Copyrighting culture
In principal copyright was introduced to stimulate creativity by protecting
the rights of a creator so that he or she could reap the rewards of his or
her inventions. However because some inventions stand to benefit all
of society, like Einstein’s theory of relativity, and because a creator’s
life is finite copyright must obviously be limited in certain ways.
Ideally copyright needs to be balanced between maximising financial return
for the individual owners of information against maximising overall innovation
and benefit to society. It would logically ensue that copyright was
limited to the lifetime of the creator, after which time the creation, idea
or information would become part of the public domain. However the
laws concerning copyright today have far exceeded this logical limit so that
the law as it stands in the US copyrights all materials created after 1978
for 70 years after the death of the author, so almost two lifetimes.
All materials existing before 1978 are copyrighted for 95 years after original
creation, so almost one and a half lifetimes. Some sections of society
are even arguing that works of Shakespeare need to be re-copyrighted.
These same groups are also arguing that existing copyright laws need to be
extended further, and this has been the pattern up to the present with copyright
laws already having been extended retrospectively 11 times in the last 40
years. It seems that what we are heading for is a situation of permanent
copyright, with no limitations. And all this, despite the fact that
copyright was never intended to maintain perfect control over a work.
Copyright was introduced in order for innovation to flourish not for motivations
of profit. It was introduced to provide a fair reward to creators
while still encouraging innovation. Lawrence Lessig is currently involved
in a US Supreme Court action to confront proposed copyright laws, and he
explains succinctly why we need information in the public domain and therefore
why there should be a limit to copyright laws.
Free resources have always been central to innovation, creativity and
democracy. The roads are free in the sense I mean; they give value to the
businesses around them. Central Park is free in the sense I mean; it gives
value to the city that it centers. A jazz musician draws freely upon the chord
sequence of a popular song to create a new improvisation, which, if popular,
will itself be used by others. Scientists plotting an orbit of a spacecraft
draw freely upon the equations developed by Kepler and Newton and modified
by Einstein. Inventor Mitch Kapor drew freely upon the idea of a spreadsheet—VisiCalc—to
build the first killer application for the IBM PC—Lotus 1-2-3. In all of
these cases, the availability of a resource that remains outside of the exclusive
control of someone else—whether a government or a private individual—has
been central to progress in science and the arts. It will also be central
to progress in the future. (Lawrence Lessig “Control & Creativity:
The future of ideas is in the balance”)
From this paragraph it is clear that information in the public domain
inspires creativity and provides betterment to society. The lengthy
extension of the copyright laws adding great boundaries to the public domain
is but the first problem concerning creativity and benefits to society.
The second problem is the issue of who owns copyright control. While
the immediate control is owned by the creator, they can sell their copyright
to another individual or group. What this has amounted to is; a handful
of record companies having ownership over a very large percentage of the
world’s music; several major film studios owning the copyright over most of
the world’s films; a handful of publishing houses having control over the
majority of books in the world; and, those of the above handfuls are the
same ones who own the copyright over all radio, television, newspaper and
digital media. Such companies as AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal,
Walt Disney and News Limited, to name but a few, own the copyright over a
huge percentage of popular culture. We can see from this that copyright laws,
rather than standing to protect the rights of the individual creator, have
come to be representative of large multinational corporations, whose interests
differ widely from those of the individual. While copyright extending
70 years after the death of the creator is little use to him or her, it is
certainly of benefit to a large corporation, and it is only a large corporation
that can afford to buy the rights off an individual. Culture and the
valuable resource of information, have become a part of the capitalist machine.
Ideas are now held under the copyright control of large corporations to the
extent that new quasi-religious texts are held in copyright, like those of
the Church of Scientology. With the additions of patents and trademarks
and the like, it is unnecessary to have copyright laws extending beyond their
logical finite boundaries. It is undemocratic and stifling to creativity
to have the control over information in the hands of so few. Particularly
when these few value only the profit that information can bring rather than
the information itself.
Many hundreds of thousands of books, movies and songs created in the 1920s
to the 1950s should be in the public domain rather than be unavailable, yet
being kept under copyright means that many of them will be unpreserved and
lost. Because unless information and cultural products are making a
profit deemed high enough by the corporate entities, such information will
not be distributed by them, and is unable to be distributed via the public
domain because of copyright. George Orwell’s 1984, for example, while
available in the public domain Australia (where copyright law only extends
50 years after the death of the author) is unavailable in the US. And
in 1930 for instance, 10,027 books were published, of which only 174 are
still in print. So what has happened to the other 9,853 books out of
print, how have they been preserved and how will they be made available when
their copyright control is ended and they enter the public domain?
What strikes us as particularly ridiculous is that the individual author would
probably give up copyright if that was the only means by which his or her
works could be received. And what can be said about the 174 books that
have stayed in print, why them and not the others? – because those are the
ones that they been able to maintain profit, they are the popular books.
Books which are specialised or only appeal to a limited number of people,
which is the nature of academic books particularly, will fall out of print
no matter how valuable they might be or how important they are to society,
because their appeal is not broad enough. So in effect it is the lowest
common denominator which will keep a book in print, rather than its individual
value or intrinsic worth. Here the financial profit weighs heavily
against creative worth. In terms of music, apparently only around 20%
of the music ever recorded is currently available. And again what is
available is popular and not necessarily the best quality. All this
because copyright is no longer in the hands of individual artists, but in
the hands of corporations that will only reproduce books and music which
is guaranteed to sell to large audiences. And this has lead to the
current saturation of the market with "popular culture". Culture than
sells to millions. While at the same time the culture that is unique,
or alternative, and often more truly interesting and creative, is being lost.
The longer a work stays under copyright protection (i.e. the more hideously
unreasonable profits are demanded from it) the more creativity and innovation
are stifled. We are obviously not against copyright laws per sae as
they too inspire innovation, rather we are arguing for more standardised
laws which are limited only by the logic of the death of the author and betterment
to society.
The current situation is such that 99.8% of profit value from a work goes
to the original creator or individual or group they have sold their rights
to. Under these circumstances it is entirely unreasonable to consider
any extension of the existing copyright laws, and within limits, it is possible
to consider changing these laws to have reduced jurisdiction. The reality
at present is that omnipresent corporate organisations have control over
the copyright of much of our culture. While this continues we can only
expect that their lobbying will lead to further extensions of copyright and
a stagnation of the public domain and diminished access to the works held
there. It is fundamentally necessary for the creators, the artists themselves
and original owners of copyright, to have more say in how their work is used
and distributed. We cannot allow for artistry and ideas to be entirely
overridden by the profit motive. Instead we should seek a balance whereby
profit is not the only ends to the means of innovation. For innovation
to flourish, which is the desire of any society, copyright must exist to
protect the creator but be limited by the need for further innovation and
benefit to society. This balance will only be achieved by continual
struggle against the interests of the corporate world. The Internet
is one site where this struggle is taking place. From Peer to Peer
file sharing to enormously wide distribution of information, the Internet
exists off the back of the public domain and access to information.
The Internet needs knowledge in the public domain in order to expand and
thrive, and to innovate new creative works. If the Internet is allowed
to become a static and diminished resource it will be a very great loss to
our society.
By Jessica Waye and JC Twinning.
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