ip in every-day language
Friday, March 10th, 2006 4:08 pm
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» saying goodbye to sivacracy, 2008-09-19 (score:17)
In an article about the post-Brokeback cowboy fashion revival [NYT 2006/3/9], I noticed this paragraph:
When you unravel the history of cowboys and their clothes, the 150-year tug of war over who’s a cowboy and who’s a dude, as department-store cowboys are still derisively called, gets tangled. The Wild West may be the place where branding was born, but if the last 150 years have made anything clear, it is that no one has staked a clear copyright claim on cowboy style.
I’m not sure what it says about our culture that IP concepts are simultaneously so ubiquitous and so mangled.
algorithmically similar posts:
» shaolin trademarks and copyright as generic for IP, 2007-04-29 (score:23)» craft and copyright, 2008-02-22 (score:20)
» carnivalia, 2005-12-09 (score:17)
» saying goodbye to sivacracy, 2008-09-19 (score:17)
“no one has staked a clear copyright claim on cowboy style”
As if there was such a thing, or that such a claim would make any sense, but here is an article from Slate about fashion designers lobbying Congress for copyright protection for their designs.
http://www.slate.com/id/2137954/
Ah, I guess it’s never safe to say there’s no copyright claim on something: Someone, somewhere will come up with one.
I’ve been watching the fashion lobbyists with some amusement and contemplating blogging about it, but for some reason have been feeling less chatty lately. But since you bring it up, I have a contrarian, feminist curmudgeonly response: Let ‘em have their 3 years of sui generis fashion design protection. Why? Because I truly believe it will kill — or at least really hurt — the fashion design industry.
Now, I can appreciate a good-looking pair of pleather shoes with arch support and a modest but height-enhancing heel. But I really believe the fashion industry is nobody’s friend. It encourages excess consumption of resources (bad for the environment, bad for poor people); feeds into body image problems, particularly for women; and last but not least, affords ample opportunity for discrimination on meaningless and arbitrary criteria.
So bring it on: 3 years’ protection for designs. What will happen? Aside from supporting more attorneys, if it’s at all effective, it will reshape the fashion industry. Upscale fashion designers will become less influential, because they won’t be getting “ripped off” by the popularizers. So ultimately the upscale fashion designers are no longer household names. My sense is that since the hunger for “fashion” is fed by the cult of personality, a loss of exposure and reputational effects will ultimately cut into the appeal of “fashion”. Who’s going to be interested in going to fashion design shows if you can’t afford to buy the actual fashion designs, and if you’re not looking to make a knock-off? I think it’s a pretty small audience.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the utter elitism of fashion design will continue to spawn its own fan base and making it even more elite will add to its mystery and allure.
But somehow I just don’t care. I think they’re foolish for jumping onto the property bandwagon and discounting reputational effects. But the proposed protection is limited to a particular industry, and short-term in length, so if they want to experiment in their own industry, go for it. I don’t see real harms to individual consumers or the public — if people can’t buy a cheap version of this year’s Little Black Dress, well, they could always wear last year’s version. And if other people can’t make a cheap version of this year’s Little Black Dress, well, they can always make cheap versions of the LBD from 3, 5, 10, and 20 years ago.
I’ll be interested to see the outcome, anyway; and I certainly look forward to the courtroom displays of the equivalent of “prior art”.