I’d heard about the 2 Live Crew – Roy Orbison case going all the way to SCOTUS, its scope, broad artistic impact, and censorship-promoting (it can be argued) conclusion. It’s sad to me, as an artist, that the group merely received a copyright license to keep their song public, that they couldn’t win a war for artists everywhere, and that the copyright holders who granted the license could revoke it at any time. It was almost a step in the right direction.

That 2 Live Crew asked for permission to use “Pretty Woman,” were denied, and went ahead with it anyway, says a few things to me, as an artist. One is that they were too wild and rebellious to follow art-restrictive copyright laws. Another is that they must have known they had a good thing on their hands with that cover version. They most likely knew they had trouble on their hands during the writing process–delicious trouble.

The argument could be made that artists should follow 2 Live Crew’s example: if they’ve got something they know is gold, yet it draws on a past work as its base and uses part of that work, the danger of releasing it essentially illegally is worth the price of the eventual ensuing legal firestorm, and a lot of time and money.

I wouldn’t advise most artists to follow that argument, however. You need money to win that kind of fight. Resources. Good lawyers. The little artists need the big ones to step up and fight these fights for us. (the trouble is–who wants to throw their (apparently) hard-earned money down a well like that?)

The funniest SCOTUS quote I’ve ever read, synopsis quoted directly from the article by Lydia Pallas Loren at Open Spaces:

The Supreme Court recognized that “2 Live Crew’s song ‘was clearly intended to ridicule the white-bred original’ and ‘reminds us that sexual congress with nameless streetwalkers is not necessarily without its consequences. The singers . . . have the same thing on their minds as did the lonely man with the nasal voice, but there is no hint of wine and roses.’”

I envision Clarence Thomas authoring that majority opinion summary. Perhaps not.

Artists have to create everything they can. Time is precious these days; art takes time to create. What little we can get our hands on should be held as precious, not derided as infringing on someone else. It’s a little akin to the argument that gay marriage is a lessening of someone else’s right, or a distortion to the institution of (hetero) marriage.

It always comes down to money, doesn’t it? The great equalizer it is. Makes me a little ill.

I agree with Loren that copyright law may be twisted into a form of censorship, distancing itself from it Constitutionally-laid plans of knowledge-promotion. Until the laws continue on their fluctuating path toward more complete freedoms, where artists can create what they want without fear of some towering overlord, artists can never be truly free.

Of course, I have no worry about this. I’m an original artist!