Several years ago the EU commission decided to reconsider the copyright law in the information society. The commission even talked about copyright in the knowledge economy. One thing remains essential - the copyright law is not in touch with the changes produced by the technology innovation.
The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control printing, which was widely established in the 15th and 16th centuries. Before the invention of the printing press a writing, once created, could only be physically multiplied by the highly laborious and error-prone process of manual copying by scribes. Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information.
Later on the governments of different countries gave licenses to printers and publishers to print certain materials (example: Stationers' Company in Britain). In pre-revolutionary France all books needed to be approved by official censors and authors and publishers had to obtain a royal privilege before a book could be published. Royal privileges were exclusive and usually granted for six years, with the possibility of renewal. Over time it was established that the owner of a royal privilege has the sole right to obtain a renewal indefinitely. In 1761 the Royal Council awarded a royal privilege to the heirs of an author rather than the author's publisher, sparking a national debate on the nature of literary property similar to that taking place in Britain during the battle of the booksellers(information from Wikipedia).
Because the incentives given by the early copyright law, printers and publishers were essentially patrons of art, spurring the development of literature and creative works.
Now, fast forward to the end of the 20th century, when the copyright law said that a work is under a copyright until the death of the author plus from 50 to 70 years after the death of the writer. If in the beginning the copyright played essential role in funding art and creativity, now it stops and prevents people from using works that should be in the public domain, spurring new creativity from existing works.
See the DRM (digital rights management) - it tried to use old approach for copyright protection in the new digital era, failing miserably. It was hacked so fast, it is an old joke right now. I am sure that every time a company decided to hinder creativity by closing platform/work or whatever there would be people who will hack it, thus making it possible for innovation. Cause you see - innovation is putting old materials/ knowledge in new and creative way. Nothing comes from thin air - and if the previous stuff are under protection of copyright law, invention would be decreased or put in a box - the way companies want to use their product, their work. If copyright law covers such a large chunks of information and for such a long time, it will hinder the creativity for the future generations to rip, mix, and burn (as Lessig puts it).Generative system is what we need, and for it we need completely new law - take creative commons for example. Many people were skeptics that it will not work, because people would never choose to pay for something that is offered for free. But this is proven not to be true.
Besides copyright law you can choose between:
1. Creative commons: several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution.
2. Copyleft - is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work. In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well.
3. GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works
Some examples:
Some examples:
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