Copyright Law in the Digital Age
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-01-05/copyright-law-digital-age
Copyright laws emerged with the arrival of the printing press in 15th-century England. The printing patent served as a way to protect guild members from those who would copy their work. Today, we live in a world of digital abundance, where everyone is both a creator and a user. As more and more information is produced and shared online -- literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works -- some believe we need more ways to protect it without discouraging creativity. Diane and her guests discuss the role of copyright law in the digital age.
Guests
William Patry
senior copyright counsel at Google and author of "How to Fix Copyright"
Michael Carroll
director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Washington College of Law,American University and founding board member of Creative Commons, Inc.
Sandra Aistars
Executive Director of Copyright Alliance
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Program Highlights
The number of people in the world with access to the internet is estimated at more than 2 billion and all of those are able to share lots of information quickly, easily, and affordably. As a result, some believe we need new ways to think about protecting original content without discouraging creativity. Our guests explore how copyright law has changed in the digital age.
What Does Copyright Protect?
Copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights granted to artists who create an original work of authorship. It allows the creator exclusive rights to copy, distribute, publicly perform, or make adaptations to creative work. Limitations to copyright include fair uses. Copyright protects both published and unpublished work. Interestingly, this issue poses a problem for historians wishing to publish old letters as part of their research. The letter-writer owns the copyright to the letter, so in order to republish it, the historian would have to contact the writer for permission - not just the recipient.
Public Confusion About Copyright
There is a lot of confusion about copyright, Michael Carroll said, because the law is quite complicated. "The incentives are different in different industries for different kinds of creators," Carroll said. Copyright is automatic, and for some people, that's good news. But Carroll points out that for others, who want to create something to share online, this system might not be desirable. This is where projects like Creative Commons can be useful, Carroll said.
Enforcement
Copyright enforecement online can be difficult, according to Sandra Aistars. "It's one thing to say that the copyright lasts for the life of the artist plus 70 years. But in reality that term is far, far shorter because as soon as you've put something out publicly and publish it in the digital age it's very quickly disseminated online, often without your authorization. So that term is less meaningful," she said.
The Shepard Fairey Case
A caller asked about the recent copyright case involving artist Shepard Fairey's famous poster of President Obama that was taken from a photographer's print of the president and altered. The original copyright holder of the photograph took Fairey to court, and the case was eventually settled out of court. Both Carroll and William Patry said they believed what Fairey did fell under fair use, but Aistars disagreed. She said that Fairey's work appeared to be very solidly based on the original photograph and that Fairey recreated all the creative elements of the photographer's original image in his own work, rather than achieving a truly transformative meaning that would be necessary for the work to fall under fair use.
You can read the full transcript here
Comments
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Hello, money and wealth also seems to be the the driving force to intellectual theft and copyright violations. A friend and I wrote a story some years ago and during the movie shoot of "The Patriot" of which he was an extra he got word to Mel Gibson about our book. After that Mel made sure to have my friend at his lunch table every day. The following year Mel produced the show for television. When my friend and his father flew to California to file suit the attorney asked them how how could they afford to commit to the lawsuit. At the answer he told them to give it up.
One guest stated, and I hope I represent this correctly, that the purpose of copyright was economic and to protect the economic interests of authors and investors. Looking at the history of copyright law it seems to me that that wasn't the intent at all. It may be one means to an end, but not the intent.
The purpose stated by our founding fathers was "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." To accomplish this they granted LIMITED rights to their work. The goal wasn't long-term ownership and guaranteed profits for the authors lifetime or for their heirs; or for perpetual profit for companies (e.g. Disney).
It seems to me that the idea was that one way to spur progress of science and useful arts was providing an opportunity to be recognized for, or profit from, your work for a reasonable amount of time; and then to further promote progress by making the works available to others. The focus was freedom of expression rather than property ownership.
The current notion that the purpose of the founding of this country was to help people make all the money they can at the exclusion of all else is a perversion of our founding principles and a danger to our future. The evolution and perversion of copyright law is symptomatic of this.
The Digital Millennium Copyright law was the codification of greed and control and was not meant to promote the progress in science and the arts. It was written by industry lobbyists to protect perpetual profits only.
Hello Diane,
This is such an interesting topic on so many levels.
As a (parttime) artist I would have concerns about protecting my work but, as your guest just stated, the act of copying other artists is how I learn to paint. Being interested primarily in pop art means that I need to copy mostly living artists.
The fact that once I put something online it is automatically copyrighted is wonderful since most artists tend to be terrible about protecting and/or promoting their work. To respond to your guest's concern about stunting creativity any one can grant permission to reuse their work. On his website the UK street artist, Banksy, authorizes duplication of his work for certain purposes. Seems like this is a simple solution, does it not?
Thank you,
Liza Raiser
If we want to have any music in our bar, we are required to purchase multiple music licenses from a host of agencies. Supposedly, these agencies represent artists and make sure they receive compensation for their music.In theory, this is wonderful.
However, these agencies admit that the money collected does not go directly to the artists whose songs are actually being played. Rather, it goes to the artists with the highest sales (i.e., Top 40). For example, we hired a local band who plays all original music. This band is registered with BMI. When contacted, BMI stated that this band (and any other small, local, registered bands we may hire) would never receive a dime of the money collected from us since they did not have “hit” songs. So, we are paying the band out of our own pockets, then we have to pay BMI to allow this band to play THEIR OWN MUSIC in our bar, and then this band never gets any of the money collected from us in fees.
These agencies also use intimidation and threats and routinely practice what amounts to legalized extortion. Their representatives are highly aggressive, show up at completely inappropriate business hours (i.e., 9pm) to harangue us in front of customers, insist papers be signed and money be paid, and threaten us with $30,000 to $50,000 dollars in fines for each case of musical infringement, totaling in the millions. Also, these agencies apparently have the right to increase their license fee by any amount at any time. We have been licensed for less than a year and one agency is already increasing our fee by well over 3%. We have no recourse, we must pay.
We do not sell tickets; we do not have a cover charge at the door; we are not a music venue or concert hall and, consequently, we do not make money from having bands play live. Like many other small businesses (coffee shops, bookstores, etc.), we simply provide music as a courtesy to our regulars to create a nice environment.
As original developer and owner of patents concerning html, DHT and several social networking ideas...
Desist website(s) immediately AND leave our internet alone... or ELSE you will be subject to severe liabilities.
Enforced by the full power of US money and paid patronage- er 'free' speech- of the US force.
And as for our cellphone patents...
and when posting ANYTHING to facebook et al...
you cede all rights to ownership AND accept full responsibilities
for any 'pirating'...
nice system if you can afford IT
smash the moneychangers- jesus
kill the lawyers- shakespeare
US screwed seperately or... forced to divide- anonamoeba
would worry more about herstory repeating but best buy date passed and civilisation on planET expires this year
I was bemused by Mr. Patry's belief that he can switch hats between being a highly paid Google employee - its chief copyright counsel - and being a neutral commentator on copyright policy issues. He's done that act before and he did it blatantly on this show as well. Look into the facts, Google makes huge amounts of money from pirate websites, and it facilitates (through ad revenue and the like) those sites' ability to make money off of stolen movies, music, books, etc. Google supports with a fat paycheck Mr. Patry's advocating for less effective copyright protection, yet he wants you to believe that it is just a coincidence that his public policy views are consistent with his employer's economic interests. Diane shouldn't have let him get away with that. In an even bigger way, Google supports a number of front groups advocating information-should-be-free hogwash. I'd like to see if those front groups would remain consistent in their views and publicly advocate that it would be ok, even preferable, for third parties to completely rip off all Google's intellectual property, such as its search algorithms. Somehow I don't think so and, until they do espouse such a consistent view, I will consider them no more than paid bag-carriers for Google's greed, notwithstanding all their pretense of being forward-thinking masterminds.
Steve Jobs believed that outright theft is in Google's DNA -- a sharp contrast to Google's bogus "do-no-evil" public facade. Perhaps Jobs was correct in more ways than one.
Artists and creators face a huge uphill battle to retain some meaningful economic rights in their work. Artists and creators are a distinct minority of the population. 99.99% of the public would prefer not to pay for the music, movies, books, and art that they enjoy, and, in the digital age, that free (but stolen) material is dangled out before them, available with a few keystrokes. Contrary to simplistic belief, however, ours is not a system of majority rule but rather one of preservation of minority rights against the possible tyranny of the majority. That principal applies here. In fact, copyright is the only express right written directly into the original version of our Constitution (as opposed to the Bill of Rights which was a set of subsequent amendments).
Hello,
If an author and/or artist is given credit for his/her work in a research paper without prior permission (in text citations are included), is that breaking copyright laws??
That falls under Fair Use and does not break copyright law. That applies to a "short passage," not to including the entire content of someone's work.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html