Lawrence Lessig has a nice op-ed in the Washington Post today (link here) on what you might be tempted to call corporate piracy: they are allowing Eyespot, an internet site that provides technology for video remixing, to make clips from the Star Wars movies available to its users for their remix projects. The catch? Under the provisions of copyright law relating to derivative works, Lucasfilms will own any remixes that incorporate their clips, and any additional material or images that the remix includes. Lucasfilms will, of course, be entitled to use these without compensating the remix artist. Lessig's characterization of this as digital sharecropping seems apt.

Yes -- sharecropping. Those poor remixers being taken advantage of by evil George Lucas and the copyright system. I can hardly stand it. I mean -- they have no choice. How will they live without remixing Star Wars? And they shouldn't be bound by any limitations! It's just not fair to see the poor remixers treated this way--like animals, really. How dare Lucas go and make these clips available! How dare he dangle that fruit and force--force!--those crazy remixers to plow his celluloid fields! And, sure, there's no evidence yet that Lucas has actually tried, or would try, to enforce these rights, but he could! And that's bad enough. I just can't imagine how the world can work when people have "property rights" and others want to use them. Something about licensing. But that's just a fantasy. Reality is the Man taking advantage of the true creators and artists. When I think of the massive innovation and creation being stymied by this injustice I almost weep. Sharecropping, indeed. Truly apt.

We could equally well ask the question in reverse: if George Lucas wanted to prevent people from remixing his work he could simply have not released it. There is no absolute moral right of the creator who chose to release his work to control how it is used. As it happened Lucas is legally correct under current law - but that doesn't make the law a good one: slavery was legal at one time, but served no good economic purpose and was the moral consequences were horrible. "Property rights" over all copies of creations are currently legal - but we have argued elsewhere that they do not serve a good economic purpose. The moral consequences are not of the order of magnitude as slavery - but telling other people what they can or cannot do with their copies of things is none-the-less morally reprehensible. Why should the fact that I am the creator give me the right to tell other people whether or not they can remix their copies? If the government awarded me the exclusive right to sell pizza in the United States, with the right to sell and license that right, it would be legal and a property right. But why would it be a good thing?