Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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There are posters discussing whether or not we should go into Iraq. That is a good discussion, and one we should have. But there's an equally important discussion, which we're perhaps moving into now, which is: "how do we as a nation decide whether we will participate in any given military action"?
I'm pretty sure the answer shouldn't be "let's just leave it up to the PM." And that's what's really getting my goat right now.
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Hard News: When the fast track seems a…, in reply to nzlemming,
That's awesome!
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Some dentists get to be dr here. So in Auckland my dentist was Dr Kool. Which I always thought was pretty, well, cool.
How that's relevant to roading projects and the democratic process I'm not sure. Something to do with 'pulling teeth'?
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Hard News: When the fast track seems a…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
erase the line on the map and make SH1 end at the Terrace Tunnel.
Or at the ferry terminal, where you can even put your car on a ferry and carry on on SH1 on the other side...
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I certainly hope the Basin Reserve flyover is indeed dooomed, with the extra o, mostly because I don't want the entry to my 'burb to be a big great ugly lump of concrete.
My favourite plan for traffic in the area, invented entirely by myself with no regard whatsoever to such paltry concerns as cost, is to lift up the whole Basin Reserve cricket ground, stands and all, and put the traffic underneath. I can't imagine any problems with that plan at all. None whatsoever. You may point to pesky historic places protection on the stands. You may point to seismic risk, and likelihood of liquifaction in former lake-beds, and tons of dirt crashing down on cars underneath. You may point at the estimated bill for such a plan, and turn green and have to sit down. I will point at you, and say "Stop standing in the way of Progress!"
or
"Stop limiting my artistic vision"
or
"We cannot let mere financial considerations limit our greatness!"
or something. -
No, I probably wouldn't think that right should exist in perpetuity (except maybe for the aforementioned ban on use in ACT party advertisements...). But maybe as long as anyone who knew me well in person is still alive, which could conceivably be longer than 70 years.
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But quoting, sampling, retelling, reframing etc – what if I don’t want the thing I’ve created quoted, sampled, retold, or reframed? If I’ve created it, don’t I have that right? Or is that the moral right mentioned earlier, separate from copyright?
Besides which, copyright applies not just to “creative” works, but also to non-fiction. I think of my grandmother, who after a lot of learning and hard work, wrote a textbook for English language teaching and learning. Her textbook was widely used in China, but she received no royalties for its use there because they didn’t have copyright law. She saw the irony in it, having been an ardent communist in her youth, but she would have quite liked to have had the royalties.
Maybe I just have to think about it some more. I certainly don’t know much about the extent of copyright.
I understand people’s frustrations at things being dropped out of print. But the effort that went into making that thing doesn’t go away. My mother’s had a few books published. Writing them them took years and stress and angst. They’ve now been out of print for 30 years. But my mum’s finances are pretty tight, and if someone was able to just come along and reprint them and sell them without her getting any reward for all her work, just because they’d been out of print for a while, I’d think that was pretty rude. Sometimes I’ve thought it could be fun to make a new book based on one of her books, but with additional chapters or sections from the point of view of another character in the book. But if I wrote and published that, and made money from it, and all that money went to me and none to her, that would feel wrong too.
To me, a creative work isn’t just a lightbulb going off in someone’s head. It’s the result of work and maybe study and investment of time and possibly money in developing the skills and aesthetic sense to create the thing that has the copyright. The person who comes along and copies that thing is getting the benefit of all those skills and training and hard work, without the person who developed them getting any reward. That’s exploitation. It’s like having someone work for you without paying them. And it doesn’t stop being exploitation just because a lot of time has gone by since you did the work.
So yeah, still not quite getting it.
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I'm not sure I completely understand the issue. Just because things are still under copyright, doesn't mean you can't see them, or hear them, or read them. It just means you might have to pay someone for the privilege (or get them from the library).
To be topical - if I'd written a stirring piece of music, I might want to be sure that the Act Party, or its future equivalent, couldn't ever use that piece of music in the background of one of its advertisements. You can argue that if I'm dead I won't care. But I don't think even my grandchildren should have to bear that.
I like Creative Commons, but there's a difference between that and the ability for others to use something you've created for their own profit or promotion. Copyright is, as far as I can see, the thing that allows a difference between these two outcomes.
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Southerly: This Week in Parliament (in…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
You forgot the Twilight reference. That was what the Venturi orifice was referring to, right? Oh, wait, Twilight was Volturi, not Venturi. Now I don't know whether I'm mortified at having mentioned it, or relieved that at least it didn't sink in enough for me to remember properly.
As you were, nothing to see here, move along. -
Yep. My interest in the Labour Party just died a little further.
I may be being unfair. I don't know much about Andrew Little. But nothing he's said has inspired me so far.