Tuesday 21 October 2008

copyFight


It seems there was a fleeting golden age for the stuff of reference, nostalgia and inside-jokes, and albeit, it was a virtual one, ready resources for a quick study and appending an effortless and expansive footnote to anything. Throttling battles over intellectual property and old claims laid to old monpolies and video-vaults have put an end to that, however. The one great wealths of clips and music have been diminished, certainly, and video form is sometimes a poor substitute for original sources seen in their original context. It's scary to think that coming generations may never hear of a Charlie-in-a-Box, Snaggletooth's laugh or a puppet called Madame, except maybe as contemporary allusions that are only intended for members of the mature audience, because of niggling copywrite laws. I was once going to explain to H that my father regarded my mother as Fred and Barney did the Great Gazoo, batting away an invisible gremlin, but it is really hard to explain without a few visual cues.