Fiona Macmillan – copyright and corporate power.

Recent development in copyright legislation has an adverse effect of hindering cultural development. Do you agree? What are implications of copyright and intellectual property legislations for multimedia designers?


Andy Warhol probably wouldn’t be allowed to do this today – retrieved from
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/Image-Library/Warhol/Warhol-200_Campbells_Soup_Cans-1962-NGA-MI-lg.jpg

I agree that recent developments in copyright legislation can hinder cultural development, because there is less and less ability to use cultural artefacts in any way other than to consume in the way intended by the copyright owner. All power over intended use is given to the copyright owner, and fair-use is eroded. There is becoming less and less ability to culturally engage with copyrighted things, for example in parody or criticism, or to use cultural narratives or ideas and extend them in another work. For example in the case of the “string of puppies” a sculpture was judged to be infringing on the copyright of a photograph.

Implications of copyright and intellectual property for multimedia designers are that there are less common images and cultural products like music and films that are able to be referred to or used in a multimedia work. There is less ability to engage with different cultural products that are copyrighted. Multimedia design practice needs to not continue to perpetuate the power of copyright to continue to comodify and stop fair-dealing cultural engagement with cultural products. Private power needs to be more publicly accountable as Fiona Macmillan suggests. Multimedia design could be part of dispersing the growing power of the few over cultural production.