The Draconian Effect Of Copyright Law

‘Copyright’ was a term that first came into being after the Statute Of Anne in 1709 – this was intended to protect the publishers of books against unwanted pirating of their works. That statute allowed authors and publishers to apply for the exclusive right to create copies of books that were their intellectual property – however, instead of creating any automatic or perpetual right, this was originally for 14 years, and then another 14 if the copyright owner was still alive, and only applied if the owner made the application to have said copyright.

Furthermore, it only restricted the creation of absolute copies of the work – all ‘derivative works’ were originally okay, although this was soon changed to exclude works where one or two words of the original had been changed. Despite the protection it afforded to publishers, the London publishing monopolists strongly opposed the law (and even challenged it in Midwinter v Hamilton). Why? Due to a previous common law assumption that any copyright would be perpetual. They felt that this law was placing unfair restrictions on ‘their’ property – which was naturally based on the assumption that intellectual property should come with the same rights as physical property.

These rights are now held in the Berne Convention – which dictates that copyright must be automatic (I’ll explain the problems with this later) and has the provision that any copyright in one country must also be valid in all other signatory countries – and the ‘European directive on harmonizing the terms of copyright protection’. The key changes now from the original copyright system (which was fair enough, in my opinion) are that all intellectual property works are now automatically copyrighted, as said above, no longer have the requirement to be held on a register, or even display the © mark, that the term of copyright is now 70 years after death for individuals and 98 years for corporations, and most importantly, that nearly all derivative works are strictly regulated, except those which fall under ‘fair use’ guidelines.

Consider this. You are a budding computing student, studying at one of the top computing colleges in the world, and create a search engine, which will allow people to find other publicly shared files on the system, for the purposes of exchanging ideas, thoughts and information. You have savings of £12,000. Then, all of a sudden, you get an angry letter from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America), threatening a lawsuit for an obscene amount in damages ($98,000,000,000) for files shared on your search engine. They offer to settle for £12,000.

Knowing that even if you win the case, you will be unlikely to be able to recoup your legal costs, and that legal aid is unavailable for you, thus you would end up spending around £250,000 in legal costs, what would you do? Whatever happens, you’re going to lose a silly amount of money for an action that is morally irreprehensible, hell, it’s a good thing to do, in that it helps others with no direct damage.

This may sound like a silly example, but that is what happened to a student in Michigan called Joe Nievelt. This is just one of many examples of copyright law allowing individuals to be victimised by corporations for actions which they either have not done, or could not foresee the consequences of. Another problem here is that the automatic copyright means that the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) are suing people for sharing, or making derivative works of, art that the author did not give commercial value to in the first place; the responsibility is on the author to directly provide a license for such use.

The problem with the automatic copyright, which I just touched upon, is that it gives silly copyright terms to works which have no commercial value. It also means that works that are out of production will not be redistributed unless the copyright author sees fit to. It is estimated that only roughly 5% of works in copyright are in print; this leads to the conclusion that the wider enjoyment of art and culture is being prevented for technical statutory reasons, rather than actual moral or financial reasons.

The incredibly long copyright term is bordering on the ridiculous to begin with (especially for someone like me who is against inheritance of any property), and already begs the question of whether someone should be liable for millions of pounds in ‘recompense’ for the use of a work, of which the original copyright owner has died. But this is further exacerbated by the rate that Parliament, the European Council and Congress are increasing respective copyright terms, which is currently faster than copyright terms are expiring. I may be slightly off, but I believe that nothing has come into the public domain (free to use) since roughly 1980.

The first animated film with sound, Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’, and coincidentally, the character that brought Disney success (Mickey Mouse, in case you’re wondering), would neither be legal under our current copyright law, due to the contraction of the definition of fair use. You see, both derived from a Buster Keaton silent film (Steamboat Bill), and so under current law, Keaton would be able to successfully sue Disney for every penny he had.

And yet, this is the Disney that so strongly opposed ‘free culture’ champion Lawrence Lessig’s proposal that copyright no longer be automatic, yet must be registered – a simple change, with no real downsides. Yet Congress still has not enacted this, several years on, and the European Union is far behind. There is no logic to opposing it, unless one believes in the automatic perpetuity of copyright – in essence, the same status as physical property.

It is also now nearly impossible to find out whether a copyright owner gives permission to use a part of a work, the automatic aspect of copyright now meaning that there is no need to keep a record of who the copyright owner is. As copyrights can be sold, transferred, or indeed different parts of a work owned by different people, this can be a nearly impossible task, the price of which make it entirely unfeasible for non-commercial ventures. Even if the copyright owner can be found, and they would be prepared to allow use of the material, a written statement of permission is normal to obtain to prevent future legal action, and this may dissuade potential donors.

Finally, there is my more opinionated argument that the creation of art should be a pastime, and nothing more – it ultimately contributes nothing necessary to society, unlike the vast majority of occupations. I can understand the need to recoup costs, or indeed to find someone to stump up the money in the first place, but I cannot see the requirement for a profit margin in the creation of art, and with the Tories slashing the government subsidies available for artists (the UK Film Council is no more, for example), there is next to no prospect of artists ever getting a good deal in our current state of affairs.

This post was mainly inspired by Lawrence Lessig’s book ‘Free Culture’ (available, I believe, under a Creative Commons license). It is a great read – I would recommend it highly.

Capitalist Causalities

N.B. I think I said in my last post that posts may not be as frequent any more - this one took two months to write.

So… I have an economics exam tomorrow, and doing all this revision really makes me think – everything around this subject is based on ‘motives’ which are all purely selfish. Obviously, the main one of these in microeconomics is the ‘profit motive’, which it is naturally assumed that all companies have, aside from other similar motives which ultimately will lead to the fulfilment of the profit motive; for instance, the motive to increase the firm’s market share.

It is also taught that government intervention is nearly always a bad thing, and exacerbates the problems of market failure. Maybe this is accurate for small government interventions, however, it seems to me that the more drastic a government’s actions are (aside from the obviously wrong – Zimbabwe, I’m looking at you), the more likely they are to work. For example, the introduction of the Rentenmark in Germany after the Great Depression (which affected Germany, which was already heavily in debt, worse than most countries) by Stresemann largely led to the solution to Germany’s economic problems at the time, albeit when combined with astute foreign policy.

However, there is one common problem for me with both of these being taught as fact – they both assume that our current semi-democratic economic and political system is the correct one to use. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for democracy, but the standard of political education in this country is dire – indeed, I have been unfortunate enough to encounter people who believe that Barack Obama is our Prime Minister – and to expect people who have little or no political awareness other than their parents’ views (or even worse, those of the tabloids!) to use their electoral responsibilities sensibly and appropriately is at best over optimistic and at worst simply naïve. This is why the media has such a strong stranglehold on politics, and why participation rates are so low.

However, I believe I’ve talked in the past about the desperate need for extra political education, so moving swiftly on, or indeed, not so swiftly, as I pick up this train of thought two months after it originally left King’s Cross, despite the general curriculum quite understandably following a middle-of-the-road political agenda, at the expense of coverage of the more extreme sections at either side, I am pleased that the curriculum gives scope for teaching of at least more than one viewpoint; however, although classicist economic schools of thought are taught pretty much mandatorily, the Keynesian school is somewhat overlooked.

Now, this may not appear to be such a harsh reality, but it is one that has particular poignancy whilst in our present situation – i.e. that of recession – as although the two schools agree that whilst a state is in economic wellbeing, a reduction in government spending will not have much effect (although the Keynesians argue that this reduction could endanger the economy’s productive capacity), the classicists believe that a reduction in spending can kickstart an economy out of a recession, whilst the Keynesians, to my mind, see logic and see it the other way around. Surely then, this bias of teaching gives bias to future economists or indeed voters’ minds, and is thus tantamount to indoctrination?

I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds...

Apologies for not musing for a while. I have actually got some written pieces down; however, some of them are (were) very topical, others are of contestable quality (some of which are simply drivel), and I’ve simply not felt the impetus to write for quite a while. It may have seemed that the blog was dead, I assure you, it was merely undergoing a hibernation process.

What I want to talk about is the human thirst for knowledge, and the divide between those who do strive for it and those that do not. Whilst to some, particularly those who make their living through various forms of research, this may seem to be a natural part of people’s internal wiring, it remains that some simply do not care to expand their horizons, or at least in the direction that society expects them to. Indeed, there are still hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people whose idea of branching out into hitherto unexplored areas of knowledge constitutes watching a new Jeremy Clarkson/James May/Fearne Cotton/(insert prolific presenter here, I don’t know many) show, and having done so, feel enlightened.

These people are often alienated from or even vilified by the self-styled ‘intelligent’ society, a reaction which I personally feel is out of order and unjustified. For starters, to treat another human as inferior is an action so despicable that it often, somewhat ironically, makes the treater actually inferior to the person on the other end of the disrespect! I am unable to see (and if there is something glaringly obvious that I have missed throughout my life, please inform me) how anyone can place themselves above another human being, or indeed below.

The justification generally seems to be that they are making no ‘contribution’ to the ‘greater good’ of society, or indeed the world. To me, there appears to be no logic, or very poor logic, behind that statement. Tying in to the point above, how has it been decided what this ‘greater good’ is, and how to achieve it? And given that the above justification appears to have assumed that the one justifying themselves is convinced of the answers to the previous two questions, it can only be that the justifier has placed themselves, and their ‘brilliant’ mind, not only above the person or group that they are condemning, but above the rest of the world, including those that a rational person would view as their intellectual equals!

I would like to point out at this stage that I do not believe myself to be an overall better person than anyone else, including these people who I am discussing at the moment. Naturally, in my eyes, all men are equal (for the purposes of political correctness, when I use the word ‘men’, please assume I meant ‘humans’), indeed, to believe otherwise after what I have just said would make me guilty of hypocrisy of the highest order.

Whilst there is a lot to be said for a democratic approach to answering the previous question about what the greater good actually is, indeed, that is what our whole political system attempts to do, there are naturally problems. Believe it or not, everyone is influenced by the voices of those around them, and a fair representation of the populace’s opinions never occurs when it comes to election time. Furthermore, it is often a great struggle to find out what you actually think about a matter – I have found the answer to be so elusive in the past that to this day I am unaware of my opinions on certain matters; not necessarily because I find them unimportant (anything that is held dear by one person is naturally important to the human race as a whole), but either because all sides of an argument have equal strength to my ears, or because I simply do not know.

Finally, there is the unfortunate fact that participation rates are at their lowest ever, possibly not because people do not care, but because the differences between the choices offered, which is essentially now a three-party system, all straight down the middle, are not sufficient to tempt people into going down to the polling station and casting a vote when they feel that the difference between middle-left, middle-right, and plain middle is negligible anyway.

We also have to consider whether those who pursue knowledge are actually doing a favour to society anyway. It has been the case over the years, that researchers who set out with the best of intentions often open up, in their field, the scope for something inherently evil. Consider this: with the dawn of atomic physics came the scope for the creation of the atom bomb, and essentially the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention unfortunate disasters like Chernobyl; with the advent of new materials, right back from the Stone Ages, there has always been new weapons for men to hurt and kill each other with; with the beginning of industrial processes came not only greater availability of consumer goods, but also the destruction of the land, the sea and the sky; with the modern political system came fascism, nationalism and patriotism, war, conservativism… (okay, the last one was a joke).

Thus, we have to consider whether we have really improved the standard of human life over the years, or whether it is actually the so-called ignoramuses who do a real service to society by learning nothing aside from just how obnoxious Jeremy Clarkson actually is.

I leave you today with words from the mouth (or pen) of Robert Burns that I believe to be particularly apt to my point here:

‘The best laid plans of mice and men
Gang aft agley
And leave us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy’