Copyright by Lessig
Next book in my book review series:
Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig (a law professor
at Stanford)
I highly recommend this pretty accessible book on intellectual property, from its history to the current debates on the subject. He starts by discussing the cyclic nature of IP law changes. The companies with money and power have always tried to hold on to their monopolies and outlaw any technology the threatens their way of doing business, like Hollywood, radio, cable tv, VCRs, DVRs, mp3 players, etc. Everyone one of those innovations involved at least one lawsuit determining whether the entire innovation should be declared illegal in the US. Luckily, so far, in every case but one, the court would find in favor of the new technology, provided it had non-infringing use cases. Only in the napster decision did they decide that despite the ability of their software that could filter an estimated 99% of pirated material off of their network, their p2p (peer-to-peer) service was ruled illegal - because 1% of people might get away with using it for copyright infringement. The VCR could never have withstood such a stringent requirement. Ridiculous. Obviously, most of us probably believe that technoogy is not responsible for the abuse people use it for (gun companies can't be sued for misuse, nor can knife companies, but computer companies can?!).
The Constitution makes a distinction between creative property and real property because clearly you can't own ideas in someone else's head. Everything you create probably depends on all the creative influences from someone else; ideas beget ideas. Consitution specifically says 'in order to promote progress in the science and arts, a limited time copyright is granted.' Note the lack of 'protect property' argument in the constitution. Originally copyright in America was for exclusive rights to a particular book, not derivative works. It was about publishing, not copying. Once you bought a copy of a book, you could make private copies, write a satire of it, rewrite it into your version, etc.
The DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) goes crazy far. It makes illegal doing anything with a copyright work that the owner doesn't give explicit permission for (if they wrap it up in a technology). This is why these companies now bribe tech companies to restrict what users can do. Also, copyrights have been extended from 14 years in the constitution to almost 100 years! That is a crazy time for an "idea" to be controlled by a single company; this perverse length doesn't promote science and arts.
Did you know 5 companies control 85% of popular media (like music)? Since these companies have enormous amounts of money and the costs of defending against lawsuits are skyrocketing (easily in the hundreds of thousands), they exert enormous control over all media. Laws and regulations have often been abused by the powerful to defeat competition. =(
But it's not hopeless. He discusses some basic solutions which would greatly improve the situation. Require registration again. Have reasonable limits but allow some renewals. Explicity reallow derivative works as 'fair use'. Go back to recognizing that technology with important non-infringing uses should be legal.
Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig (a law professor
at Stanford)
I highly recommend this pretty accessible book on intellectual property, from its history to the current debates on the subject. He starts by discussing the cyclic nature of IP law changes. The companies with money and power have always tried to hold on to their monopolies and outlaw any technology the threatens their way of doing business, like Hollywood, radio, cable tv, VCRs, DVRs, mp3 players, etc. Everyone one of those innovations involved at least one lawsuit determining whether the entire innovation should be declared illegal in the US. Luckily, so far, in every case but one, the court would find in favor of the new technology, provided it had non-infringing use cases. Only in the napster decision did they decide that despite the ability of their software that could filter an estimated 99% of pirated material off of their network, their p2p (peer-to-peer) service was ruled illegal - because 1% of people might get away with using it for copyright infringement. The VCR could never have withstood such a stringent requirement. Ridiculous. Obviously, most of us probably believe that technoogy is not responsible for the abuse people use it for (gun companies can't be sued for misuse, nor can knife companies, but computer companies can?!).
The Constitution makes a distinction between creative property and real property because clearly you can't own ideas in someone else's head. Everything you create probably depends on all the creative influences from someone else; ideas beget ideas. Consitution specifically says 'in order to promote progress in the science and arts, a limited time copyright is granted.' Note the lack of 'protect property' argument in the constitution. Originally copyright in America was for exclusive rights to a particular book, not derivative works. It was about publishing, not copying. Once you bought a copy of a book, you could make private copies, write a satire of it, rewrite it into your version, etc.
The DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) goes crazy far. It makes illegal doing anything with a copyright work that the owner doesn't give explicit permission for (if they wrap it up in a technology). This is why these companies now bribe tech companies to restrict what users can do. Also, copyrights have been extended from 14 years in the constitution to almost 100 years! That is a crazy time for an "idea" to be controlled by a single company; this perverse length doesn't promote science and arts.
Did you know 5 companies control 85% of popular media (like music)? Since these companies have enormous amounts of money and the costs of defending against lawsuits are skyrocketing (easily in the hundreds of thousands), they exert enormous control over all media. Laws and regulations have often been abused by the powerful to defeat competition. =(
But it's not hopeless. He discusses some basic solutions which would greatly improve the situation. Require registration again. Have reasonable limits but allow some renewals. Explicity reallow derivative works as 'fair use'. Go back to recognizing that technology with important non-infringing uses should be legal.