No Other Possibility

I just noticed that the Onion A/V Club interviewed Mark Hosler and Don Joyce of Negativland last week. I've been a fan of Negativland for about 15 years, discovering them shortly before the infamous U2 incident.

I've continued to follow Negativland's releases despite the fixation on copyright issues that has settled in since their run-in with Island Records. That fixation has led their work to be somewhat repetitive and, as this interview demonstrates, their positions on intellectual property issues indulge in some utopianism. Viewed more charitably, however, Negativland's expressed attitudes toward copyright can be characterized as an extreme position championed to test the assumptions of those who believe that only an oppressive, culturally stifling regime of universal property interest can effectively cultivate value. Seen in that sense, they have good company. Justice Stephen Breyer's tenure piece was a 1970 Harvard Law Review article entitled "The Uneasy Case for Copyright," which makes a good case for the fundamental reconsideration of copyright law.