“plagiarize, let no ones work evade your eyes”

Thomas Lehrer

That world is called cyberspace(80’s reference).

Exactly.

Btw, this blog is really embracing the freetard flag now. Not even trying to hide it anymore.

So what are the other major pirate cheerleading sites besides Techdirt and TorrentFreak?

“But who said art has to cost money?

I’ve always loved Ian MacKaye’s thoughts about this. That art/music is free (and always will be free), because art/music is like water. It’s essential to us, and we can go down to the stream anytime we want to drink. But sometimes you might want to drink in your car or in your home, and so someone puts that water in a container to make it more convenient for you. And it’s the container/convenience you pay for, not the art/music inside it.

Although I realize this wasn’t specifically what Coppola was getting at with that line.

There is a huge difference between influence and replication. The Beatles might have been influenced by Chuck Berry or Chubby Checker, but they did much of it their own way. They were influenced. The cover band at your local bar? They are into replication.

Any of us can take a song we hear on the radio and sing other lyrics we make up to it. That is easy. Someone learning to play the piano (or even the Ukulele) can learn to play someone elses music, and perhaps play it in their own way. That is much closer to pure replication than it is to influence.

FFC says “You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice”. That is what influence is all about. Watch our movies, see how we do it, make your own. It doesn’t imply in the slightest that you should just replicate, or duplicate. As he said, in making a movie, even taking is only the first step. It isn’t an end in itself.

200 years ago, we had no simple way to distribute music in a manner that could be purchased for enjoyment. The only way you got music was to attend a concert. Now we can have music 24 hours per day from hundreds of different sources. Concerts aren’t the only way to get music, many people never attend a live show. They still enjoy music. As FFC says, maybe music should be free. It isn’t a definitive statement that it should, only that it is something to consider.

Oh yeah, I agree with Anonymous on this one, TD really is hoisting the freetard flag the last little while. I attribute that to the fact that they are finally seeing that government and private legal actions are having an impact on the online world, and that perhaps the all you can eat buffet of free stuff is getting curtailed.

Still waiting, Anonymous. Specific evidence or complete retraction. Now.

it’s inspiring to read these reflections from one of the great creative minds in film. how far we’ve come – or been driven – when such common sense, awareness of history and thoughtful questions will be seen by some as radical… or more properly perhaps, heresy….
d

ps- love Banksy’s work, but just to be fair…

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
Pablo Picasso

You’re not seriously attributing that quote to Banksy, are you? Because it’s been attributed to other artists since before he was born.

Bzzt. Whoops. Go look up the definition of ‘free market’. Piracy means this is the exact opposite of a free market.

But a moronic statement like yours is to be expected on this site…

If you just re-recorded his song, then you stole from him. If you wrote a “new” country song with your own words, you own opinion, and your own twist on the sound, then you created something new.

When FFC says “steal my stuff” he isn’t suggests “copy my movie and give it away”, he is saying to steal his approach, his idea, his camera angle, his pacing, whatever it is that you see in his movies as great, and make it your own. Use it your own way, move forward.

There is a difference (as your song writing example goes) between replication and inspiration. Understanding the difference makes all the difference.

Go look up the definition of ‘free market’.

OK

Free Market Definition:
Where buyers and sellers can make the deals they wish to make without any interference, except by the forces of demand and supply.

And your point was?

Piracy means this is the exact opposite of a free market.

Really? So your assertion is that:
“Well you won’t sell it to me for the price I’m prepared to pay so I’ll get it for free from someone else”
is less like the above definition than:
“I have it and you can’t get it from anyone else so you must pay the price I set and I have a whole other organisation (the government) to make sure you do”?

I did quite well at english in school but clearly my comprehension skills are slipping. I bow to the obvious master of language. Please explain by all means for us lesser mortals.

Or is it simply that the words “buyer” and “demand” are only there as place holders and not intended to be interpreted as part of the definition?

I would think that as an artist, the act of borrowing or using an idea of mine to build on would be greatest form of flattery.

I knew someone would say that. I was going to say it myself if no one had just to get it out the way.

Every time someone says something like this or an alternative method of making money to the current status quo works in some situation, someone pipes up and explains why that’s an exception and doesn’t work in general.

In this case “because he’s already rich from it” was the obvious one and I’m almost suprised it wasn’t followed up by something like “If he really thinks that why doesn’t he give away all his copyrights or something?”
I’m curious though what the argument would have been if he’d been a poor or unknown film maker. I’m guessing either “Well he’s not got enough experience for his opinion to count for much” or possibly “Well of course you can give little films away for free, but you could never do that with a big film, they cost just too much to make!”

You fail logic forever.

Copyright is a monopoly, monopolies make a market non-free. Therfore anything that busts up a monopoply makes a market free again.

Does Masnick post a headline when an artist says their art is for sale, not to be taken for free?

He does. Usually also commenting why he thinks the artist in question is wrong.

That’s rich. Gotta see that one some time.

Does Mike give away advertising here for free?

Does he give his presentations for free?

Until Mike Masnick starts giving away these things, he’s really not connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy.

I guess when I show up at his winery, I can expect to take home a few free cases of his artistic wine.

Awesome. Thanks Francis 🙂

Is making silly comments all you do?

Masnick allows reposting of all his articles, but he doesn’t give free ad space because ad space is limited by what users are willing to deal with. In other words, he’s selling the scarce but doesn’t sweat the copying of the infinate…….which is exactly what he teaches artists to do.

Mike gives away his content for free, quite valuable content at that. The reason he can make money from advertising is because he is constantly producing new content that keeps people like you and me coming back.

I could copy his content to my own website any time I want and Mike would not have a problem with it. I cannot make money from his content. The market will rapidly become aware that I steal content and they will soil my comments. The comments are a big reason people come back to TD. Also, it takes time for me to copy Mike’s content onto my site, making TD a more timely place to get the content. I can’t compete with that.

With every breath you take, you are not buying the air that you breath are you a thief?

You are invading the public space, you are trying to rob people free interactions.

P2P DNS is like anything else: It does nothing, because the traffic still goes over the same networks and goes through the same IPs, and the same infrastructure, and the traffic will still have the same profile and will still easily be blockable by even simple systems. Better, the entire DNS system will be easily hijacked and turned against people. It’s a fail all around.

Copytardo, stay away from tech talk you are not good at it.

People can create their own secure channels over the infra-structure that exists and the traffic will be indistinguishible from any other traffic except in the amount that is being send, there is no patterns to search for in those instances, a million dollar deep packet solution can be defeated by simple doing 2 things at the same time like streaming audio or video and using another software, how will you separate the two if you don’t have the ability to know what it is inside the packets?

Further there are already solutions to DNS hijacking(i.e. government seizures), try looking at TOR hidden services and Osiris Serverless Portal System, not to mention complete solutions for network protocols that are decentralized, encrypted and anonymous like Netsukuku.

The Pirate Parties are single issue, narrowly focuses special interest groups that will never have enough of a wide appeal to get anything done. They may elect a few members, but that is more to do with proportional representation rules rather than any real victories. Another fail.

I can cite the Prime Minister of Japan who elected some people to just pass the legislation he needed as proof of your inability to understand how things work. Try searching for Kozumi Children.

If ever the Pirate Party do a search to see the things people want and promise to change the laws accordingly, they probably become the most powerfull party on earth, the tools are here, you just need a forum where people propose laws and vote on those laws using encrypted keys to assure only one vote for person recording they physical location to plot a graphic on a map of how things are welcome or not.

So saying they will never be able to do something is not a risky proposition is just stupid, have more respect for something that could rock your world hard.

Operation payback are a bunch of DDoS’ing kids. Giving them a shout out sort of gives me an indication of your age (and grade level in school, which is about 10)

Yep their are mostly kids, no argument there, kids are impatient and don’t know they have other options, still that is just a sign that there is feroucious opposition to your kind and that is not going away anytime soon either LoL

What you should learn from Torrent freak is that every time a big site is taken down, another site comes up in a country they think they can hide out in. The list of countries tolerating the crap is getting smaller and smaller, and soon everyone will find themselves hosting in Sweden and Turkey and trying hard not to get arrested. That isn’t exactly progress.

Or people just start using anonymous networks overlays, that are today impossible to probe. Retroshare is a good example of one, Omemo is another, StealthNet is yet another and next generations could embed audio and video inside other videos and that would by pass any filters based on fingerprinting in existence today, is not progress beautiful?

The reality is that governments are more and more aware of the economic impacts of piracy, and even countries like China are showing that they understand the value of IP. What you see today short run (the all you can eat buffet) isn’t what you will see in the long run.

Governments care about other aspects of IP laws, those laws are perfect for censorship.
But it doesn’t matter that much the all eat buffet is just getting started I can post here a mile long(no kidding) list of free content that is free to share and distribute legally, like it or not you will need to compete with free or board the free train if you want to stay on the market, no government is going to pass laws forbiding people from creating content and saying others can give it away for free. Also the open source philosophy values cooperation and stimulates a better market, where production is local but creation is a global affair, everyone can make money not just the choosen few.

Your daddy(i.e. goverment) can’t help you and it won’t be able to do anything about it. Your days are numbered.

Can we talk IPv6? It’s coming. More and more companies are getting converted, more and more of the network infrastructure can handle it, and it will only be a matter of time before it comes out. IPv6 will do away with much of the need for shared or ever changing IP addresses, and will make it easier to identify an individual user based on IP address. The same IP address can be offered back to the same MAC address all the time, etc. There will be less and less legal need for proxies, and over time traffic from known proxies is likely to be denied by networks, making it even harder to hide out.

I think you don’t appreciate fully the economic incentives companies and others will have to keep doing the same things that IPv4 did. People won’t buy a whole bunch of IP addresses for every device inside their companies when they can just buy a small number and use NAT’s to multiply that, ISP’s will not buy one IP address for every customers they have dude.

The wild west didn’t stay the wild west for long. There are reasons. Learn and understand what is really going on, and by the time you actually make it to university, you might be ahead rather than behind.

That is right at some point order will come to the chaos and your invasion of the public space will not be tolerated anymore.

You are invading the public space in the name of profits, you are trying to force the vast majority to conform to something they were not consulted about it and will fight back.

Just for clarification it must be noted that piracy have been going on for at least 40 years since the 70’s and you are saying that somehow it will stop? and even if stopped miraculously what makes you think people would go and give you any money? do they not have alternatives?

God knows I have found legal free and good alternatives and don’t give money to people like you. You are not the center of the universe and you will never see my money, that I can promise.

You can stomp your feet and whine about it all you want, but the Internet got sold to profits a long time ago. It’s not the but a big fucking shopping mall now.

And we already know piracy can never be completely stopped, as it’s been around forever, but how many times does it have to be repeated?

Nobody cares if geeks, nerds and dorks steal content.

Wouldn’t want to stop how all of you gain inner fulfillment in your empty, worthless lives, now would we? That’d just be mean.

The idea is to stop it from being so easy for normal people to do so.

Other cheerleanding pirate sites that are totally legal LoL

Music:

Jamendo (Free Music)
Beat Pick (Free Music to listen, paid license if it is to be used)
SectionZ (Free Music)
Opsound (Free Music)
Pod Safe Audio (Free Music)
Magnatune (Free Music)
CCMixter (Free Music)

The same reason you give your advice for free.

Because he can.

Floyd it is not that simple.
Piccaso once rightly said “you can not learn technique” . Whilst there are no original ideas in art , all performances are unique , original.
A particular business model for cultural production, based upon what were natural monopolies over production and distribution of copies of,
A performance is coming to a end.

“men come , men go, all things remain in God”

Oh! when the people stomp their feet your world rocks is that not beautiful?

The most beautiful part is that, there is no technical solution, no political solution and no enforcement solution for “sharing”, you can ignore that all you want in the end people will still keep doing what they are doing today and you have no way of stopping that.

But things change and I have absolute confidence that someday people will just realize that they don’t need to illegally pirate anything is much more pleasant to pirate things legally.

Jamendo FTW.

Yours sincerely Freetardo the Pirate from the seven networks.

The idea is to stop it from being so easy for normal people to do so.

Ignorant Copytardo, that goal is also untainable. Technology is not getting harder is getting easier with each iteration.

Want to see how easy it is to stream something to a lot of people?

DVDFlow was a first attempt to make something like a personal HULU for the masses.

Put that on a virtual appliance and install in a PC and you get your own personal Netflix.

Scary for you, fun to the rest of the world.

A few free cases of his digital wine.

What about the ad space here?

Why doesn’t Masnick give that away for free?

I’m assuming you’re being deliberately obtuse here because cynic though I am and liable to believ the worst of people I refuse to believe anybody is that stupid.

> Copytardo

Could both sides PLEASE stop with the name-calling? It adds nothing to the discussion, and only makes you both look like immature children who have no better argument and so have to resort to calling the other side names.

Focus on the argument, not on the person.

“His blog posts are copy and paste stuff”

Except when it’s not. If you’d bother to look through his post history you’d find plenty that’s not just quotes. But I’m probably wasting my time as you really don’t care about little things like facts and logic.

Funny, I don’t see the words copying or stealing in the sentence you’re responding to. Are you talking to yourself?

So what’s the deal? Do I get to go to his winery and take some wine for free or what?

monopoly would only apply if there were no other options in a marketplace, and it very rarely happens in a free market, even with the most restrictive of copyright or patent laws. Patents alone generally don’t great a monopoly. Even with drugs (where the medication formula and combinations are patent), there is still competition. In their Viagra should have been the only impotence drug, yet the market is also there for Cialis and others. Even under the strictest of rules, there is no monopoly.

It’s the same thing with computers, cell phones, and thousands of other things. There are all sorts of patents issued, and all sorts of alternate solutions sought and found, making for a huge amount of innovation (actual “new idea” innovation, rather than just minor changes to existing models) such that what we have isn’t a monopoly, but massive parallel developments streams.

Since we don’t face monopolies very often (and when we do, they don’t last very long), that argument tends to fail.

For them! The rest of us, I believe, are attempting to move forward.

If Coppola wants me to file-share his movies, why doesn’t he make them available for free? LOL! Fat chance of that.

There seems to be two types of stories on techdirt, FUD and DUF. We all know what FUD is. DUF is just the opposite of FUD. This story is all DUF.

Doubt, Uncertainty, and Fear? How is that different from Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, aside from changing the order?

It has the opposite effect/intent of FUD, that’s why I’m calling it DUF. The idea is that instead of using false or misleading information to create unfavorable opinions (FUD), false or misleading information is being used to create favorable opinions (DUF).

I’m working on a good “backronym” to make it work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

“Dubious Uplifting Fluff” it is. DUF is born! 🙂

Can you make a copy of his wine with your own means?

If not you are not welcome to do so.

“Dubious Uplifting Fluff” it is. DUF is born!

Ah but that’s copyright me that is. I’ll be generous and let you pay the $20 license fee before I sue you for $150,000. 😉

Ah but that’s copyright me that is. I’ll be generous and let you pay the $20 license fee before I sue you for $150,000. 😉

Actually that does prompt me to a (probably rambling) question.
This is probably totally the wrong thread for this but what the hell it’d lose context otherwise.

Before I started reading techdirt I was of course aware of copyright (and other IP type) and probably in general what I should and shouldn’t do with say a song. Reading Techdirt has given me more info and insight into how (US at least) copyright works at a legal level, which actually makes things less clear.

So I’m going to use this as an example and see if anyone can clarify things a bit, and along hte way perhaps demonstrate what I think is so daft about current copyright law.

“Dubious Uplifting Fluff” as I understand it would, as a creative written expression on a website, be considered by default covered by copyright under US law, am I correct? I kinda hope I’m not there because that would be slightly scary, but there seem to be copyright lawsuits that revolve around almost equally small “creative expressions” – the 7 notes of the “Under Pressure” riff, Queen vs. Vanilla Ice many years ago for example. Whether I’m right or wrong on that point, let’s assume it is covered for the sake of argument.

The next question is whos copyright is it? Mine since I coined the phrase? Or could AJ claim that the original idea of a “backronym” of FUD is his and therefore my “work” is derivative of his? On the other hand both “FUD” and “Backronym” are pre-existing and both AJ’s idea and my expression of that idea are derivative of both. Do they have copyright associated? Are they public domain? I have no idea how I would even go about finding out and had I not started reading this blog probably would never have even thought about it.
Or is it possible that as an expression on someone else’s website that Techdirt own the copyright on “my” expression? In this case I didn’t see any T&C to which I agreed, but from memory the original “boilerplate” license for Chrome (could be misremembering there but something like that, IE maybe?) assigned all rights of anything you did through it to Google. Well let’s assume it’s my copyright.

Assuming it’s mine, does that then mean that any other use of a “Backronym of FUD” should now be considered a derivative work of mine as the first such expression? Even if it uses totally different words? That seems a stretch, but again there seem to be plenty of suits that on the surface are based on equally tenuous links – Catcher in the Rye seems popular in this space.

And now we come to enforcement (and the even sillier bit). As we’ve established I “own” the backronymn in question and everything that refers to it I want to make money off it as many would claim is my absolute right. It’s valuable intellectual property after all – clearly it has value to AJ, who was looking for the “solution” to his problem that I provided. I’ve decided that no one is allowed to use “my” backronym without a license fee… $20 should cover it. Hmm that would seem to mean that Techdirt now owe me a license fee if they want to continue to display my valuable property too.. this is getting good.

Except if I do that they’ll probably just remove the comment and it won’t get around. OK I’ll extend a “free” license to Techdirt because of the advertising value. But everyone else is getting charged. I’m sure everyone else will want to pay my entirely arbitary fee.

Except the words are right there. How the hell can I tell who copys them and to where? I know I’ll inist Techdirt add some software to their site that allows tracking of copy and paste to protect my property. It is very valuable after all.

Except what if someone just reads them and remembers them and uses them elsewhere? Hmmm well there’s plenty of laws about that. I’ll get the government to enforce it for me. I’m sure I’ll get the same response from the authorities for the THEFT of my property as major studios and record labels get. The law is for everyone after all.

And I’ve set my price at $20… what should I do if a bunch of people use it and send me $5 each because that’s what they’re willing to pay? Should I sue them?

And so on. A little trite as an example perhaps. Feel free to tear it apart as I’m truely interested in both sides (if such exists), but bear in mind it’s an illustration not reality (I don’t think!).

And just as a final thought, contrived though that is, it is derived from the failry extensive information reading comments on this site. That’s more information than most people have about how copyright works and I’m willing to accept if someone tells me the whole thing is total b*llocks. Which is kind of the point. How is it reasonable to enforce laws on the population that are not easily understandable and therefore impossible to tell if you are breaking the law? The ultimate expression of that is that no-one dare do anything for fear of being “derivative” or worse, and yet as AJ and I have just demostrated in a very small way, that’s exactly how ALL creativity works, though the origins are often more obscure which only adds to the problem.

The people that upload movies to pirate sites don’t own the rights either, and that doesn’t stop them.

What’s stopping Francis from doing the exact same thing?

Let’s see him put his money where his mouth is.

You too. When are you going to give away your ad space for free and start making your money with t-shirt sales?

I think the DUF idea is pretty funny, as immature as it may be. 🙂

Oh, by the way…. any rights I may or may not have to “Dubious Uplifting Fluff” and any derivatives I ascribe to whatever Creative Commons “Do what the bloody hell you like with it” license might be available. If someone can make money off it I’ll be seriously impressed. If you do and happen to make a fortune, then you might be kind enough to remember me and send me a beer or something.

Goodness, you’re mind’s in a tizzy

You think? Try reading it again and, since I mentioned it, insert “musical phrase or riff” and imagine it posted on a music blog say by a well known musician. Am I really that far out?
Laws are supposed to be “for the overall benefit of the people”, not “for the overall benefit of the people with enough money to work the system”. How do “the people” benefit when it’s unclear to a common level of understanding whether they have broken a law or not?

You can keep that one.

Which was at least perenthetically my point – were I to ascribe a wholly artificial value to such a “creation” and insist people pay it if they want to use it, I’m going to get 1 of 2 reactions:
1- People will ignore it and never use it
2- People will just laugh at me and use it anyway because it’s right there to be used.
Either way that doesn’t work out well for me.

Remind you of any other situation at all?

I’m still working on my own backronym for DUF

But what you don’t know is I’m a secret multibillionaire so I can afford the finest lawyers to sue you for your “derivative” whatever it is when you come up with it. I’ve got more money than you so I can’t possibly lose. Bwa! Ha! HA! HAAAAAA! 😉

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=ad+block&cat=all

There, now STFU!

It may be that Hollywood is technologically obsolete at a certain level, at the level of _Apocalypse Now_, that the idea of expensively re-enacting the past in maximum possible detail, in order to film it is obsolete. I should like to construct an analogy of the visual image.

In 1815, the year of Waterloo, there were no cameras. The collective sense of what the battle looked like was formed by paintings, done many years after the fact. Producing such a painting involved getting people to pose for each figure, etc. In its essentials, it was rather like movie-making. One of the more successful painters was the wife of a colonel, who was in a position to borrow her husband’s troops for a re-enactment. Still, it has been pointed out that the “factual” content of the images is often impossibly wrong. Things simply couldn’t have happened that way. However, people related to the picture as if it were the truth.

The painting of recent battles was a special case of history painting. In the late eighteenth century and the nineteenth century, each country asserted its national identity by commissioning large and elaborate paintings of significant episodes in its historical past. The artists went to great deal of trouble to research all the different elements, making sure that the characters wore the right kind of clothes, etc. When the painting was finished, another artist would engrave an adaptation on a copper printing plate, taking account of the differences between the two media, and the plate would be used to produce paper prints which would be sold in quantity.

However, these pictures were inauthentic in one big sense. They were images of things which, at the time they happened, were not considered worth recording, because the collective mindset was different. Sometimes, the incidents were themselves fictional, invented a couple of hundred years after the fact– or five hundred, or a thousand, or two thousand. The Victorians were effectively imposing their own values on the past. For a time, they were able to fool themselves by collecting period detail.

In 1863, the year of Gettysburg, photography existed, but the paraphernalia necessary to take pictures filled a whole wagon. Photographers like Mathew Brady drove over the battlefields when it was all over, setting up their big tripod cameras, and taking pictures of the aftermath, and taking the wet glass photographic plates directly into the darkrooms built into their wagons to process them on the spot. At this time, half-tone printing had not yet been invented, so there were limits to the circulation of these pictures. Print media, such as newspapers, made engravings, drawing from various sources, some photographs, some sketch-drawings, and some pure imagination. A large selection of a couple of thousand photographs was eventually published in the _The Photographic History of the Civil War_, in ten volumes, edited by Francis Trelyvan Miller, in 1911. However, the public visual memory of the Civil War was still defined by the big painting commissioned for a public building. This painting drew on the same kinds of sources as newspaper engravings.

History painting, in general, collapsed at the end of the nineteenth century. Halftone printing had come along, making it possible to photograph works of art, and economically reproduce them on paper. Equally to the point, travel had become cheaper and easier with the advent of railroads and steamships. Instead of making new pictures out of the imagination, it was possible to travel all over Europe and see works of art produced in historic times, and photograph them, and accurately reproduce the photographs for sale. In particular, the Spanish pictures were influential, those of El Greco and Velasquez. Madrid had been a remote city, difficult to get to, and the capital of a country which had once been a great power, but was now lost in its own past. In a sense, the Prado Museum and the Escoril Palace were a kind of lost world. History painting was demoralized. In the old pictures, people encountered a vivid way of life, which was not merely a translocated copy of their own time.

The big new wave of painting in the 1870’s and 1880’s was Impressionism. In terms of its subjects, Impressionism did not stray very far from home. Impressionist pictures shocked a lot of people because of their unfinished style, but at one level, they were fairly conventional. The pictures were usually of things which fell within the daily experience of the upper-middle-class customers. They painted a quite large number of pictures of little girls, engaged in their normal activities, playing with toys or whatever, and these pictures were commissioned by the parents. Very few impressionist pictures had any kind of public or political import. The people who painted public pictures were becoming artistic second-raters. Poster artists, working for the print media, were often very political, when they were not engaged in their main business of advertising. A very elaborate illustration, showing more than a hundred people, was likely to be an advertisement for a department store– or a labor union poster. Of course, eventually, advertising switched to photography when photography got good enough, with rich enough production values.

By the time of the World Wars, cameras had become compact enough and automatic enough that a news photographer, someone of the type of Robert Capa, could carry a camera instead of a rifle, and could keep up with the troops to such an extent that he was likely to be killed in battle eventually. Being that far forward, the photographer was able to produce compelling photographs, which could be sent home in the mail as unprocessed rolls of film, and which appeared in newspapers and magazines while the fighting was still going on. These photographs effectively deprived the artist of his ability to craft a collective memory. They were not technically so good as what an artist could produce, but they were comparatively real, and they wound up in every household, in the form of stacks of back issues of Life magazine in the closet or attic. Of course, during wartime, the pictures still had to pass censorship, so they did not show moral decadence or the like.

By the time of Vietnam, ordinary soldiers were often carrying cameras, although they naturally didn’t have as much time to use them as a combat journalist would have. Whether the pictures were taken by amateurs or professionals, Vietnam was the great age of the uncensored war photograph, depicting war in all its physical brutality. Only one veil was left: that of inner mentality. Lieutenant Calley still knew enough to lie about what he had done at My Lai. If he was giggling hysterically while he personally killed the small children, there is no record of it.

Iraq took the process one step further. Reasonably efficient press censorship was in place, but cameras had penetrated down to the “moron” level, at places like Abu Ghraib. According to recent press interviews, Lynndie England still cannot understand why what she did was wrong. She simply hasn’t the education or intelligence to grasp why abusing prisoners-of-war is shameful. It was someone like _that_, who did not understand the necessity of destroying potential evidence, who could casually create souvenir-pictures, the way a hunter does with a dead deer. And that is what the collective visual memory of Iraq will be.

Now, of course, other things equal, film/video cameras are heavier and bulkier than still cameras, but they are following the same basic trajectory. Photographic images, one might add, tended to “frame” movies, to define the visual look which movie-makers were striving for. At a certain point it will become impossible to make Hollywood movies which compete with the home movies made by the participants. Something similar applies to things like gun-camera films, video which is automatically recorded by equipment. Large sections of a movie will be built up out of commonly available archival footage, so abundant that it has no scarcity value, and is not controlled by a few organizations.

Alternately, film-makers might decide that they simply don’t need to pretend to portray certain events realistically. They can provide animation at the cartoon level for “framing content,” which can be done inexpensively with tools like Second Life, and concentrate their actual filming on much smaller scenes. A novelist varys his exactness of description according to circumstances. He doesn’t tell you exactly what a building looks like, unless it matters. In that case, he may very well draw a picture, or a map, or a diagram. A traditional Hollywood film-maker has to go all-out in achieving exact period detail, because he is trying to convince you that what he is showing you is reality. Once he simply gives up that goal, because it has become unattainable in the light of home movies and surveillance footage, the rules change. He has to give you enough visual cues so that you know what is going on, and where to locate the action. However, that can be done with inexpensive animation and image-processing technique.

Just as painting in the “Grand Manner” went through a fatal loss of confidence, I suspect that film-making in the Grand Manner will also go through a fatal loss of confidence. It will come to be understood that if a movie cannot be made inexpensively, that is a sign that this particular project is not well-suited for film.

Roy Strong, _Recreating the Past: British History and the Victorian Painter_, 1978

Gus McDonald, _Camera, Victorian Eyewitness: A History of Photography, 1826-1913_, 1979[1980]

Max Gallo, _The Poster in History_, 1974, 1975 [abridged translation of _I Manifesti_, 1972]