Once again, you know not of what you speak. I'll take it bit by bit...
@?,*???&? wrote:However, that person is also not gaining anything financial from the brief- unless you consider winning the case in court.
I'm quite certain most attorneys are paid rather well, in fact, win or lose. Especially lawyers of the caliber to write and argue briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court. Like, for example, Lawrence Lessig.
@?,*???&? wrote:I would propose that if you were a student and wrote a paper and had to use quotes in the paper to support your ideas as well as footnote them, your paper would have an exceptionally subjective viewpoint. The legal brief described above- at least as he describes it in the book- is devoid of such subjectivity.
How does using quotes lead to a subjective viewpoint? I don't follow; in fact, I tend to think something with fewer references to outside work would be more subjective. As to whether a legal brief has a subjective viewpoint, it most assuredly does. This should be immediately obvious from the fact that both sides in a civil suit will argue that the same law necessarily implies two opposing outcomes. What one does and how one does it in a legal brief may seem inane to an untrained observer, but it certainly involves a high level of creativity, along with skill, strategy, and concision.
@?,*???&? wrote:Music can certainly direct, engaging, immediate, precise, emotional and a whole host of things without having a single, solitary, borrowed phrase or sample. So why let go so quickly of them and turn them loose into a 'free' domain?
Of course, music, like a legal brief, is nothing without what came before it. I doubt that any musicologist, or for that matter any serious musician or music listener, would be able to listen to any piece of music without easily identifying all sorts of source material, some direct, some less so. Like anyone, I admire originality in music, but I certainly do not think pure originality is even possible. In all creative endeavors, as in any human endeavor, the background from which you start is a huge part of the story. That's why people like Lessig want people like us to have unfettered access to the elements composing that background.