Emmanuel from 2600 Magazine writes, “Trunk Archive has apparently looked over its recent claim against 2600 for its Spring 2012 cover and realized how wrong they were.
“Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe their practices won’t continue to ensnare unsuspecting artists worldwide who will be forced to pay their extortion fees through intimidation.”
This is not about blatant copyright infringement, which most can agree causes problems and should be dealt with. We’re talking about the attempts to license everything under the sun, using high technology to match the tiniest of images, and crushing the very concept of fair use. Art has always been derivative and transformative – our cover at the center of all this is a great example of such a work (just not with any of Trunk Archive’s material). But by making people look over their shoulders whenever they try to create something unique using elements of existing works, a chilling effect is created that will result in less works being created. This is also bad for the original artist, who is robbed of the opportunity to see how their creation can be adapted and transformed into something completely different. But in the end, we are all hurt by this kind of thing. Creations such as remixes of music, mashups, new arrangements and interpretations, parody, patchworks of images, logos and pictures captured on film, snippets of code – they can all be identified and monetized. That neat little app on your phone that can identify music? Imagine that going out and automatically charging a fee for anyone who has captured a bit of that music on something they created. Every corporate logo you capture in a picture would also have to be paid for. Imagine where this technology can take us in the next few years if this unbridled greed isn’t reigned in.