Indulge a trip down memory lane with me for a moment…
The year was 1995 and I was a wee lad of 8 years. My older brother came home with a VHS of NBA Jam: the Music Videos. The dunks, the fabulous passes, the buzzer beaters and the bloopers held me spellbound for the VHS’ tidy 50 minutes or so of its running time. What you’ve seen and heard above is the climax of the VHS. Joe Public performed their mega hit “Live and Learn” much to my delight then and now.
However, in light of reading Reclaiming Fair Use by Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, the wizened 25-year old me has many inquisitive thoughts. Inquisitions that amazingly don’t involve Ken Norman, Duane Causwell or other luminous 1990s NBA players.
Specifically, Reclaiming Fair Use piqued my curiosity when it recalled the Sony Betamax VCR back in the 1980s. This VCR had the ability to record TV shows and allow viewers to “time shift” when they watched the Cosby Show and other delights of the 1980s. Incredulous, media companies sued to have the Betamax banned since it allowed for copying their copyright shows. The courts ruled against these money-grabbers, but in its ruling it laid forth an economic rationale: individuals copying the shows didn’t cut into the market share of the show creators.
Well, this got me wondering. What exactly are these companies creating? When my family bought that NBA Jam video in 1995 what were we actually buying? Was it the right to view those NBA highlights whenever we wanted? Or did we already possess that right? So instead, were we buying the convenience of already having highlights selected and packaged in VHS form?
Furthermore, that Joe Public song used is laced with a litany of music samples. I can identify three quite clearly: 1) James Brown’s “Get Up, Get Into, Get Involved”, 2) Steely Dan’s “Peg”, and 3) “The Grunt” by the J.B.’s.
The last of those songs itself is built upon an older Isley Brothers song called “Keep on Doin‘”.
Just looking at this music video reveals just how interdependent culture is. Nothing is ever truly new or original. It stands on the shoulders of the work of others and in the process reveals that intellectual property is in reality a common field of creativity and not a fiefdom of originality.
Curtis
You pose a wonderful question about creativity. If everything is derivative, what is new? If we are all standing on the shoulders of those who came before, what part of what we’ve created is ours alone, to be copyrighted and promoted and heralded? I have no more answers than you, but appreciate the way you framed the question.
I love this post Curtis! You always find a way to connect back to basketball! I think you pose an interesting question that neither this weeks readings, nor my book review author Paul Goldstein, addresses. I think if we were answering the question in 1995, people would say consumers were buying the convenience of a VHS tape with basketball highlights. In light of youtube, however, people can just go online and watch last nights replays whenever they want…for free. Granted, you might now have the same quality, but consumers today balk at the idea of having to pay for “free and easy” entertainment. The question that I have though is how do youtube submitters get around the warning “that NBA games are protected by copyright and are not to be redistributed without the expressed consent of the NBA?” I know some people just take videos of their TV screen, but others do not. I wonder if there are any recent legal cases for the NBA or MLB where a fan has infringed on their copyright.
Your examination of the VHS conundrum highlights an underlying theme I noticed during this week’s readings. The debates surrounding copyright and fair use also seem to circle around another question: What exactly constitutes an appropriate consumption of culture? At what point does audience engagement become transgressive?
Great post — maybe you could point to the two factors Jaszi and Aufderheide argue must be considered in making a fair use designation:
o Did the unlicensed use “transform” the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
o Was the amount and nature of material taken appropriate in light of the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
Of course their argument can not be reduced to a checklist. Most importantly, however, you point to the larger rationale behind fair use — the social dimensions of cultural production.