Reception History Updated

It was a late October afternoon the sky was a gun metal gray and the rain was steadily falling, giving a bone chilling dampness to the air, with not the slightest hint of the weather changing for the better.

The trial was fast paced and turning out to be very exciting from a laymen’s point of view. Both the defense and prosecution had done their homework and done it well, for with each turn of events the tension mounted in the courtroom. With both sides deadlocked in confrontation, it was time for a radical decision to be made. The defense lawyer petitioned the court for a day of recess. He called me to his side and whispering in low tones told me of an old relic he was sure still existed in a warehouse of rare and antique art objects. And with this object of art, he swore he could prove his point beyond the shadow of a doubt and bring these incessant legal arguments to a close once and for all. After all, he stated, “How many times has it been said…one picture is worth a thousand words.” So with that statement, I accepted my assignment and was off in search of this rare art object for the defense attorney.

The warehouse itself had been skillfully constructed to hold and maintain various objects of art throughout the ages and was in and of itself a tribute to modern technology at its finest. As I entered the building, I immediately became aware of the change of the purity in the air, it had an indescribable clean sweetness to it and it almost took my breath away. The total lack of moisture in the building was also a remarkable and yet unmistakable sensation. It was also at the entrance of the warehouse that I was stopped by one of the guards, dressed in white from head to foot, and asked to produce the legal document authorizing my admittance into this holy repository of artifacts.

Once my document was found to be in order the guard led me down a short hallway and into a small room where I was instructed to put on what appeared to be a puffy snow white space suit. At first, I couldn’t understand why this seemed so important, but then the guard explained the necessity of maintaining the purity of the warehouse’s atmosphere to preserve the art objects held within its walls.

With my snow white space suit securely on, the guard then led me into another containment room, large enough for only one person, and it was from here that I would be allowed to pass into the warehouse itself. The guard sealed the door shut and I steadied my nerves as a high pitched whooshing sound and a pale white transparent smoke-like substance enveloped me and filled the one-person cleansing cubicle in final preparation for my entrance into the main warehouse.

As quickly as the smoke-like substance had appeared, so did it also disappear with a sharp high-pitched hissing sound that left my ears ringing for a few moments following the departure of the smoke-like substance. I slowly turned to face the door on the opposite side of the cubicle and as that door slide from right to left a blinding white light snapped on in the room directly ahead of me. I was unprepared for the awesome sight as I slowly emerged from the cleansing cubicle. This looming structure was the sole haven for the most visually breath-taking and stimulating objects of art I had ever seen or experienced since starting my detective agency. I immediately sensed the overwhelming vastness in the warehouse and an overpowering inadequacy of my task at hand, as I witnessed before me rows upon rows of a myriad of colors, a diversity of sizes, and an unconceivable polymorphism of shapes contained within these walls.

The relationship between the diminutive size of the thing I was seeking and the sheer spaciousness of this warehouse, with its rows upon rows of awe-inspiring art objects, seemed to work against each other. However, the cold hard facts still remained, my instructions of where to locate the white box inside this warehouse were “level 6, section 38, row 52, shelf 103-B” and I was determined to carry out my assignment. Therefore, I had to muster up my convictions and bolster my determination to press onward without any more delay to the task now set before me. It was of little comfort to me that I carried the knowledge of where to find this unpretentious small white box. This small white box had somehow become more than just an art student’s simple message to the masses.

It was the defense attorney’s intention to introduce this small box into evidence. At present he alone knew of the thought-provoking message contained within the small white box and he was pinning all his hopes on the irrefutable explanation of this mysterious message. For this reason alone my urgency to locate and obtain the white box overrode my sense of complicity, so I dug down deep into my inner resources and continued on my search.

I carefully removed, from the pouch on the side of my white space suit, a sterile see-through zip-locked bag holding the instructions I was to follow once inside the warehouse. I followed the directions without a hitch and as I came to my last turn on the lower level I knew it was now time to ascend into the web-like rafters above. I quickly located a nearby elevating platform and following the instructions supplied on the control panel I was able to engage the gears and was on my way to the top of the rafters and to my small white prize.

Yet even armed with the knowledge that I was well within reach of successfully finding this small white box, the same question kept repeating itself over and over again inside my head, “Was there still be time to change the course of events that had recently thrown our society into this creative abyss?” Or would the freedom of creative borrowing from the great minds of our past become dead to our future?

Because of this question it was hard for me to believe I had been sent to look for a piece of art that had originated as an university art student’s project for a remix assignment using Lessig’s book, Free Culture. The catalog description of this art project was, “a predominately white rectangular box, approximately seven inches in length by five inches in height and four inches in width, light in weight and simple in its overall design.” There would be several curious geometrical-shaped groupings of text on the outside of this white box. The placement of these geometrical-shaped groupings fall into a random and chaotic layout, with the groupings sometimes overlapping, sometimes being placed upside down, and sometimes with chunks of text being randomly cut out of their paragraphs and discarded. Furthermore, upon my closer inspection of these textual groupings, it becomes apparent that they are indeed direct quotes from the book authored by Lawrence Lessig dealing with his interpretations of the unintended and improper use of intellectual property and copyright laws.

However, the most intriguing part of this small white box was not the text that haphazardly covered its outside, it was a lonely rectangular opening in the upper left-hand corner at one end of the box. I could not resist my curiosity, I had to peek inside the white box that I had been sent to retrieve for the defense. The visual impact of the diminishing repetitions of the copyright symbol hit me like a ton of bricks. Instantly realizing the sheer folly of our society being allowed to continue on its present path of self-destruction was nothing short of mind boggling. For by permitting ‘ALL’ copyrights to become extended indefinitely, it would only be a matter of time before nothing would be left to draw from or to use as source material in the creative realm.

What had once started off as noble and justifiable ideas, intellectual property and our copyright laws, had been quickly turned around and put into a downward spiral working against our unsuspecting society. The original intention of Intellectual Property (IP) and our copyright laws was to allow people to own their own creations and innovative ideas in the same way they owned personal property. Through IP and copyrights these owners could control and be rewarded for the use of their creative property, which would in-turn promote new growth and the continued development of other new creative and innovative ideas.

It was obvious to me that it would not have been prudent for me to have continued with my search had it not been for the Preservation of Art Acts (POAA) passed some fifty years ago. By putting into motion these preservation laws society was able to maintain and restore artifacts from our past. To give back, by building on the knowledge given to us from those (creative people) before us, is only right. Then I began to understand a quote I had read from Francis Bacon (English painter, 1909-92), he said, “…This is the artist’s privilege—to be ageless.” And it was in this warehouse where those laws were being enforced I was able to find the evidence for defense.

Finally with the small white box tucked securely under my right arm I started a slow steady decent from the web-like rafters of the warehouse. My return trip from the warehouse was wholly uneventfully, for the most part, with the exception of the warehouse guard’s meticulous handling of the white box in preparation for its departure into the outside world from which it had been protected from all these many years until now.

The warehouse guard carefully opened the front door to the entrance of the warehouse and I stepped out onto the covered landing before the street. I popped opened my oversized black umbrella and adjusted my coat, in hopes of protecting me and my prize from the steady downpour of the endless rain, the gun metal gray sky and the bone chilling damp cold that seemed to penetrate the strongest of materials, as I slowly descended the stairs from the covered landing. I was now on the finally leg of my adventure, back to the conclusion of the trial and ultimately to witness the judge’s decision concerning the future of borrowed creativity.

Works Cited
Image Description
Intellectual Property and Copyright laws
Lessig, Laurence. "Free Culture."