CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Why Copyrights Would Kill The Fashion Industry

Techdirt: "Earlier this month, we wrote about Senator Chuck Schumer's misguided plan to extend copyright protection to the fashion industry. As we've noted in the past, this makes absolutely no sense."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Creation is sometimes very originally from tradition. A new product might be a “revised” tradition. This might be called as “rewind” style. i.e. the flared trousers.
However, in a competitive society, a creator needs to search and create a brand new thing if he really wants to be discovered by people and to be famous. At this point, copyright might mean nothing for a real creator.

Anonymous said...

I think if this bill were put into practice it would adopt some of the problems other industries have with copyrights. Like with old books or music with no author alive to collect royalties, at what point would a "trend" or idea in fashion become public domain anyway? And who decides what does or does not constitute copying? Do you simply steal a look or does using a small piece as inspiration count? It's harder to pinpoint copying in fashion, I think, because so many parts of a particular piece can have things in common with already existing pieces, and not necessarily by choice, but simply because the design called for a sleeve to look like this or a hem to have a particular shape. I guess my point is that this bill would get really messy, since one item of clothing can have so much in common with another, even if they are completely different designs or concepts, and at some point people will always "steal" from the past (because who's going to enforce copywriting on an idea you got from a design in 1850 or an obscure painting from the middle east?).

Anonymous said...

this is one of those debates that will be an age old question. copyright. it is something that transcends all of the different design and art industries. there is a fine line between inspiration and imitation. its sometimes hard for one to recognize the difference, as we are constantly finding. honestly i think it one of those things that must be tackled as the problem arises...its hard to say what is and what isn't nothing can be completely original, something is always an inspiration something will resemble another work. it is just one of those debates that will continue. fashion of all industries though has been seeing problems with this but in many cases people capitalize off of the ideas of another designer to make it more accessible to another audience.... its a matter of being able to connect people and make things relatable in most cases, usually obviously executed with genuine intentions... things just tend to get muddled.