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how do you Protect artists?
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How Do You Protect Artists?
(Originally published as “Online Censorship Hurts Us All,”
The Guardian,
October
2, 2007.)
Artists have lots of problems. We get plagiarized, ripped off by
publishers, savaged by critics, counterfeited — and we even get
our works copied by “pirates” who give our stuff away for free
online.
But no matter how bad these problems get, they’re a distant
second to the gravest, most terrifying problem an artist can face:
censorship.
It’s one thing to be denied your credit or compensation, but it’s
another thing entirely to have your work suppressed, burned, or
banned. You’d never know it, however, judging from the state of
the law surrounding the creation and use of Internet publishing
tools.
Since 1995, every single legislative initiative on this subject in
the UK’s parliament, the European parliament, and the U.S. Con-
gress has focused on making it easier to suppress “illegitimate”
material online. From libel to copyright infringement, from child
porn to anti-terror laws, our legislators have approached the In-
ternet with a single-minded focus on seeing to it that bad mate-
rial is expeditiously removed.
And that’s the rub. I’m certainly no fan of child porn or hate
speech, but every time a law is passed that reduces the burden
of proof on those who would remove material from the Internet,
artists’ fortunes everywhere are endangered.
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