Being a writer, I appreciate the existence and protection of Copyright law. But recent legislation on intellectual property rights is shafting the people. The public realm is being reduced and its ideals thwarted. The original rationale for Copyright was to provide incentive for individuals to produce and gain in the short run, but society would gain in the long run. Copyright protects an author's ownership and any potential earnings from the original format of a work, not ideas in themselves, for a substantial part of a lifetime. However, some ideas cannot be legally protected, i.e., philosophical and political, and naturally belong in public discourse. Others, pertaining to practical applications, can be handled by patents. These have a time limit so that the work can go into the public domain to become a part of our intellectual heritage. Once it is in this realm, individuals may do with it as they please.
Copyright can be licensed, sold, inherited or otherwise transferred just like any other property. Or it can be relinquished to the public realm by its owner. A work is Copyrighted as of its creation. It does not have to be registered with the Library of Congress. Registration is simply for the owner's protection should legal questions over creation and ownership arise.
The U. S. has one of the more stringent Copyright laws, more strict than the International Copyright Convention, and it is becoming more strict. Copyright is being extended to 70 years and it may be renewed, carrying its protection far beyond the life of its creator. The reason for this is greed.
Many companies, especially the entertainment industries, want to be able to keep their intellectual property alive in perpetuity. The potential amount they can earn from films, novels, recordings and videos is enormous. A large licensing and lobbying industry, represented by the likes of RIAA, ASCAP and BMI, arose to protect artists copyrights and established a system of billing for use, but they have become a major political influence and intertwined themselves into our laws in an unfair and antidemocratic manner.
Even the honorable principle of Fair Use, that allowed short quotes from a work to be used without permission, although with appropriate attribution, is being eroded. Today, it is questionable how much one can use of a sound, video or film recording, even if for review purposes. Businesses are resisting Fair Use policies because they would like to make every cent possible.
Many great works of art and literature that appear to be our common cultural heritage are still under Copyright, long after their creators have turned to dust. Their ownership is private and apparently profitable. Is this morally right? A work that has existed for such a long time and is so well-known as to be considered a part of our culture is hardly a private one. Many individuals would not even consider checking Copyright to use such works, assuming that they are in the public domain. There is a contradiction here between the public and private perceptions of ownership.
Another problem is altering public domain works and then copyrighting them. How much can a work be altered to be deemed a new one? Should this be allowed? After all, Copyright was instituted to protect originality.
The Internet has made Copyright violation rampant. Due to its expansion, especially the World Wide Web, intellectual property laws are in flux and lawyers are trying to catch up with the problems this free flow of information has caused. Many of the Net old timers believe that information should be free to promote a free flow of ideas. I concur, but ideas alone are not a particular format and use of ideas is not copyrightable. Otherwise, I abhor censorship of any kind.
Information is abstract, flexible and often timely if it is to be valuable. For these reasons it is difficult to pin down and own. Much of it can be copied over and over and each copy is an exact duplicate of the original. Nothing is lost in the copying procedure. So it would seem to have little intrinsic value in itself, but only in its potential application. Only restricted information can have value proportional to the amount of restriction and its potential applicative value to others. We haven't yet learned how to handle these problems of intellectual property.
Trademarking is another problem. Why should a company be able to use a preexisting word to identify itself or its products? Why should we allow a public domain identifier (signifier) that is part of our language to be co-opted by private interests? This law gives private interests too much power and allows a company to sue for infringement of trademark if the word is used in a similar context. Many companies trademark neologisms or distinctive phrases, rather than use a preexisting word, a much more sensible policy.
It would seem that we are moving toward a society wherein everything is privately owned and must be licensed or sold for use, even our language. When we reduce the public realm, everyone loses because a competitive and personally isolating business mentality replaces the give and take goodwill of public discourse and politics. If this is late Capitalism, I wish none of it.
I think that Copyright should exist for only 50 years and be nonrenewable. Other civilized countries have such laws. But the protections of this intellectual property should remain much as they are now. Once a work has entered the public domain it should under no circumstances be allowed in whole or part to be re-copyrighted. This would protect the public interest.
Most of us copy protected material - articles, parts of books, video tapes, DVDs, CDs, software - for personal use and most of us don't see anything wrong with it. This practice is almost impossible to regulate. We rarely will copy a whole book because it would cost as much buying the commercially produced book and our effort wouldn't look as good. But with video tapes, DVDs, CDs and software it's cheap and easy, although in the case of some video or audio the image will be slightly degraded. Video and digital audio copy protection schemes only make the copying process a hassle because there are many inexpensive devices and software that will defeat this protection. The industry hasn't stopped us from copying and likely any new protection schemes will eventually be defeated. Therefore, Copyright should include a provision that allows copying for personal use without permission or payment. That means that one does not make profit from it, plagiarize it or distribute it. Students and researchers benefit from doing this all the time and it best serves the interests of our society. Copyright should protect its owner from piracy, the illegal copying and distribution for profit of a work that constitutes fraud. There is a question here whether copying for personal use to avoid payment for the legitimate article is morally right, but humans will not always operate on these moral principles and policing personal copying is probably more expensive than any revenue lost. Much of the copying of Copyrighted works in academia and research is because the work is no longer in publication and unavailable, except in libraries with restricted access. But to reduce this practice, I further propose that Copyright law require that a work be in publication and available for it to be in effect, otherwise copying for personal use should be a legitimate form of access. However, the owner may withdraw a work from the market and still retain Copyright if all copies are recalled.