Most regular users of YouTube and Google Video will by now be aware of their recent attack on copyright infringements.
YouTube, Google Video and other similar facilities have been taking a huge amount of user content offline, due to supposed copyright violations. Some of it, such as videos where the user has created their own images to a professional sound track, has simply been silenced - you can view the images still, but there's no sound now. In my view, that's desecration of art.
The whole move is supposedly a crack down on piracy, which is, if you believe the likes of YouTube, a huge problem for the profitability of artists, musicians and entertainers. When people use music without obtaining legal permission, they're doing a terrible, criminal act against struggling artists who need every penny they can get.
Pirates are portrayed in the media as cold-hearted profiteering criminals, and very similar to low-level thieves. Bad People. Out for a fast buck. Lurking in dark alleys, shoving bootleg copies of movies at unsuspecting teens.
But is this really the situation? Is piracy really the threat to creativity it is claimed to be? Is all piracy bad? Is the law ethically right? And what should we think and do about it?
Case study: Family home videos
A friend of mine makes home videos of his friends, and sends them overseas to his friends and family. They are not for commercial release, or even really for public viewing.
However, the videos are on Google Video, to enable his friends and family to view them quickly and easily, and to save sending huge attachments via email.
The videos have snatches of old 60s songs as a soundtrack, including The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Hollies (still all under copyright), and some classical music (created prior to the invention of copyright laws).
Google Video send my friend a warning, removed the videos, and threatened him: should he ever post such criminal material on their site ever again they would take legal action.
What I think
This is ridiculous and overly heavy-handed. All across the net now, ordinary people like my friend are being threatened like this. They are not doing any harm. They are not stopping any one making a profit, and they bought the music they're using legitimately (at a CD shop, not in a dark alley).
What this sort of tactics on the part of the companies is doing, though, is making people very angry. People like me are beginning to sympathise with the pirates in a way we never did before.
Up until now, I have always bought everything I use and listen to legitimately. I believe in paying for what I use, and being fair and honest in my dealings.
But if companies treat me like a criminal for listening to music I paid for on an Ipod I paid for, as an example, why should I feel any empathy for those companies? They are not respecting me! They have turned a working relationship of business trust into one of distrust and attack. That makes me angry and resentful.
Talking to friends about this issue at the pub, people believe the heavyhanded tactics of the mega-companies are backfiring. People are starting to feel that we should ignore the legalities of piracy laws. When laws are ridiculous, after all, they should be ignored.
Case study: Should Beethoven be copyright?
Imagine if Beethoven was around in these days? Or Mussorgsky, whose Night On Bald Mountain was used to wonderful effect in Disney's Fantasia? Disney would be stymied by the very Frankenstein laws it helped create!
The only reason Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Mozart, and a host of other musicians' works are available freely is because the copyright laws didn't exist when they were alive. It's that simple. They predate these laws. But you can be certain, that if another Mozart were born today, his music would be just as legally inaccesible as that of The Beatles.
Do current copyright laws really protect creativity?
I'd argue that the current copyright laws protect profits of mega-corporations. They do not protect creativity.
Having worked in a small company whose livelihood depended upon its intellectual property, being a composer of music, and a professional writer myself, I've become very aware that copyright as it currently stands does not protect creativity or the profitability thereof.
In the case of small companies with great ideas, those ideas are almost always bought up quickly by large companies. Microsoft and Apple, as well as Google and Disney, are all excellent examples of companies whose profitability is based very largely on ideas they have bought from others, then marketed as their own. The originators of the ideas were paid, the intellectual property rights transferred, and the larger company reaps the rewards henceforth.
A lot of the time, large companies will buy up competing creativity, and then just sit on the ideas or products, to stifle competition.
As for Disney, almost all of its "original" works were based on the works of others. Fantasia is all based on music that predates copyright. Peter Pan is the work of J M Barrie. Snow White is a Grimm fairy tale, as is Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. So much for "Disney Princesses"! Disney also now owns Jim Henson's Muppets, including Kermit The Frog and Miss Piggy.
In the world of Hollywood entertainment, spying and duplication is rife, and real creativity is limited. Examples of duplicated movie ideas following likely spying include:
- Antz: A story all about insects defeating nasty invaders (DreamWorks 1998) and
- A Bugs Life: A story all about ants defeating nasty invaders (Disney 1998),
- Armageddon: A team of astronauts go up in the space shuttle to blow up an asteroid before it destroys the earth (Touchstone 1998) and
- Deep Impact: A team of astronauts go up in the space shuttle to blow up an asteroid before it destroys the earth (Paramount 1998)
- Finding Nemo: Fishy friends and adventures (Disney 2003) and
- A Shark Tale: Fishy friends and adventures (DreamWorks 2004).
So much for creativity in the big time!The Conscienscious CitizenMany philosphers believe that the role of the citizen isn't just to obey the law, but to also actively disobey the law when it is clearly faulty. This is the basic concept of
civil disobedience.
Without civil disobedience, the Berline Wall would still stand, and arguably India would still be a part of the British Empire.
Originally, copyright lasted just seven years. Seven years was believed to be long enough for any artist to make money from his/her work. After that, the work passed into the public domain.
I think it's about time we, as citizens decided to revoke the current copyright laws, and return to the old ones.
If we return to the original copyright laws, as they were first deemed appropriate, the following are now out of copyright, and are public domain, free to be copied, lend, shared, and used as we, the people, see fit:
- Most of Disney's "creations" including: Snow White, Fantasia, The Lion King, A Bug's Life, Aladdin, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck...
- All music from the 90s and earlier, including: The Beatles, The Hollies, Duran Duran, Queen, Abba, The Rolling Stones.
- Most well-known and well-loved musicals, including: The Sound Of Music, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, South Pacific, Porgy and Bess, Meet Me In St Louis, Singin' In The Rain, The Wizard Of Oz.
- All television shows prior to the turn of the century: The Brady Bunch, The Muppet Show, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, Star Trek.
- All movies prior to 2000: Star Wars original movies, E.T., Gone With The Wind, most James Bond, most childrens TV and videos.
- All books and written material prior to 2000: All classic literature, half of the Harry Potter series (!!), most books still in the book shops today.
Food for thought, all of this. In other words, what current copyright laws are doing, I believe, is keeping ideas away from the public, due to expense, and keeping money in the hands of the elite.
Have you noticed how cheap classic literature books are? That's because there is no copyright. You can pick up Jane Austen for $2-3 a copy, but a similar sized novel from a novelist from the 1970s will cost you upwards of $15.
Returning copyright to a seven year period would still enable the payment of the originators of ideas. But the stranglehold on creativity would end.
It's time for change. And unless change comes from the legal system, I believe piracy will continue to become and increasingly large problem, due not to a huge criminal element in our society, but simply due to ridiculous laws.
Read more...
Posts
