Sunday March 11, 2007 ![[Duke Thinking]](http://mediacast.sun.com/share/tmarble/Duke-Thinking.jpg)
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Sunday March 11, 2007
Creativity from Difficulty
The New York Times has an interesting article today,
Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved,
in which Gil, the Brazilian minister of culture, makes
some excellent points about creativity (Gil will
speak on Wednesday at
SXSW,
do read the article soon as it is
All Rights Reserved).
Mr. Gil's complaints about the inequities of copyrights are derived in part from his own experience. Like many other musicians he signed contracts early in his career that essentially gave away publishing rights to the songs he wrote. But he waged a seven-year court battle to regain his rights, which ended recently with a favorable ruling that opens the door for other Brazilian artists to regain their rights as well.
[...]
Why give up something as gratifying as playing music for the wear and tear of public administration? "Life is not just pleasure," he said. "The first phrase of the Vedic scriptures is that 'All is suffering.' Difficulty is stimulating, challenging, it's an element of the pulse of life."
![[Gilberto Gil, Lawrence Lessig and Ronaldo Lemos]](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/51/173925004_414422c772.jpg)
A great deal has been written about modernizing copyright of creative works -- especially for music. Perhaps the most important reference on this topic is Lessig's book Free Culture which provides an eminently readable overview of the complex legal environment for art and culture. I anticipate this struggle for authors to retain copyright of their works will extend beyond music to all sorts of creative endeavor. Knowledge workers are often creative people who leverage their skills with their employers time and materials as part of their day job, but who may also, like Gil, exude other expressions of creativity after they punch the time clock.
Just as Gil has secured rights for musicians in Brazil it seems that knowledge workers could benefit from modernization of employment agreements in the context of the digital age. Typically all work for hire is owned by the employer (except, of course, for states like California that have special limitations).
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Posted by tmarble ( Mar 11 2007, 12:47:13 PM CDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
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Posted by daniel on March 12, 2007 at 05:43 AM CDT #