the last decade to 74,227, most minority groups grew and the white population decreased by nearly 12 percent.

“It’s good to have that kind of mix as far as population is concerned,” said Village President Al Larson. “That says that Schaumburg is a very attractive place to come to.”

The largest minority group is Asians that number 14,731, according to the census. That’s about 38 percent more than 10 years ago…

Schaumburg’s changes are happening elsewhere,  said Mike Maly, who chairs the Sociology Department at Roosevelt University. He’s studied census numbers and the changing demographics of the Chicago area.

“What’s happening in Schaumburg is part of a larger trend in suburban Cook County,” Maly said. Minority groups are moving out of the city, and into the suburbs. At the same time, the white population seems to be moving to the outskirts of the suburban area, he said.

So like many suburbs, Schaumburg is experiencing growth in the minority population. But it is also interesting to note that the Schaumburg’s total population declined and the white population dropped by over 11 percent. Some questions should emerge out of this:

1. What is the long-term future of Schaumburg? Declining population in a suburb is not particularly a good sign.

2. Where exactly is the white population going in the Chicago suburbs? If you look at the interactive map here, one might guess that the whites are moving to the outer edges of the Chicago region.

3. On one hand, it sounds good that more minorities are moving to the suburbs, particularly communities like Schaumburg. But if white residents are moving out of these places where minorities are moving, are the same issues of residential segregation simply going to be reproduced in the suburban landscape?

City locations straddling the fine line between acceptable and edgy

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Certain urban neighborhoods draw attention because they are “edgy” and offer something different than mainstream American locations. What happens when these “edgy” areas start to disappear or start to become established, mainstream places? Here is a look at this process in New York City:

Around countless corners, the weird, unexpected, edgy, grimy New York — the town that so many looked to for so long as a relief from cookie-cutter America — has evolved into something else entirely: tamed, prepackaged, even predictable.

“What draws people to New York is its uniqueness. So when something goes, people feel sad about it,” says Suzanne Wasserman, director of the Gotham Center for New York City History at the City University of New York…

If there’s one thing that doesn’t change in New York City, it’s nostalgia. Consider Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. After his election in 1934, he worked to remove the pushcart peddlers clogging the streets of the Lower East Side, viewed by many as a problem.

Once they were gone, people missed them.

A couple of thoughts about this article:

1. Cities thrive on these edgy or odd locations. The whole city doesn’t have to be different but young people (and perhaps even the Creative Class) tend to like these edgier locations. When it becomes too mainstream, people move on to the next novelty. But the character of a city is expected to be more unique and odd than a typical suburban setting.

2. The article highlights how people generally don’t like change, even if it is dealing with issues they once thought were problems.

3. I wonder how much money this has been worth to New York City. For example, what kind of taxes did the seedy Times Square bring in compared to the sanitized and Disneyfied version of Times Square? Certainly, some of these areas are now more palatable to suburban residents and families, broadening the group of people who might visit a location.

4. This is a reminder that what is now “edgy” or “cool” likely won’t stay that way for long. Cities, in particular, change fairly rapidly as new residents and businesses move in and out. I’m sure more edgy places will pop up in New York City.

4a. Could a city develop a “historical preservation district” (or something like it) to protect an edgy establishment or block? By making it official, does the site automatically lose some of its edgy status?

The billable value of humility

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In a previous post, I linked to an IBM executive who claimed that Watson’s success on Jeopardy! might revolutionize the legal profession.  Gary Kasparov, the chess champion who was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, makes an interesting observation over at the Atlantic:

My concern about its utility, and I read they would like it to answer medical questions, is that Watson’s performance reminded me of chess computers. They play fantastically well in maybe 90% of positions, but there is a selection of positions they do not understand at all….A strong human Jeopardy! player, or a human doctor, may get the answer wrong, but he is unlikely to make a huge blunder or category error—at least not without being aware of his own doubts. We are also good at judging our own level of certainty…but I would not like to be the patient who discovers the medical equivalent of answering “Toronto” in the “US Cities” category, as Watson did.

It would be ironic (in the extreme!) if what saved the legal profession from being taken over by computers was lawyers’ own humility.  In a world where machines can process far more data far faster than human minds, perhaps our weakness is also our greatest asset:  we know our limits.

Long-winded patents

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Edward Tenner over at the Atlantic has a few observations about the trend towards ever-longer patents:

Patent numbers are often treated as a proxy for invention or technological creativity. There are many more now than there were at the peak of technological optimism in the late 1990s….[But if each individual patent has] thousands of claims, is none of them very important or — as some speculate — is there a tendency to obfuscate the significant ideas with chaff, defeating the patent’s rationale of disclosure?

I wonder whether another reason for increased patent lengths is the widespread availability of word processing software.  One observation I have made in my years of legal research is that court opinions and law review articles tend to be shorter (and have fewer citations) the further back in time one goes.  Perhaps our fore-bearers spent just as much time on their “work product” (a.k.a. writing and analysis) as we do but the cumbersome mechanics of research and writing in a pre-digital era nudged one towards focus and concision.  Today, of course, the kitchen sink goes in because it can.

Whatever the reasons, you should really check out Tenner’s full post, which offers a few other explanations and ends by arguing that all this increase is not necessarily a good thing.

Emerging adult men struggling to follow “life script”

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An excerpt from a soon-to-be released book, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women has Turned Men into Boys, talks about the sociological concept of “life scripts”:

But pre-adults differ in one major respect from adolescents. They write their own biographies, and they do it from scratch. Sociologists use the term “life script” to describe a particular society’s ordering of life’s large events and stages. Though such scripts vary across cultures, the archetypal plot is deeply rooted in our biological nature. The invention of adolescence did not change the large Roman numerals of the American script. Adults continued to be those who took over the primary tasks of the economy and culture. For women, the central task usually involved the day-to-day rearing of the next generation; for men, it involved protecting and providing for their wives and children. If you followed the script, you became an adult, a temporary custodian of the social order until your own old age and demise.

Unlike adolescents, however, pre-adults don’t know what is supposed to come next. For them, marriage and parenthood come in many forms, or can be skipped altogether. In 1970, just 16% of Americans ages 25 to 29 had never been married; today that’s true of an astonishing 55% of the age group. In the U.S., the mean age at first marriage has been climbing toward 30 (a point past which it has already gone in much of Europe). It is no wonder that so many young Americans suffer through a “quarter-life crisis,” a period of depression and worry over their future.

This is a decent description of the category of emerging adults. This is an ongoing area of research interest among sociologists (and others) and I have some earlier posts on this topic: here is a recent posting on Catholic emerging adults, here is part 1/part 2/part 3 of an earlier series on studies about emerging adults.

It is hard to tell from this excerpt whether this author argues that the fact that women have risen in society has directly led to the downfall of young men. If so, this sounds a zero-sum kind of argument: since women have risen in society, then men must fall. Does it have to be this way – can’t both men and women find acceptable and expanded roles? And what have men done to fight back against broader social forces or to find and strengthen new roles or develop an attractive “life script”?

Settling the score

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Daniel J. Wakin over at the New York Times has a write-up about Edward W. Guo and the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP):

The site, the International Music Score Library Project, has trod in the footsteps of Google Books and Project Gutenberg and grown to be one of the largest sources of scores anywhere. It claims to have 85,000 scores, or parts for nearly 35,000 works, with several thousand being added every month. That is a worrisome pace for traditional music publishers, whose bread and butter comes from renting and selling scores in expensive editions backed by the latest scholarship. More than a business threat, the site has raised messy copyright issues and drawn the ire of established publishers.

Has it ever.  Apparently, all this free music sharing of hundreds-of-years-old music is not putting money in the right people’s pockets:

While a boon to garret-living, financially struggling young musicians, the library has caught the attention of music publishers.

Take that, struggling musicians!  Music publishers are feeling the heat!  Though, really, it’s only going to hurt all of you in the end:

“I don’t know if I would call it a threat, but I do believe it hurts sales,” said Ed Matthew, a senior promotion manager at G. Schirmer in New York. “It is that profit that helps us to continue to bring out more composers’ work.”

Wait…what?  It is the profit from selling/renting sheet music composed by long-dead composers like Beethoven at above-market prices that allows the G. Schirmer company “to bring out more composers’ work”?  Insofar as this even makes sense, they can only mean one of two things:

1.  Traditional music publishers can only continue to publish public domain scores if they can continue to sell it at monopoly prices (e.g., $30-50 for “[a] set of parts for a mainstream string quartet”, according to the NYTimes article).

Analysis:  Good riddance.  IMSLP will publish it for free.  Deadweight loss triange:  gone.

2.  Traditional music publishers can only afford to take a bath on contemporary composers if it can subsidize them with profits from public domain scores of dead composers.

Analysis:  Whatever this is, it’s not a business argument.  There are plenty of reasons to support new composers (and musicians generally) that have nothing to do with business, of course.  One may think that the arts are intrinsically valuable, or may want to give back/pay it forward, or may simply want the prestige of having one’s name connected rising talent as a “patron”.  All fair enough.  But there’s no business reason for a traditional music publisher to subsidize new talent with monopoly money.  Why should it do that?  It would make much more money if it simply sold the old public domain stuff and told new composers to take a hike.  (Unless, of course, it does make money off the new composers….)

You can’t have it both ways, G. Schirmer.  Either you do make money off new composers (in which case the issue is completely unrelated to your publication of public domain scores) or you don’t.  If you don’t, you have been running a charity, not a business.

I should point out that if G. Schirmer (or any other traditional music publisher) has been effectively running a charity for new composers up until now, I thank them.  Seriously.  This was very kind of them and the sort of thing that should be encouraged.

I hasten to add, however, that just because a music publisher may have used some of its profits to support the arts doesn’t mean that they should be able to assert legal rights they don’t have to public domain musical scores just because the Internet is threatening their traditional business model.  The arts can be supported much more directly and efficiently.  There’s no need to expand copyright law to allow a revenue stream to continue flowing into the publisher’s pockets that a trickle may eventually find its way into the tip jar of the up-and-coming composer.

Update 2/27/2011: TechDirt selected my comment summarizing this post as an “Editor’s Choice” in their comments-of-the-week wrap-up!

The prospect of the automated grading of essays

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As the American public debates the exploits of Watson (and one commentator suggests it should, among other things, sort out Charlie Sheen’s problem) how about turning over grading essays to computers? There are programs in the works to make this happen:

At George Mason University Saturday, at the Fourth International Conference on Writing Research, the Educational Testing Service presented evidence that a pilot test of automated grading of freshman writing placement tests at the New Jersey Institute of Technology showed that computer programs can be trusted with the job. The NJIT results represent the first “validity testing” — in which a series of tests are conducted to make sure that the scoring was accurate — that ETS has conducted of automated grading of college students’ essays. Based on the positive results, ETS plans to sign up more colleges to grade placement tests in this way — and is already doing so.

But a writing scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology presented research questioning the ETS findings, and arguing that the testing service’s formula for automated essay grading favors verbosity over originality. Further, the critique suggested that ETS was able to get good results only because it tested short answer essays with limited time for students — and an ETS official admitted that the testing service has not conducted any validity studies on longer form, and longer timed, writing.

Such programs are only as good as the algorithm and method behind it. And it sounds like this program from ETS still has some issues. The process of grading is a skill that teachers develop. Much of this can be quantified and placed into rubrics. But I would also guess that many teachers develop an intuition that helps them quickly apply these important factors to work that they read and grade.

But on a broader scale, what would happen if the right programs could be developed? Could we soon reach a point where professors and teachers would agree that a program could effectively grade writing?

“Singing”

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Is there something in the hyperspace? William Shatner, best known for his portrayal of Captain Kirk on Star Trek, is rather infamous for his spoken-song style. Now TechDirt draws our attention to James Earl Jones, who gave voice to Darth Vader in Star Wars, who is apparently jumping in on the act:

the great actor James Earl Jones recites some Justin Bieber lyrics while a guest on the Gayle King Show.

Here’s a direct link to the YouTube video.

As TechDirt’s Mike Masnick asks,

So here’s a simple question: is this copyright infringement? Did the Gayle King Show properly license the lyrics from the copyright holder? Perhaps it did, but we’ve seen music publishers get pretty worked up about various websites posting lyrics online and have heard stories about books not being able to be published because they quoted snippets of lyrics without a license.

Assuming fair use is off the table, I don’t think JEJ’s recitation qualifies for the compulsory license provisions of U.S. copyright law because he was performing on TV — he would have needed a synchronization license.  Moreover, according to 17 U.S.C. section 115(a)(2):

A compulsory license includes the privilege of making a musical arrangement of the work to the extent necessary to conform it to the style or manner of interpretation of the performance involved, but the arrangement shall not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work, and shall not be subject to protection as a derivative work under this title, except with the express consent of the copyright owner. [emphasis added]

I think we can all agree that JEJ changed the basic melody of this work.

Of course, there is no doubt a simpler explanation for all this.  Bieber’s song “Baby” is repped by ASCAP, and ASCAP offers blanket licenses that allow for TV broadcasts of their works.  I’m guessing the Gayle King Show (or, more likely, the Oprah Winfrey Network) simply paid the requisite fees.