Virtually all the volumes of statutes which now go far beyond this are not only unnecessary, but counter-productive to the now common practice of piecemeal appropriation in the creation of new work. The crucial difference between simply bootlegging entire works in order to profit from someone else's creativity and the creation of new work which incorporates elements of existing work for the referential or commentary effects thus produced must be made clear to lawmakers. Not a desirable role for government. Culture is more than commerce. The law should begin to acknowledge the artistic domain of various creative techniques which may actually conflict with what others claim to be their economic domain.
Art needs to acquire an equal footing with marketers in court.
The media and electronic publishing industry's argument that appropriation equals rip-off is truly irrelevant. Unlike bootlegging,appropriation in no way prevents an artist from profiting from his or her own work through every form of sale which would normally occur. It is simply unearned gravy, existing only because of another's efforts to begin with. A revamping of copyright laws envisions a more free-wheeling and referentially unconstricted art world. This, of course, would be a lawyer's nightmare of lost work and layoffs.