Enjoy this rant by an old old friend — delicious in its vitriol, yet way out of the park in comparison with my own strong feelings on matters of intellectual copyright. I couldn’t disagree more with the thesis of the essay … but its barbed points (penned by Chicago-based writer Noah Berlatsky) are coherent and straightforward and it’s worth hearing him out. At the very least, just so you can argue back. Noah’s view is mostly from the perspective of the world of contemporary comics and graphic novels, and when he touches on the intellectual copyrighting of music, it’s with an eye toward hip/hop-based sampling, but it’s an easy leap toward applying his anger toward the confusing morass of contemporary concert music’s licensing issues.
And handing it to him, as it were, Noah definitely puts his money where his pen is, by distributing the essay under a Creative Commons license. You won’t find me doing anything like that (as I have to make a living, Noah) but the gesture is appropriate and I applaud.
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