burroughs in Sollfrank & Goldsmith 2013


t went on for pages and pages and pages. And then, at
the end, it says, "Under the threat of perjury, I state these facts to be
true," signed such and such person. [9:05] Now, what they did, they went into
UbuWeb and they put the words "William S. Burroughs," and they came up with
every instance of William S. Burroughs. If William S. Burroughs is mentioned
in an academic paper: that's our copyright. Nick Currie Momus wrote a song "I
Love You William S. Burroughs.” Now, Nick gave UbuWeb all of his songs. I know
that Nick owns the copyright to that. [9:30] I said, you know, it's
ridiculous! And even the things that they were claiming… It was the most
ridiculous thing. [9:37] So I wrote them back. I said: L


hat you really do own and
you really don't want there, let's talk about it, but could you please be a
little bit more reasonable. [10:13] And then of course I got a letter back,
and it's an intern, the college student saying, the state of William S.
Burroughs just asked me… [10:23] I said, look, I get it but, you know… let’s
try to do it the right way and let's see what happens. And then they came back
with another DMCA Takedown, with a much shorter list. But even in that list,
most of the copyrights didn't belong to William S. Burroughs. They belonged to
journal poetry systems, many of them were orphan. [10:45] Because in media,
often if you publish in a publication, often the publisher owns the copyright,
not the artist, you know. You have to look and see where the copyright
resides. [10:59] Finally, I said, look this is getting ridiculous. I said,
please send a note on to the executor of Burroughs' estate, who is James
Grauerholz, and he's a good guy. He's a good guy. And I said, I quoted, and I
said, look Mr. Grauerholz, William S. Burroughs' poetry wants to be free. You
know, and I quoted from Burroughs. And also it's a great thing that Burroughs
said. I said, you know, we're not making any money here. I'm not going to
pirate Naked Lunch. I know where are you making your money, and I swear I
wouldn't want to touch that. That does well on its own. [11:30] But his cut-
ups, his sound collage c


raduates use it.
[11:40] So this was a way in which copyright is often used as a threat, that's
not true. And then, a little bit of talking, and you can actually get back to
some logic. And then after that it was fine, and there's all the William S.
Burroughs that's there that it was always there. And everybody seems to be
okay.

[11:57]
Opt-out System

[0:12]
Things get taken down all the time. People send an email saying, you know, I
don't want that there. And I try to convince them that we

 

Display 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 ALL characters around the word.