<nettime> what's your problem dude ?

by Bruce Sterling and placed on his blog for Wired Magazine without either informing me, asking permission or crediting

me- though he did add a link to my blog saying that another version was available there- Thanks for that Bruce-

We know there is the legal framework which is the CC lisence but in the end if a well known author chooses to

take the words of someone less known and leave the provenance of the actual labour ‘ambiguous’ by adding a few lines

of his own here and there. There is not much one can do about it, without wasting a lot of time and energy. He has the

larger platform and the reputation.

Oscar Wilde once said to the painter Whistler who had made a witty remark “I wish I had

said that” to which Whistler replied “you will oscar..you will”. Picasso is also known to have said to a friend who

wouldn’t let him in his studio for fear of seeing his own ideas popping up in Picasso’s next show “don’t worry I never

borrow. I steal!”

Bob Dylan was recently accused of appropriating chunks of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech

His likely defense was highlighted by an article in Rolling Stone

In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan responded to the accusations of plagiarism pertaining to Love and Theft.

“I’m working within my art form,” he said. “It’s that simple. I work within the rules and limitations of it. There are authoritarian

figures that can explain that kind of art form better to you than I can. It’s called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm,

and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it.”

So clearly a pithier response might be “what’s your problem dude.. it was just a cover version”

Maybe this ‘squib’ will also appear on Bruce’s blog.

David Garcia