Patents and copyrights were conceived as individual rights, not corporate goods. And open source proves that inventions can be even grander than before if rights to the work are held in common.To some people this still sounds like revolution, like a peasant’s revolt. It’s not. It’s just a new market reality, one which has no use for Kings.
Dana Blakenhorn on ZDNet.
The difference between revolution and evolution is a matter of perspective.
Update: On second thought, perhaps this decision from the Supreme Court of Canada (2002) would be a better quote:
Excessive control by holders of copyrights and other forms of intellectual property may unduly limit the ability of the public domain to incorporate and embellish creative innovation in the long-term interests of society as a whole, or create practical obstacles to proper utilization.
I’ll gladly hold on to the copyrights on my three publications and large number of photographs. And I’ll defend those copyrights in a court of law if need be. Creative Commons? Not for those, thank you very much. My work, and my artistry, is mine alone to use as I wish.
While I don’t disagree with some of the arguments behind Creative Commons, I firmly believe that many of the people behind the “kill all copyrights” revolution are simply those who are too goddamned lazy to do the work for themselves, or too goddamned cheap to pay someone else for their hard work and efforts.
And I would defend your right to your copyright, Brikwall. It becomes a thornier ethical issue when disembodied corporations get the same rights as individuals, and copyright lasts beyond the grave.
I’ve done some more research into copyright in Canada, and this quote from a 2002 Supreme Court decision (Théberge vs Galerie d’Art du Petit Champlain) shows that copyright is about much more than just protecting the creator:
“In crassly economic terms it would be as inefficient to overcompensate artists and authors for the right of reproduction as it would be self-defeating to undercompensate them. Once an authorized copy of a work is sold to a member of the public, it is generally for the purchaser, not the author, to determine what happens to it. Excessive control by holders of copyrights and other forms of intellectual property may unduly limit the ability of the public domain to incorporate and embellish creative innovation in the long-term interests of society as a whole, or create practical obstacles to proper utilization.”
The corporate copyright is a different issue so I won’t touch it here.
I do believe in the extension of personal copyright beyond the grave, at least for a limited period of 50-75 years. After all, if my works have some monetary value, shouldn’t that be part of the legacy I leave for my children and heirs? Shouldn’t they have more right to my works than the person down the street or some marketing guy in Toronto? Of course they should.
As for what happens to a work after it is sold, the matter is not as cut and dry as that Supreme Court decision might imply. If I take a photograph, and sell you a print, that should not give you the right to take the print, or the image it contains, and modify or otherwise use it for your own purposes (especially commercial purposes). While you could resell the print itself, you should not be allowed to make copies of it for resale, sell the image to marketing firms, or use it for advertising of your own. I am still the copyright owner of the original photograph and I should still have the right to decide how it is used. However, if I sell you both the image and the rights to it – which is often the case in commercial photography – that is a different matter.
I believe the issue involved is this: If I buy a music CD and download the songs to my MP3 player, that should not be a violation of copyright. If I make a backup copy of the CD because I don’t want to carry the original in my car, that should not be a violation. These are personal uses. The music industry, though, has long deemed such uses to be violations. However, if I give you and all of my other friends a copy of the songs, either a backup CD or downloaded to your MP3 players…well that should be, and is, considered a violation. It’s no longer a strictly personal use.
The same issue is involved in photography. If I take a family portrait and you buy one copy for yourself, but then scan and copy it 20 times to hand out to your relatives, that should be considered a violation of copyright. Why? For the same reason as with the music CDs: because it’s no longer for personal use and because you have taken away some of the potential financial gain the artist would have realized from the sale of those extra copies. Even though I took the picture for you, I still own the copyright and I still control all rights to the image.
What will happen if the courts and the government allowed the user/purchaser to do as they wish with authorized copies of works of art? For one, they will become more expensive. If, in the past, I would have sold you ten copies of that family portrait at $20 each but, today, you’ll only buy one and then copy it yourself 9 times for your relatives, my response will be to make that first copy not $20 but $200. I will get my money up front with the original sale. If I plan to make a living doing it, I’ll have no choice.
Actually, I will…I can live with the fact that people will copy and distribute my works without my permission and simply hope that I can still make a living at it. Or, I can just give away my images and publications knowing that I’ll never make any money at it anyways because of all the unauthorized reproductions that will quickly start floating around. Or, I can simply say “the hell with it” and either give up my art altogether or refuse to allow anyone but myself to see and enjoy what I have created. None of those options are very inviting…
What I see is a public that believes they can use anything they find/acquire/purchase for whatever use they see fit in total disregard for the original creator of that work. Many don’t understand copyright, the remainder simply don’t care. It’s reached an extreme. Unfortunately, the response from artists and industry has been to go to the other extreme. The problem is that current Canadian copyright laws are either unclear on certain matters or don’t mention them at all. We need a new definition of the creator’s rights, and a new definition of “fair dealings” in the digital age, so that the artists can be protected while the consumer has a clear understanding of their rights to personal use. But the Federal government undertook this task in 1996 and they still aren’t finished…
You’ve hit the nail on the head in saying that copyright law is not clear.
It also gets messier with digital copying media, as your music CD example may be logical, but I don’t think it reflects the current law. For instance, Canadians pay a levy on each blank CD they purchase, which gives them the right to make copies, since they have already paid the fee to the CRIA. For instance, in 2005, the CRIA collected $35 million from the levy charged on all blank media (CDs, disks) in Canada. This gives Canadians the right to copy music, because they pay for it with the purchase of each blank CD/DVD, no matter how they intend to use it. of course, photographs and other media are different, and then the law gets murkier.
I write about copyright because I want to understand it better, especially since the digital age has changed the landscape. I think it will be very important for the advancement of education and learning to have reasonable copyright laws. Copyright itself is a legal construct (different in UK & Canada than in USA) that was developed in reaction to another technological innovation, the printing press.
We need to get this discussion out in the public and we also have to start educating our politicians.
The best resource I’ve found on the subject is Michael Geist’s blog:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/
I’m not opposed to some type of protection for intellectual property, especially considering how real property has all kinds of protection (and all kinds of middlemen).
The period of protection for intellectual property like copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret is arbitrary. Brikwall seems to think 50 or 75 years after death is a good timeframe. But in the U.S., for decades, a work was protected for only 28 years. It could be but was not automatically renewed for an additional 47.
In 1976, that was changed to the author’s lifetime plus 50 years (or a total of 75 years for a work of corporate authorship), and the 1998 Sonny Bono act extended the 50 to 70… which means that no works will enter the public domain in the U.S. until 2019 unless the author specifically puts it there.
(This system would collapse overnight if it were possible for individual consumers to place their credit history under copyright.)
Creative Commons depends entirely on copyright law. A CC license is a vehicle for assigning author rights, much like a rental agreement lets a landlord assign certain property-use rights to a tenant.
So it’s inaccurate to imply that someone who favors CC is “too goddamned lazy” either to enforce a copyright or to create his own work. It’s much more the case that an author recognizes the unlikelihood of much financial gain from, say, a blog post or a given photo. Similarly, when I’m looking for an image to enhance work I’m doing, purchasing custom photos or stock photos isn’t realistic. So I do without, or I look for a CC-licensed image that I can use, and for which I post attribution.
As for the people who reuse fixed expressions of original authorship, few of them are deterred by copyright, and few copyright owners other than corporations have the resources to go after violators.
Yes, Harold. Today we pay a levy for blank CD’s. But until SOCAN successfully lobbied the government for the levy, the de facto standard was that ANY copy of a movie, album, tape or CD, even for personal use (ie: making a cassette tape of a record album so you could play the cassette in your car or walkman) was forbidden. I say forbidden rather than illegal because it was the industry and not any particular law that stated such. Fair dealings would imply it’s okay, but the movie and recording industries said it wasn’t. The blank tape/CD/DVD levy was simply a way of placating both sides while ensuring that the artists still received some compensation for all the “forbidden/illegal” copies floating around.
It wasn’t my intention to refer to the CC proponents as either cheap or lazy, although I guess my original statement could be construed as such. I was referring instead to those who ignore copyright (or CC licences) altogether, without any concern for anyone but themselves. Creative Commons, like traditional copyrights, has its place – as I stated in my original post, I don’t disagree with it.
But, that being said, there are those who would do away with copyright altogether in favour of Creative Commons which, effectively, removes some of the creator’s rights to his or her own works. And, of course, there are those who simply don’t give a damn about any law, they’ll do as they please, thank you very much.
As the creator of any original work, I firmly believe that I am the only one who should decide how my works will be used. It’s not up to anyone else – not the government, not large corporations, and not the end-user to make that determination for me.