Official Response:
http://noneinc.com/tBSWM/tBSWM_FAQ.html#LibraryOfCongress_permissionsResponse
2011.03.11
Library of Congress
Copyright Office
101 Independence Ave., S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20559-6000
Title: 'Thee Backslacpkping With Media' Control Number: 81-512-1302(L)
To whom it may concern,
This letter is to explain my position why the work, 'Thee Backslacpkping With Media' should be included into the Library of Congress.
Although advised by examiner, Gareth James, that the commentary portion of this presentation could be included as just the text, I informed him that both the audio/video and commentary were 98% recycled. So I am proceeding with the 'Performing Arts' registration, realizing that it will most likely be denied, because the 700+ permissions have not been obtained.
I view this presentation as citizen journalism. Although it was 2005 (before youtube) vast volumes of media data was available for consuming and reinterpretation.
I don't claim to own copyright of any of the pieces in this presentation. Just like the author of a book doesn't claim ownership of the letters 'C' or 'P'. Letters are the tools of writers. Media sources and their sentence, word fragments or images are the building blocks of my attempt at citizen journalism. And that collective re-newsing is what I feel deserves a copyright registration. I understand this registration doesn't protect me from future lawsuits dealing with the individual reuse cases from their owners. All published versions of 'Thee Backslacpkping With Media' has been dedicated to the Public Domain, Creative Common's license CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
According to the Library of Congress' website: (http://www.loc.gov/about/mission.html)
Quote: "The Library's mission is to support the Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people."
If the Library of Congress denies works on the lack of permission claim, they are failing to support their Congress persons, since much of public knowledge falls into this grey area which has been created by advances in technology.
The Library of Congress is acknowledging this grey area and the media landscape shift with two recent acquisitions.
1. http://twitter.com/librarycongress/status/12169442690
Quote: "Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archive -- ALL public tweets, ever, since March 2006! Details to follow.
10:36 AM Apr 14th, 2010 via web Retweeted by 100+ people"
All those retweets are given equal time in the Library of Congress archive, even though they are 99% exact copies of their source.
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/sports/09archive.html?src=twrhp
Title: Library of Congress Buys Audio Archive
Quote: "Miley was a junior at Bosse High School in 1947 when he began taping sporting events as a hobby with a $165 wire recorder that his father bought from Sears & Roebuck."
These are illegal recordings according to the Permission rules applied to my project. Except these sporting event recordings are completely unaltered. Everything in 'Thee Backslacpkping With Media' has been processed / analyzed and reconfigured so that it tells a new story or enlightens upon a larger topic which wasn't necessarily the primary focus of the original recordings. Which is one of the guides in copyright legislation; does the work provide commentary, criticism, news reporting, research or scholarship.
It's the viewpoint of myself, that this type of presentation will be possible in future search engines. We have archives of video data (C-Span, youtube, etc.), the public is beginning to tag the data with meta values and recently even subtitles. Search engines can process the subtitle text just as easily as a webpage's text, so implementing simple video editing to the subtitles will make search results of processed video a reality. Presentations like 'Thee Backslacpkping With Media' will become commonplace, it might not be pretty but it is informative.
In all reproductions of 'Thee Backslacpkping With Media' all the original sources are declared so that the entity interacting with the project can seek out the original source. I will not be attempting to get 700+ permissions for a variety of reasons.
If denied, I will anonymously donate 'Thee Backslacpkping With Media' to the Library of Congress.
Thanks for your time and consideration, sincerely.
Peter A Lopez