Silenced

Kazzy

Silenced

You're looking at (no longer listening to)
a big-time copyright infringer who has been shut down.

A guest post from Kazzy's husband, Gideon Burton.

Kazzy isn't too happy today. Her voice is being silenced, literally, by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Today she received a notice from Blogger that someone had complained of her infringing upon copyright. If she doesn't remove the copyrighted material from her blog it will be shut down. So, she's complying. After nearly 800 posts and many years, she doesn't want to put her blog at risk.

Here's the bad news.
I think it's cool that Blogger mentioned
the chilling effect of this action.

What makes me sad is that her singing has been such a central part of this blog and of her online presence generally. Kazzy has, of course, made no money from all of her singing. But copyright holders are becoming aggressive in protecting their intellectual property that is posted on large sites like Blogger or Box.net.

So, if you want to hear Kazzy's singing, you'll have to send her an email and she will send you the .mp3 file directly. Not as much fun, but there it is. Just don't post it online!

Today's take-down notice has already discouraged her from doing additional singing. She's even worried about her novel, part of which she posted online, because it was (quite loosely) based on a novel by Faulkner. What if they shut down her blog, or take her to court? Yep. That's how creativity gets killed in the digital age.

This is known as the "chilling effect" of current copyright law (check out chillingeffects.org for more info). Kazzy's case is a perfect example. Even though her singing is only promoting the brand of the singers whose work she has imitated and she never makes a dime from her singing, she is an infringer, a scoff-law now, and not the amateur but oh-so-beautiful performing artist that we've come to enjoy whenever she posted another song. This chilling effect is powerfully ironic, as the original intent of copyright was to encourage creative work. In the digital age, when algorithms and bots can identify potentially infringing material and automatically take it down (Kazzy's post with the offending cover of a K.T. Tunstall song was automatically removed by Blogger) -- it creates a climate of non-creativity. Do you feel the chill?

We need better copyright law for creative people of all stripes. We also need to use creative commons licensing as an alternative (both when producing and using media). I encourage those of you who share dissatisfaction about the current legal status of intellectual property to follow the work of Nina Paley (an animator and advocate of "copyleft" who urges us to question copyright) or to read the books listed below.

In the meantime, what are your thoughts about Kazzy being silenced? How does this make you feel about copyright law?

Lewis Hyde, Common as Air:
Revolution, Art, and Ownership

Keith Aoki, Bound by Law:
Tales from the Public Domain

James Boyle, The Public Domain:
Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture:
The Nature and Future of Creativity