The Forge is all about creator control and so forth, but I've frankly never been completely on that boat past a certain point; creator control is good, when creating, but worse afterward in various situations.
I bring this up because I wasn't entirely certain how to phrase my thoughts during the whole OMG!NOMOREDUSTDEVILS!!?OMG!!NOES! fit part of the indie community suffered, and the equal OMG!YOUGUYSAREJERKSANDNOTREALLYINDIE!!ST
FU!!@$$! fit the other half suffered, but I came across
the following text earlier tonight and it fit:
For those who argue that the author’s wishes should be sacrosanct — should we move things more in that direction? What if all texts lived in DRM’ed, encrypted containers, and electronic readers had to ask permission of a central authorization server for the text could be displayed. This would allow the author to, after the fact, disable anyone from reading his or her works, if for some reason the author so desired it. Would that be a good thing? If not — and I hope most authors would agree this would be horrific power to give copyright holders — then it’s clear that author’s moral rights as creators should not be entirely sacrosanct, and that the society also has some claims on preserving its culture, and that once a book has been published and becomes part of the culture, society should have some claim on that book as part of culture.
And also:
Songs, poems, essays, and yes, even computer programs, once written and submitted for use/enjoyment/consideration of the society, become a part of the society’s culture, and so society has some moral claims on the work of art, just as the creator does; copyright is a delicate balancing act between the legitimate needs of the creative, as well as the needs of society. That’s why the copyright term is not infinite, even though the Disney Corporation might never want Mickey Mouse to enter into the public domain. The wishes of the creator are not absolute.
And:
The rights of the copyright owner is not absolute, even today. Copyright is a limited monopoly which is granted by society for the betterment of society. It is not just to...give absolute control of a work to its creator.
If you don’t believe that, take a look at the US Copyright Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Sections 107 through 122. They list all sorts of limitations on the creator’s exclusive rights granted by Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 106. Some of those limitations make absolute sense...
Section 110, subsection 1, allows performance or displays of copyrighted materials in classrooms of non-profit educational institutions — without having to pay any royalty fees. That’s because Congress decided as a matter of public policy, supporting the mission of non-profit educational institutions was more important than the absolute right of the creators of the copyrighted works.
So, yes, I'm for creator control during creation, but not for a stranglehold of creator control after release, whether that be with the written word, or with art, photos, games, or etc.
And I dearly hope I'm pissing off a bunch of hard-core creator's rights folks by saying that, especially the ones whose knickers twisted up during last year's Game Chef, where I argued against the idea of absolute and utter control over one's work in relation to that work being used as a basis for new work by someone else, and certain people chewed off their own limbs in disbelief and outrage that
I, an
artist, would and could say such a thing (instead of greedily clinging to complete ownership of my work like a two-year old who just learned to screech "MINE!").
ADDENDUM: None of the above is meant to imply that a
creator should be at the mercy of the public and enslaved to their desires, only their creations, to an extent. So we aren't going to lock artists or writers or publishers up and say "MAKE STUFF FOR US!" because that's their business.