The Importance of Copyright

While I might be one of the first people to acknoledge the importance of viral distribution in marketing and the potential of new media distribution platforms, I always come back to one centering idea: it is truly the creator’s will that defines how art is utalized.

In the United States, both my birthplace and my chosen home, Copyright is not just some whimsicle idea the government dreamed up to protect major coprorations or an afterthought to the many other rights granted to its citizens. Copyright is a foundation of who we are as Americans, provided in the very document we so cherish as the cornerstone of our existance, the Constitution.

Pursuant to the United State Constitution, Article 1, Section 8; “Congress shall have the power… to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for a limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and disclosure.” This is further defined in Title 17 of the United States Code which outlines the details of the interpretation of the Constitutional decree of the creation of copyright.

Copyright is a foundation of our existance as a nation, appearing in the body text of the Constitution and in the first twenty titles of the US code. To undermine the value of Copyright not only devalues the precepts of our Constitution, it rots away at so many other valuations we put on our granted freedoms.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property law and protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way they are expressed when fixated upong a tangible medium. Copyright grants the creator the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute and / or disemenate, perform and / or display, liscence and to generate any derivative works for a fixed peroid of time.

While “fair use” clauses exist to protect users of copyright works for their private and home use of their purchases, they do not extend to all uses of Copyright. The balance they create between a copyright creator and a copyright users rights is more based upong the trends of popular culture and not that of the original intent of the Constitution.

The Consititutional provision existed, in part, because the “founding fathers” believed the arts and sciences needed to be a cornerstone of Americana and wished to provide a quantifiable reason for people to engage in the arts and sciences above and beyond that of their vision of a free-market, capitalistic society. The guarentee of ownership was meant to encourage the creation of artistic and scientific pontification when or if capitalism would not or could not support their existance. It is with that same respect the ideas of Copyright exist today and is defended, not by major corporations, but by every garage and basement writer wishing to receive credit for thier creations both in monitary compensation (in a capitalistic ideal) and in personal inspiration (in the freedom of exercising thier first ammendment right to free speach).

Copyright, however, is not all encompassing and exists in the dynamics not only of our own societal perception and interpretation of the language in which it itself is fixated but in the broader scheme of a now more encompassing world society with differing viewpoints of how to maintain fixated works of art and science. Concepts such as parody, derivation in concept and even piracy were not nearly as prevelant when the original concepts of Copyright were even developed thousands of years before even our own Constitution. That being said, our own execution of Copyright needs to address the future of both creation and usage while maintaining a very deep intellectual understanding of its roots in the past.

In the end, piracy is not the biggest issue of a copyright holder per se, despite what the mass media might have us believe. Much like infidelity is in a marriage, piracy is more a symptom of a problem and not necessarily the problem itself. It is probably a symptom of the Copyright holders inability to market and distribute its work in a consumercentric fashion. It is probably demonstrating the needs of the user not coenciding with the execution of the Copyright holder.

The gaps need to be bridged, not the laws changed. The laws are fine the way they are. Copyright holders need to listen to their users and understand how to maximize the worth of their copyright with the users. Copyright users need to respect the rights of the copyright holder and not abuse the creations juse because they cannot always receive them in a way they choose best.

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~ by thedoormouse on 16 August 2006.