Are copyright laws really that effective? Copyright infringement is happening more and more often in today’s society. It hurts the U.S the most because the U.S provides around 80% of the world’s software and that puts a damper on the digital culture for content creators according to Wikipedia’s article on Copyright Infringement (Wikipedia, 2008). Is it possible for content creators and the public to accommodate each other on copyright? In order to achieve this, adaption will have to be made on both parts; the creator and the public.
Accommodating both the interests of the public and the content creators may provide to be very difficult due to the fact that they both want different ways on how content is accessed and used. In a perfect world we would all just get along but this is far from being a perfect world. Now we are faced with the controversy of physical and intellectual property being of the same nature. Lawrence Lessig views that physical and intellectual properties are not related and claims so with the Mickey Mouse copyright. No one is allowed to use the icon, as it is protected under the copyright law. Lessig (2004) claims it is art and not a “factory” and it is therefore, "historically ... absolutely wrong. They have never been the same. And they should never be the same, because, however counterintuitive this may seem, to make them the same would be to fundamentally weaken the opportunity for new creators to create. Creativity depends upon the owners of creativity having less than perfect control (“The Mouse Who”, p. 1).” Then there are others who view that a balance, which may be hard to find now, is needed and that we have to observe debates on media and their effect on the world (Manjoo, p. 1). Everyone is different and when they create intellectual property many feel that need to say or think, “It’s mine and you can’t have it!” but that doesn’t exactly stop people from taking your work and using it illegally. For example, look on YouTube; a bunch of movies are posted that a person can watch for free. There is no need to go to Blockbuster and rent a movie for five dollars when an individual can watch them for free online. Lawsuits must be an everyday occurrence against YouTube, and it’s not necessarily their fault. People tend to feed off of each other; when one person acquires a movie they are able to burn it. Then the person can post it on YouTube and YouTube viewers view the movie and then they decide to post their movies. It only takes one person to create a chain reaction and there is no telling how prepared the world will be when it happens.
At this point it looks like it’s almost impossible to structure copyright infringement in a way that both the creator and the public are in agreement on. From a cultural stand point this is just how people are and as a society a person has to accept the fact that people will infringe. It will be impossible to fix what has already happened in the world with infringement so as a result individuals will have to work with it. Laying some responsibility on creators to claim their intellectual property is not a bad idea and if another person wants to use the same property to make it better, then they should have contact with the creator and they should settle for a fee of some sort. This idea may not happen enough and that could be a minor solution. If we structure the types of intellectual properties into different categories that have different rights or policies, that may put a stop to some infringements. At this point, we as a society have gone so far that it will be hard to go back and start over again. We have to deal with what we have now and work from that.
I feel that we can never really stop it because it is just so out of hand. If we were to completely eliminate copyright on intellectual property there is bound to be some cases involving people’s rights. If we were to completely copyright all intellectual property, many ideas or creations that result from a basis of something that is already copyrighted will come to a halt and fail to exist. I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t get excited when I can get a computer program for free or I can watch a movie online. I think its great but then again I would never post something or take someone’s ideas without contacting the creator first. The last thing I want to do is violate their rights and ideas. There is a difference between intellectual property and physical property and it should be dealt with structurally for both, because both are suffering.
References:
Copyright Infringement. 2008. Retrieved September 11, 2008, from the STS Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. In Farhad Manjoo (Ed.), The Mouse Who Would Be King (p 1-
2). Retrieved from http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/04/08/copyright_culture/
index.html
Manjoo, Farhad. 2008. The Mouse Who Would Be King. Retrieved from
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/04/08/copyright_culture/index.html
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1 comment:
I totally agree that physical and intellectual infringements are two totally different acts. I will go so far to say that I feel that intellectual infringement should be looked upon as a complement. If someone believes in your ideals and innovations enough to look into them more in depth and add upon them one should be honored. If you have created knowledge on a subject wouldn't you want more innovation on the topic to be explored so that the community can grow? Every idea starts from others ideas that came before you.
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