TeledyN

The uncapturable

in one fell stroke of a stripe of red midst the deep blues, Barnett Newman defeated the entire reprint industry. They can copy his stripe all they wish, duplicate every non-variance of his pigment tone and brushwork, even blow their copies up just as high and mighty, but they cannot usurp his work's position as the Voice of Fire.

[...] Only this ephemerial state of being the uncapturable, the marker of a place in time and space, the now of being here, this is the only option in a digital rebroadcast future, an inevitable convergence path for all art in a digital age.

And that future is here.

I was reminded of this post today in the whole Cory Doctorow vs Nina Paley discussion, which is an excellent read, true, but they still seem to miss the hard fact point how if what you can do can be copied by machines, then look out for your job because the machines will do it! That's true if you fold towels for a living too.

ok, now this has gone beyond hilarious: not only were Marcell's The Fountain urinals not found but meticulously recreated, it now surfaces that the Duchamp estate is pissed about some stray 'copies' magically turning up with a cool $2.5M pricetag.

So now, copyright-fans, do tell: if some unauthorized someone replicates a slyly successful forgery, is it intellectual property theft? Or just hilarious.

Hilarious as this is, and so true too, I don't think this is nearly why bootlegging works (to keep our terms straight) -- just as with its namesake in the booze world, bootlegging works mostly because the price is reasonable and the product is available, and I'll add a third in that the product actually fits what the consumer wants it to do. By comparison, what we get from the studios via the retail chain (yes, even from Amazon) is a clipped minority subset collection of overpriced goods that, when played on modest equipment, fails to play due to being optimized to the latest greatest most expensive HD gear.

The solution is, not surprisingly, staring them in the face on every bit-torrent site:

1. obviously people are quite comfortable with 640x480 AVI files, largely because it is still better than broadcast TV and it fits the use-case of being as playable on the home entertainment console as on the desktop computer or laptop. Who stays glued to the couch anymore?
2. online downloads abound with content needlessly restricted to the false god of nationalisms. Listen up: there are asian/african/nordic/latin (take your pick) people living everywhere. And what's more, some latinos like japanese films, some africans like salsa epics; humanity is a global thing, omni-internetworked they know the other stuff is 'out there' and if you don't sell it to them because of some petty turf-war with your colleagues, well hey, no matter, the local asian/african/nordic/latino shopping mall will be pleased to offer it to them at a reasonable price of which you'll get not a penny because you're being a jerk. QED
3. the theatre experience is special, it is show and spectacular, it is a social space and increasingly it offers gear which the home set up simply cannot compete. So why charge the price of two top-dollar admissions? Assuming the title is actually available in the first place and the printed edition will actually play when you get it home. if you want them to buy a lesser experience so as to get them excited enough to go for the full-blown big-screen thing when the next comes along, you have to cut them some slack, Jack. Offer them a deal, and cut your costs if you need a bigger margin. For one thing, bit-torrent proves you can dispense with the whole landfill-bound fragile plastic disk and oversized DVD case, it is ob-so-lete.

and there, done deal. Now what was so hard about that?