Tisha Turk on multiple viewpoints

type="html">Tisha Turk, professor of English at U. Minn.-Morris, has agreat response to Judges as Bad Reviewers, which shelinks to her testimony in the DMCA hearings: 

What I found especially interesting was her analysis of aspecific case (Blanch v. Koons) in which appropriation artist JeffKoons' use of a copy of a fashion photograph was found to be fair use: thecourt deferred to Koons' own account of his reasons for using the photo—and by"[s]hifting to a particular expert, the artist himself, the court left thestructure of expertise intact." As Tushnet explains,

fair use was determined not on thebasis of potential audiences’ understandings of new meanings from the accusedwork, but on the ability of the artist to express his intentions.... Thus,rather than accepting that multiple meanings and interpretations can coexist,the court picked a side in a contest about true meaning, not unlike a ruling ina contracts case.

Not surprisingly, that passage also made me think of the DMCA hearings, where myprimary value was not my academic credentials (except indirectly, insofar asthe nature of my employment allows me to be cheerfully matter-of-fact about myfan activities) and certainly not my legal expertise (of which I have exactlynone) but my willingness and ability to speak as an artist expressingintention: "This iswhat I need and this is why I need it." …

Tushnet's article shows, I think, why we need both to encourage fans whocan do that kind of speaking to do it (because many fans, for any of a varietyof reasons, are not in that position) and to change the cultures—legaland otherwise—that value artistic expertise/authority at the expense ofinterpretive multiplicity.

I mean, that's a huge part of the point of fandom, right? Do all the readings!Make all the meanings! Explore every possible option in as many ways aspossible! One of the many reasons that vids and vidding appeal to me isprecisely that they're not one person's art project; rather, they're embeddedin a whole ecosystem of overlapping and intersecting and sometimescontradictory projects and goals and ideals and interests. That's what makes itfun.

Judges don't have to be fans--but recognizing that audiences and interpretations vary is one thing copyright analysis should share with fandom.

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