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Does Copying/Stealing Ideas/Images in Artist Endeavors Stifle or Promote Creativity?

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Putting side the moral or legal "trespass" of property rights of originators of unique artwork, what happens to creativity as a result. It's said that copyright laws protect the innovators and so creatives will invest their precious life time waking hours making new things. It's often claimed that failure to protect innovators would stifle such individual investment of effort and we'd all lose out!

Well is this true? In the restaurant world, the signature dishes of famous chefs define the restaurants they serve and bring in the clientele. So what about the wholesale copying of ideas. recipes and menus? Read this here!

Asher
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
My students often copy mine and other photographers work to learn new techniques. I find myself doing the same. I encourage it from my own students and from myself.
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Asher,

copying/stealing are biased words (especially the latter) for the act of imitation.
Now, imitation is a basic element of the learning process, even the most important during the first years of life.
It is still an important element later in life.

It is desireable that innovators receive adequate pay from the fruit of their work, but does it motivate them to create more innovations? For some, yes, but not for all. Too high protection may hinder the spread of an innovation if the innovator cannot exploit the innovation to an extent justified by its impact and importance.

Limited protection may provide sufficient gain from the innovation, but the limitation could motivate the innovator sufficiently to be more prolific while other innovators could use the then free work as a base for their new creations.

I do have some issues with the difference in duration how creative works are treated for copyright protection compared to technical innovations (patents).

Best regards,
Michael
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
It is desireable that innovators receive adequate pay from the fruit of their work, but does it motivate them to create more innovations? For some, yes, but not for all. Too high protection may hinder the spread of an innovation if the innovator [my bold]cannot exploit the innovation to an extent justified by its impact and importance.


Well written! Do you mean innovators, i.e. other innovators who are need in society to spread and expand useful new ideas?

Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Well written! Do you mean innovators, i.e. other innovators who are need in society to spread and expand useful new ideas?

Asher

Asher,

I meant that there are situations, where the inventor/innovator protects his innovation, but is not capable to spread it sufficiently.

Limited protection may provide sufficient gain from the innovation, but the limitation could motivate the innovator sufficiently to be more prolific while other innovators could use the then free work as a base for their new creations.
This is what I meant.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Asher,

I meant that there are situations, where the inventor/innovator protects his innovation, but is not capable to spread it sufficiently.


This is what I meant.

Best regards,
Michael

Good points. So for a company like Apple which depended at it's inception on other people's, (especially Xerox') inventions, to sue anyone who uses their own ideas we say what? Apple is so powerful that we can trust them to fully exploit those ideas or they will restrict out technological growth by their big bullying muscle, stifling the natural spread through small innovators or leaders like Samsung?

I don't know the answer but suspect that latter stifling of exploitation of ideas for the benefit of everyone is what results. After all, imagine if Xerox had blocked Apple that way?

Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Asher,

Apple is an interesting example, as many of the ideas originated at Xerox PARC, but the company is currently pretty busy suing other companies for patent infringement.
For me this has a taste of double-standard.

Using patents/copyright to block other people/companies from market segments does not help innovation - it makes development extremely difficult. A new product has to be developed around the sometimes vague claims with the support from lawyers to make sure that there are no patent infringements.

Back to the act of imitation and the learning process.
It is a good thing to imitate a style to learn how to achieve the same results, if somebody decides to follow a certain school of art, why not? Even within a certain way of doing something, there is room for individual expression as can be seen when studying the history of painting.
Recreating exactly the same pictures to make a living is not good and there copyright protection should prevent others from copying. From my point of view, variations based on these ideas should be permitted, as they are already for e.g. caricatures of a work.

There is a case, where the idea of protection is interpreted in a way that goes too far in my eyes.

I am afraid that this will not remain the only case.

The developments in copyright and its interpretations will continue to deliver interesting results.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
So has this case of the red London bus been appealed yet? This is a case of a strong idea, (the red London bus against desaturated classic background), copied so closely that we feel it's a similar expression.

If they had chosen a Glasgow Green bus then it would, IMHO, be very different in expression and hence one could argue that it was independent enough to be separate and not an infringement.

Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
If they had chosen a Glasgow Green bus then it would, IMHO, be very different in expression and hence one could argue that it was independent enough to be separate and not an infringement.
It clearly depends on how precise/vague you define an idea. It could be 'Bus with intense color against desatured background'. You can have a similar effect when taking a picture on a November day with some light fog, which seems to me not too far-fetched when you look on the 'original' picture. I wonder if there is prior art anyway...

The whole thing is taking a turn in a direction which turns even casual photography in a legal mine field (which it is already in some places for other reasons - just mind the illumination of the Eiffel Tower).

Best regards,
Michael
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I've been reading glimpses on a new book on Creativity. It's by Mihaly Csikszentmahilyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. It points out that inheritance of useful traits in the development of successful species is in DNA. However, for ideas, each new generation of humans requires ideas to be transmitted by learning, observation and apprenticeship. One useful way of spreading new ideas is the developed quality of appreciation and valuing of ideas and beliefs by virtue of memes which have much in common with infectious genetic material. There's a stiff competition for ideas for religion and manners to toolmaking and preferences in taste or political parties.

However, if ideas or their execution are protected by copyright barriers, then the natural evolutionary process of human creativity progressing from generation to generation might be slowed down and we all lose out. Think of all the medical inventions that we might miss out because drugs are patented then not made available until the sales of one of the drugs drops or has competition.

I know that Bristol Miyers has cornered myriads of platinum anticancer drugs and released only several as they prefer to save their bank of new drugs for when the first patents on cis-platinum, ran out and now with the second drug, carboplatinum.

So, I can now see that Apple and other giants, intimidating lesser companies must indeed stifle progress.

Asher
 

Mark Hampton

New member
I've been reading glimpses on a new book on Creativity. It's by Mihaly Csikszentmahilyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. It points out that inheritance of useful traits in the development of successful species is in DNA. However, for ideas, each new generation of humans requires ideas to be transmitted by learning, observation and apprenticeship. One useful way of spreading new ideas is the developed quality of appreciation and valuing of ideas and beliefs by virtue of memes which have much in common with infectious genetic material. There's a stiff competition for ideas for religion and manners to toolmaking and preferences in taste or political parties.

However, if ideas or their execution are protected by copyright barriers, then the natural evolutionary process of human creativity progressing from generation to generation might be slowed down and we all lose out. Think of all the medial inventions that we might miss out because drugs are patented then not made available until the sales of one of the drugs drops or has competition.

I know that Bristol Myers has cornered myriads of platinum anticancer drugs and released only several as they prefer to save their bank of new drugs for when the first patents on cis-platinum, ran out and now with the second drug, carboplatinum.

So, I can now see that Apple and other giants, intimidating lesser companies must indeed stifle progress.

Asher

Large companies are psychopaths and always behave as such when protecting themselves - to expect them to behave in any other way is lunacy.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
On a lighter note:

Inspiration can be a two-edged sword.

Michael,

I hope the Swiss rap their Appleoid knuckles with their largest Swiss Army knife! Well at least when Apple steals they have no problem with taking from the Swiss, home to wonderful alps, the best skiing, friendly people, chocolate and the hidden billions of money hoarders of questionable ethics!!

(What irks me is that, in California, when some Black or Hispanic lad steals his 3rd toaster, motorbike or muffin mix, he's in for jail for life!! If one can get to wear fine suits and white collars, then for stealing millions, (maybe moving that to the Cayman Isles or Swiss Banks, it's six years max and out in 3 for "good behavior". Now how can white-collar criminals do "bad" behavior when they are on a happy farm for white-collar criminals with almost all the comforts of a country club?!!!

Well here, I side with the Swiss!

Asher
 
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