The Ethics and Art Of Stealing

Jonathan Lethem, author of Fortress Of Solitude and Gun, With Occasional Music, has a very interesting article posted over at Harper's dealing with copyright and plagarism. It's pretty interesting stuff and worth a read, especially if you're at all creatively inclined.

Here's a sample:

"Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work. The Recording Industry Association of America prosecuting their own record-buying public makes as little sense as the novelists who bristle at autographing used copies of their books for collectors. And artists, or their heirs, who fall into the trap of attacking the collagists and satirists and digital samplers of their work are attacking the next generation of creators for the crime of being influenced, for the crime of responding with the same mixture of intoxication, resentment, lust, and glee that characterizes all artistic successors. By doing so they make the world smaller, betraying what seems to me the primary motivation for participating in the world of culture in the first place: to make the world larger."

Fascinating stuff. Check it out.