R Street Institute recently released a report on copyright duration entitled: "Guarding Against Abuse -- Restoring Constitutional Copyright." The report examines how copyright terms today are completely unmoored from the original public meaning of copyright in the Constitution, and how this incredible disparity hinders learning, destroys our cultural legacy, hurts innovation and the general public, but most importantly it impedes filmmakers, artists, DJ's and other content creators that need to be able to build upon the work of others to create new content -- as we have done for centuries.

There is a cost to extremely and unusually long copyright terms as we have under current American law. Indefinite copyright would likely have been considered to have been a violation of core natural rights. It is for these reasons that James Madison ominously implored future generations that copyrights and patents must be guarded with "strictness ag[ainst] abuse." But, by any measure, abuse is precisely what we have seen.

That original U.S. statute created a 14-year copyright term, with the option of a 14-year extension if the author was still alive. Until 1976, the average copyright term was 32.2 years. Today, the U.S. copyright term is the life of the author, plus 70 years.

By contrast, patent terms have changed very little. Today's term for patents is 20 years. As legal historian Edward Walterscheid puts it, while patents and copyrights were included in the same clause of the Constitution and originally had the same or similar durations, the patent term has increased by just 43 percent while the copyright term has increased by almost 580 percent.

Congress must justify why a 20-year term can provide sufficient incentive to inventors, but not to writers and artists. The only explanation is cronyism and special interest manipulation: with patent policy there are interest groups on both sides, companies waiting for patents to expire and companies seeking to maximize their monopoly, but for copyright there is only one interest group, the copyright lobby, pushing for longer and longer copyright terms, without any heavy weight on the other side.

In the Senate Judiciary Committee report on extending copyright to life + 70, Senator Hank Brown (R-CO), the panel's only opponent, wrote that he "thought it was a moral outrage ... there wasn't anyone speaking out for the public interest." In Madison's words, there was no one to "guard" copyright "aga[inst] abuse."

Infinite Copyright on the Installment Plan

Ensuring that copyright was temporary was expressly written into the Constitution, but today special interest groups have created infinite copyright on the "installment plan," by continually extending it when it's about to expire. While the Founders' copyright was for 14 years, today's copyright lasts over 100 years. Thus the instrument the founders created to "promote the progress of the sciences" is actually being used to impede the progress of the sciences.

Copyrights and patents act, in some ways, as restrictions upon creation, speech and personal liberty. Under the Constitution, those restrictions are justified as necessary to provide incentives for creative genius, but they remain restrictions nonetheless and therefore must be heavily limited. It is precisely because they are restrictions, authorized and created by the government, that the founders called them monopolies.

The success of Disney epitomizes the importance of a rich public domain, allowing for copyright to eventually expire so others can learn from and build upon the work.

Disney, brought to you by the Public Domain:

Disney's recent 2013 film Frozen was based upon an 1845 fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, entitled The Snow Queen. Sleeping Beauty from 1959 was based upon a 262-year-old folk tale published by Charles Perrault in 1697.

Snow White from 1937 was based upon the Brothers Grimm folk tale from 1812, and when Walt Disney was asked about that film he explained that "[he] picked that story because it was well known." In fact three previous versions of Snow White had already been created by 1937, and Disney himself remembered having seen work performed before while growing up in Kansas City.

Under the current extremist copyright regime, as lobbied for by the content industry and enabled by Congress, there would never be another Disney Corp., whose success has been highly dependent on derivative characters and stories plucked from the public domain. Here is a short list of works created by Disney with storylines mostly or entirely based upon works in the public domain (including the often larger global revenues and other ancillary forms of lucrative merchandising and monetization):

Disney has been enormously successful repackaging older storylines from the public domain. Incredibly, while Disney was making its first feature film of Snow White, based on the public domain, they were considering making a feature film of Alice in Wonderland, but Disney "put the project on hold" because he believed that rights to Alice in Wonderland were not in the public domain. Disney was "so committed to using public domain works that he was willing to wait until all of the rights were clearly lapsed, and he finally released his version of Alice in 1951."

Other films in the Disney vault based upon the public domain include Cinderella, Robinson Crusoe, The Sorcerers' Apprentice, Pocahontas, The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Little Mermaid, Oliver Twist, a Christmas Carol, The Three Musketeers, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Treasure Island, Tarzan, and John Carter.

The Disney Corporation, of course, added their own secret sauce, but the data shows that even 262-year-old storylines (not to mention earlier works, like Aesop's Fables and the Greek myth of Hercules) easily can be translated to the modern world. But under current policy, there will never be another Disney Corp., because the availability of new materials to use from the public domain essentially stopped in the 1930s. While Disney took and reused from the public domain, none of the works created by Disney, including derivative works based upon public domain works, has entered the public domain for others to build upon. If current policy is extended, they never will.

The content industry has claimed that copyright is their property, a claim which is legally, historically and constitutionally incorrect, but under this claim they have sometimes argued that even fair use impedes upon their "property." One of their most vocal voices in Congress, Marsha Blackburn explained her thoughts on fair use, "I think we have to begin to look at this issue not as just piracy, not as just snippets, but we have to look at it as theft." If, in the vernacular of the content industry, taking other people's work without paying for it is always stealing, then the Disney Corporation is responsible for one of the greatest thefts in world history. Hollywood has "derived more profit from reusing public domain works than any other industry in history," yet lobbies for policies to ensure their works never enter the public domain.

Madison's "Abuse" manifested today:

There have been numerous studies on copyright duration, to find the most appropriate term to benefit existing and future content creators, the general public and other interests, and every study shows that today's copyright terms are insane. There simply is not any study to justify our current copyright term. The only explanation is cronyism. In fact, at times the MPAA has even been frank on how it wields its enormous checkbook and political influence to get its way:

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake ... Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."

Very candid indeed. Dodd said this after members turned against their SOPA-PIPA legislation to censure the Internet. Dodd's statement seems like potential evidence of quid pro quo bribery, which is a felony:

A) We won't write a check, if, B) you don't support this legislation now.

Dodd is the epitome of the fear that the Founders had of these systems being abused by special interests generations later -- and precisely why Madison told us to guard these instruments, with "strictness," against "abuse."

And during SOPA/PIPA, when MPAA/RIAA and their allies tried to kill innovation and censor the internet 12 million Americans were there to "guard" against abuse, forcing Congress to back down.

Is Congress going to reform, or is this a shell game?

As the House Judiciary Committee is considering major copyright reforms to provide for the next Great Copyright Act, they must include copyright terms more consistent with the original public meaning of the Copyright Clause. But, instead, so far they haven't even announced a hearing on the topic, a demonstration that Congress is simply not serious about reform. It's not serious about fixing the broken copyright system.

Congress must set a firm limit on copyright term that is backed by the data, and thereby protect the public domain of the future. Copyright terms over 100 years are ridiculously and unconstitutionally long, and a shorter term would do better to facilitate the Constitutional goal of "promoting the progress of the sciences."

"Support, advance, and develop Pacific Island media content and talent that results in a deeper understanding of Pacific Island history, culture, and contemporary challenges. Pacific Heartbeat, now in its third season, is an anthology series that provides viewers a glimpse of the real Pacific. From revealing exposés to rousing musical performances, the series features a diverse array of programs that will draw viewers into the heart and soul of Pacific Island culture."

"The NMC serves as an important component of American public television by nurturing the next generation of minority producers and program managers. Moreover, we create an awareness of the value of public media among communities which have historically been untapped by public television. From 1997 to 2002, the National Minority Consortia delivered over 88.5 hours of quality public television programming. Collectively, we have also funded 223 projects and 422 producers/directors. The past 25 years of work by the Minority Consortia has built a foundation for growth and contributed to the nation's appreciation of diverse cultures. Through innovative outreach campaigns, local screenings of works destined for public television, and promotion of web-based information and programming, communities of color are embraced rather than ignored. Our work in educational distribution further increases the value of public television programming by sharing our works with thousands of students.

We fund filmmakers, present works on public television and other venues, exhibit films and videos, and distribute works to schools and libraries. In addition, we facilitate production training, skills advancement, and career development through workshops, lectures, and counseling. Our collective growth is a testament to the creativity and commitment of our staff, board members, funders, and community partners across the country. As we collaborate, we provide a model for collegial support, mutual development, and growth. Together, we serve the needs of our communities by presenting thought-provoking programs that encourage dialogue, nurture respect, and promote understanding. Our high-quality programming builds new and diverse audiences, with an eye towards cultivating future stakeholders in public television."

"Whether we're in Hanalei, Wahiawa, Honolulu, Hilo or Kaunakakai, we'll find families who continue to keep the tradition alive -- recipes they continue to make that came from an ancestor. While in their kitchen or back yard, we learn about individual characters and family history. We meet the grandmother, the son, and the niece -- the person that has taken the lead of learning how to make the family recipe best -- and we delve into their family albums, listen to their stories, and learn more about who they are by following their recipe to its origin."

Reading literary fiction can be highly pleasurable, but does it also make you a better person? Conventional wisdom and intuition lead us to believe that reading can indeed improve us. However, as the philosopher Emrys Westacott has recently pointed out in his essay for 3Quarksdaily, we may overestimate the capacity of literary fiction to foster moral improvement. A slew of scientific studies have taken on the task of studying the impact of literary fiction on our emotions and thoughts. Some of the recent research has centered on the question of whether literary fiction can increase empathy. In 2013, Bal and Veltkamp published a paper in the journal PLOS One showing that subjects who read excerpts from literary texts scored higher on an empathy scale than those who had read a nonfiction text. This increase in empathy was predominantly found in the participants who felt "transported" (emotionally and cognitively involved) into the literary narrative. Another 2013 study published in the journal Science by Kidd and Castano suggested that reading literary fiction texts increased the ability to understand and relate to the thoughts and emotions of other humans when compared to reading either non-fiction or popular fiction texts.

Scientific assessments of how fiction affects empathy are fraught with difficulties and critics raise many legitimate questions. Do "empathy scales" used in psychology studies truly capture the psychological phenomenon of "empathy?" How long does the effect of reading literary fiction last and does it translate into meaningful shifts in behavior? How does one select appropriate literary fiction texts and control texts, and conduct such studies in a heterogeneous group of participants who probably have very diverse literary tastes? Kidd and Castano, for example, used an excerpt of The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht as a literary fiction text because the book was a finalist for the National Book Award, whereas an excerpt of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was used as a 'popular fiction' text even though it was long-listed for the prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction.  

The recent study "Changing Race Boundary Perception by Reading Narrative Fiction" led by the psychology researcher Dan Johnson from Washington and Lee University took a somewhat different approach. Instead of assessing global changes in empathy, Johnson and colleagues focused on a more specific question. Could the reading of a fictional narrative change the perception of racial stereotypes?

Johnson and his colleagues chose an excerpt from the novel Saffron Dreams by the Pakistani-American author Shaila Abdullah. In this novel, the protagonist is a recently widowed pregnant Muslim woman Arissa whose husband Faizan was working in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and killed when the building collapsed. The excerpt from the novel provided to the participants in Johnson's research study describes a scene in which Arissa is traveling alone late at night and is attacked by a group of male teenagers. The teenagers mock and threaten her with a knife because of her Muslim head-scarf (hijab), use racial and ethnic slurs as well as make references to the 9/11 attacks. The narrative excerpt does not specifically mention the word Caucasian, but one of the attackers is identified as blond and another one has a swastika tattoo. They do not believe her when she tries to explain that she was also a victim of the 9/11 attacks and instead refer to her as belonging to a "race of murderers."

The researchers used a second text in their experiment, a synopsis of the literary excerpt from Saffron Dreams. This allowed Johnson colleagues to distinguish between the effects of the literary narrative style with its inner monologue and description of emotions versus the effects of the content. Samples of the literary text and the synopsis used by the researchers can be found at the end of this article (scroll down) for those readers who would like to compare their own reactions to the two texts.

The researchers recruited 68 U.S. participants (mean age 36 years, roughly half were female, 81 percent Caucasian, reporting seven different religious affiliations but none of them were Muslim) and randomly assigned them to the full literary narrative group (33 participants) or the synopsis group (35 participants).  After the participants read the texts, they were asked to complete a number of questions about the text and its impact. They were also presented with 18 male faces designed by the researchers with a special software in a manner that they appeared ambiguous in terms of Caucasian or Arab characteristics. For example, the faces combined blue eyes with darker skin tones. The participants were asked to grade the faces as being:

1) Arab

2) mixed, more Arab than Caucasian

3) mixed, more Caucasian than Arab

4) Caucasian

The participants were also asked to estimate the genetic overlap between Caucasians and Arabs on a scale from 0 percent to 100 percent.

Participants in the narrative fiction group were more likely to choose one of the ambiguous options (mixed, more Arab than Caucasian or mixed, more Caucasian than Arab) and less likely to choose the categorical options (Arab versus Caucasian) than those who read the synopsis. Even more interesting is the finding that the average percentage of genetic overlap between Caucasians and Arabs estimated by the synopsis group was 33 percent, whereas it was 57 percent in the narrative fiction group.

Both of these estimates are way off. The genetic overlap between any one human being and another human being on our planet is approximately 99.9 percent. Even much of the 0.1 percent variation in the human genome sequences is not due to 'racial' differences. As pointed out in a Nature Genetics article by Lynn Jorde and Stephen Wooding, approximately 90 percent of total genetic variation between humans would be present in a collection of individuals from any one continent (Asia, Europe or Africa). Only an additional 10 percent genetic variation would be found if the collection consisted of a mixture of Europeans, Asians and Africans.

It is surprising that both groups of study participants heavily underestimated the genetic overlap between Arabs and Caucasians, and that simply reading the fictional text changed their views of the human genome. This latter finding is also a red flag that informs us about the poor state of general knowledge of genetics, which appears to be so fragile that views can be swayed by nonscientific literary texts.

This study is the first to systematically test the impact of reading literary fiction on an individual's assessment of race boundaries and genetic similarity. It suggests that fiction can indeed blur the perception of race boundaries and challenge our stereotypes. The text chosen by the researchers is especially well-suited to defy stereotypical views held by the readers. The protagonist's Muslim husband was killed in the 9/11 attacks and she herself is being harassed by non-Muslim thugs. This may challenge assumptions held by some readers that only non-Muslims were the victims of the 9/11 attacks.

The effect of reading the narrative text seemed to have effects on the readers that went far beyond the content matter -- the story of a Muslim woman who is showing significant courage while being threatened. The faces shown to the study participants were those of men, and the question of genetic overlap between Caucasians and Arabs was a rather abstract question which had little to do with Arissa's story. Perhaps Arissa's story had a broader effect on the readers. The study did not measure the impact of the narrative on additional stereotypes or assumptions held by the readers such as those regarding other races or sexual orientations, but this is a question that ought to be investigated.

One of the limitations of the study is that it assessed the impact of the story only at a single time-point, immediately after reading the text. Without measuring the effect a few days or weeks later, it is difficult to ascertain whether this was a lasting effect.  Another limitation of this study is that it purposefully chose an anti-stereotypical text, but did not test the opposite hypothesis, that some fictional narratives may potentially foster negative stereotypes.

One of my earliest memories of an English-language novel about Muslim characters is the spy novel "The Mahdi" by the British author A.J Quinnell (pen name for Philip Nicholson) written in 1981. The basic plot is that (spoiler alert) US and British intelligence agencies want to manipulate and control the Muslim world by installing a 'Mahdi', the long-awaited spiritual and political leader of Muslims foretold by Muslim tradition. The ridiculous part of the plan is that the puppet leader is accepted by the Muslim world as the true incarnation of the Mahdi because of a green laser beam emanating from a satellite. The beam incinerates a sacrificial animal in front of a crowd of millions of Muslims at the Hajj pilgrimage and convinces them (and the rest of the Muslim world) that God sent this green laser beam as a sign. This novel portrayed Muslims as gullible idiots who would simply accept the divine nature of a green laser beam. One can only wonder what impact reading an excerpt from that novel would have had on the perception of race boundaries by the participants in Johnson's research study.

The study by Johnson and colleagues is an important contribution to the research of how reading can change our perceptions of race and possibly stereotypes in general. It shows that reading fiction can blur the perception of race boundaries, but it also raises a number of additional questions about how long this effect lasts, how pervasive it is and whether fiction might also have the opposite effect. Hopefully, these questions will be addressed in future research studies.

Image Credit: Saffron Woman by N.M. Rehman (generated from an attribution-free, public domain photograph)

Reference:

Dan R. Johnson , Brandie L. Huffman & Danny M. Jasper (2014)

Changing Race Boundary Perception by Reading Narrative Fiction, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 36:1, 83-90, DOI:10.1080/01973533.2013.856791

Excerpt of the literary fiction sample from "Saffron Dreams" by Shaila Abdullah

 This is just an excerpt from the narrative sample used by the researchers, which was 3,108 words in length (pages 57-64 from the book):

I got off the northbound No. 2 IRT and found out almost immediately that I was not alone. The late October evening inside the station felt unusually weighty on my senses.

I heard heavy breathing behind me. Angry, smoky, scared. I could tell there were several of them, probably four. Not pros, perhaps in their teens. They walked closer sometimes, and other times the heavy thud of spiked boots on concrete and clanking chains receded into the distance. They walked like boys wanting to be men. They fell short. Why was there no fear in my heart? Probably because there was no more room in my heart for terror. When horror comes face-to-face with you and causes a loved one's death, fear leaves your heart. In its place, merciful God places pain. Throbbing, pulsating, oozing pus, a wound that stays fresh and raw no matter how carefully you treat it. How can you be afraid when you have no one to be fearful for? The safety of your loved ones is what breeds fear in your heart. They are the weak links in your life. Unraveled from them, you are fearless. You can dangle by a thread, hang from the rooftop, bungee jump, skydive, walk a pole, hold your hand over the flame of a candle. Burnt, scalded, crashed, lost, dead, the only loss would be to your own self. Certain things you are not allowed to say or do. Defiant as I am, I say and do them anyway.

And so I traveled with a purse that I held protectively on one side. My hijab covered my head and body as the cool breeze threatened to unveil me. I laughed inwardly as I realized I was more afraid of losing the veil than of being mugged. The funny part of it is, I desperately wanted to lose my hijab when I came to America, but Faizan had stood in my way. For generations, women in his household had worn the veil, although none of them seemed particularly devout. It's just something that was done, no questions asked, no explanations needed. My argument was that we should try to assimilate into the new culture as much as possible, not stand out. Now that he was gone, losing the hijab meant losing a portion of our time together.

It had been just 41 days. My iddat, bereavement period, was over. Technically I was a free woman, not tied to anyone, but what could I do about the skeletons in my closet that wouldn't leave me alone?"

Excerpt of the Synopsis used by the researchers as a comparator:

This is the corresponding excerpt from the synopsis used by the researchers. The full-length synopsis was 491 words long:

The scene starts with Arissa getting off the subway train. She is being followed. Most commuters have already returned home, so it is not the safest time to be traveling alone. Four people are walking behind her. Initially confused by the lack of fear in her heart, she realizes that it is the consequence of losing someone so close to her. It is ironic that she is wearing her hijab, a Muslim veil. She wanted to get rid of it when she came to America, but her husband, Faizon, insisted she keep it. Following his death, keeping the hijab was a way of keeping some of their time together. It has been 41 days since the attack, and Arissa's iddat, bereavement period, is over. She is a free woman, but cannot put aside her grave feelings of loss.

"He will out of her own goodness make the net that shall enmesh them all."

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself... The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor. The point of being an artist is that you may live...

Over Here from Jasmina Tesanovic on Vimeo.

Paris Photo Los Angeles, the US edition of the world's most celebrated art fair for works created in the photographic medium, has taken place at Paramount Pictures Studios April 25th-27th, offering the ideal setting to explore how artists have been and are using photography and moving image in their work in the 20th and 21st centuries, and welcoming more than 16,000 visitors.

81 leading international galleries and booksellers from 18 countries presented historical and contemporary bodies of works by renowned and emerging artists in the legendary Paramount Pictures' soundstages. The New York Street Backlot, the one-of-a-kind replica of New York City's streets, has been dedicated to the presentation of cutting-edge solo shows, Young Gallery exhibitions, and bookseller projects, each exhibiting within an exclusive movie set.

The public program is also an important component of the fair. Built around cultural events involving artists, art world professionals, collectors, and cultural institutions, this year's program has included special exhibitions and the Sound & Vision series of conversations and screenings.

Edgar Degas's influence on fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt is widely known, but her role in shaping his work and introducing him to American audiences is fully examined for the first time in this exhibition of seventy works in a variety of media -- National Gallery of Art