Some of the greatest artistic phenomena in the world (like jazz) would never have been allowed to be created if today’s copyright laws had been in existence back then.
What an excellent, timely art exhibit.
Thanks to Kendra Mayfield for writing such a great story for Wired News about it:
Art: What’s Original, Anyway?

If current copyright laws had been on the books when jazz musicians were borrowing riffs from other artists in the 1930s and Looney Tunes illustrators were creating cartoons in the 1940s, entire art genres such as hip-hop, collage and Pop Art might never have existed…
To acknowledge this landmark case, an exhibit will celebrate “degenerate art” in a corporate age: art and ideas on the fringes of intellectual property law.
The exhibit, Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age, will take place in New York from Nov. 13 to Dec. 6 and in Chicago from Jan. 25 to Feb. 22.
“Almost all art, to a certain extent, is unoriginal,” said Carrie McLaren, publisher of Stay Free! magazine and organizer of the exhibit. “(In) an environment where you can have free exchange of ideas, you get better art.”

Here’s the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://r.hotwired.com/r/wn_html_link/http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,55592,00.html
Art: What’s Original, Anyway?
By Kendra Mayfield
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