Copyright Kills Culture
American culture is dying. The public domain is drying up. Congress is being asked by Disney to continually extend copyright protection, 20 years at a time. Currently, it’s at 95 years. Everything. Each of our cultural artifacts is protected for longer than their creator is alive. This means that people unconnected with the work are making money off stuff they didn’t make and are disincented to make new stuff. Oh, the making money part all depends on if this thing (book, movie, character, photograph, poem) continues to be commerically viable. We all know there’s a lot of crap in the world. Yes, even the crap is protected for 95 years.
Chuck Olsen has a post on how copyright law affects independent filmmakers.
What can you do to help? Release more of your creations under a Creative Commons license, MNteractive is.
7 Comments
As graphic designer/developer I’m supposed to embrace IP laws. Yet, I just get disgusted with each passing legislative session and folks like Orin Hatch, the RIAA, and Disney. IP laws have been corrupted by capitalistic greed. Blech.
I wouldn’t say that IP laws have been corrupted by anything. They are not corrupt in and of themselves. The US has historically done an incredible job by balancing the Old World philosophy of eternal ownership with the concept of public domain. Just be thankful the European tradition of passing IP rights like real property doesn’t exist here. It seems somewhat hypocritical for creative types to complain of all the copyright protection afforded to owners of creative work when our IP law makes it economically feasible for creatives to make a living.
The people creating the work should be pissed about copyright law. Especially those just learning. One of the reasons we’ve had so much innovation in the web so quickly is because of ‘View Source’. People wanting to understand how websites are built and innovate can do so relatively easily. This is not possible with anything other creative form.
We need sane copyright law that promotes innovation, copyright law that understands creative people are making American culture and a living, copyright law that admits only a small fraction of creative work is commercially viable after 7 years.
I guess a person needs to choose whether his copyright should be passed like real estate to his heirs and he enures the exclusive economic benefit or whether he wishes that the fruits of his labors be shared by the community at large with no payback. Again, the statutory limitation that the US has historically imposed is vastly more generous that traditional notions of copyright law. Maybe the US should look to patent law, where the statutory protections are much more limited in substance and time– a true value-added proposition, indeed. It all comes down to whether you believe the individual should retain power over this right, or whether another institution (government) should control (and limit) the right.
By the way, I don’t know of a single person who was afraid of using ‘View Source’ because they thought they were infringing someone else’s copyrights. And certainly, we need to look how IP policies shape IP in a broader sense. Tell the entire entertainment industry that their creative work is not valuable after 7 years. I think you’d find them begging to differ. There is a lot of economic viability and value generated from copyrights that extend well beyond that time frame. Also, more material is entering the public domain now than any other time in history. 95 years protection? Okay, maybe that’s too long. Keep talking to your federal representatives.
I’m a big fan of Lawrence Lessig’s plan: Automatic copyright (just like today) for 7 years. If the work is still commerically viable after that time - pay a registration fee of $1 to extend it. The added benefit of this plan is we now know who own the copyright. Not something we have today.
My correction, Lessig’s Plan is 50 years, then $1 (see the “we need your help” post.
“It seems somewhat hypocritical…”
I prefer the term ‘ironic’. I’m not against IP protection. I’m against the current ‘balance’ of it. IP rights should be a balance between free content for society and a way to encourage new content be developed (through economic gain). I think graphic designers have a lot to gain through a more balanced approach to IP law.
Personally, I don’t think any copyrights should be extendable. Pick a timeframe, and that’s it. You have x years to make your money off of it. After that, it enters the public domain from the greater good.