On Copyright
I’ve had an interesting morning so far, reading various articles and arguments in the field of copyright law. Well I thought it was interesting anyway. Its something I’ve long been interested in and something that is getting talked about more and more as its starting to affect things that some people care about. The main arguments I’ve been hearing on the news lately are from the likes of Sir Cliff Richard and the families of Lonny Donegan. The only way in which I can see they have a point is that other creative works benefit from a slightly longer term, but either way they seem to be misunderstanding what copyright is for.
Copyright is not a natural state of the world. There is no natural law that ensures that someone should get paid for their ideas and art. For millennia these works were immediately entered into the public domain once they had been expressed or created. In fact the first copyright law, back in the late 17th century, was created to protect printers (not, it should be noted, the author of the works). In 1709 the Statute of Anne was reworded to grant the author exclusive ‘right and liberty’ of printing books. Of course this was usually exercised by granting a license to a printer (publisher). It should also be noted that the original writers of the law thought a 14 year term, renewable once (to 28 years total) was sufficient to reimburse the creator for their effort.
Through the centuries the law of copyright has gradually been extended to include other forms of creative endeavour and lengthened to provide a monopoly situation for longer periods of time. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works 1886 was the first time that a minimum framework of principles was produced to be observed around the world. In this, and all (most) future laws and conventions the key feature was to strike a balance between protecting the intellectual work of creators whilst also providing the public the freedom to access and build on such works. It seems to me that some current performers and artists are striving to upset this balance in the favour of a permanent monopoly on their works.
The intent of copyright law, as I currently understand it, is to give incentive to people to create works which will be a benefit to society. The people wishing to change these laws seem to think that for art and abstract ideas to have a value they need to be owned by someone. This is almost exactly not what gives art and ideas their value. Furthermore, if someone has failed to extract the value of their idea within the first 50 years of its creation then why should they expect to get more value from any future years?
It might also be useful to think off all the people that have benefited from works entering the public domain. Disney: A hugely successful company who are part of the lobbying group in the US asking for copyrights to be extended. Where did their stories come from then? Snow White for example, something Disney makes a lot of money from and tries to prevent anyone else from using. But isn’t that an old folk tale written by the Brothers Grimm? Shouldn’t Disney be paying the ancestors of the Grimms? Actually in this case the Brothers Grimm just collected that story as it is an even older tale probably originating in Asia in the middle ages. Pinocchio: I wonder if they are paying the family of Carlo Collodi? I wouldn’t pick on Disney if it weren’t that they are one of the biggest supporters of changes to copyright laws. Plenty of other people benefit from works in the public domain and I’m sure many would love to receive increased protection for their derivative works. Fortunately there are still plenty that understand why and how the current laws work. And anyway, other people have written much better pieces about Disney’s two-facedness on copyright. See here for example.
Another argument I hear is that after 50 years the creator of a house or of a car do not have them taken away from them. This is just a ridiculous argument. For one, if we are saying that physical property is exactly analogous to intellectual property then it would seem that we should remove all rights. There is no equivalent protection in the physical world so why have it in the abstract world? But more reasonably, the creator of a car or house does not get financial reward every year after he’s built it does he? The people who own that one physical object get any reward from living in it, using it or selling it on. In the mean time the builder has been paid once and perhaps used part of that money to pay into some form of pension for his and his family’s future.
More importantly than all of this is the fact that I like creations such as Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Its littered with characters from stories now in the public domain. How many more of these types of works would we see if copyrights keep getting perpetually extended?
(For another misguided article on copyright (US) see A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright? . And the wiki showing why the author is rather foolish here - Against perpetual copyright.)