QotW3: Rights -Are We There Yet?

It is an insane tug-of-war. Just the other day, a friend of mine went into a spiel about the creators behind street labels Fuct and Obey. According to him, Obey’s Shepard Fairey ripped off Erik Brunetti’s designs for Fuct and it brought on blood bad between these two with things being said in interviews, forums and on sites like BrghtNghts.com (http://www.brghtnghts.com/blog/?page_id=33). Fans for both camps dug up evidence and such to prove their respective points.

Nobody wants his/her work to be used without permission. Everybody wants to be credited or reimbursed for the work they have done. But in the digital realm, wars are being fought surrounding this issue –people are facing lawsuits from the powers that be because works from images to sound files are being used illegally.

As website WhatsTheDownload.com highlights, even the creators themselves cannot come to a consensus. Should the industry come down hard on the people they are trying to get their creations to or should they give leeway to these same people who are sharing them with others by making copies without permission?

A book written by a Stanford Law School scholar, Lawrence Lessig, examines the problem from a different stance (Manjoo, 2004). He made Mickey Mouse the centerpiece for his explorations in technology and issues relating to the restrictions imposed in creativity and culture. He argues that copyright was meant to legally foster creativity, not deter it.

This same notion is supported by Australian lawyers from the Queensland University of Technology (Martin, 2007). After a team of DJs were in the red for remixing music without permission from its original artists, many were enraged. Petitions were signed resulting to heated discussions in online communities on IP rights and the stifling of creativity.

What Happened To Us?

What of the public who rely on the Internet for information-sharing? The public who are fans and enthusiasts who can ‘spread the word’ like a bee that goes to flower to flower to pollinate each one? The public who will be inspired to create something out of the content it consumes online?

We are either being hauled into court for our misuse of intellectual property or we are devising even more ways to avoid getting caught. The problem is if no one comes up with a solid plan to make both content creators and the public happy, these choices remain.

Perhaps we have to acquaint ourselves with the dynamics of copyright infringement in the online world. Carlos Ovalle of the University of Texas in Austin provides a list of objectives (2005). He addresses the importance of copyright and the limitations which entails the use of a copyright work.

The make up of the International copyright, copyright in a digital environment and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are just a few of the issues Ovalle elaborates on. With talk of licensing downloads and providing levies to compensate original creators (Litman, 2004) and the reforming of existing copyright restrictions, where do we begin to understand and begin to implement? There are so many forms of digital media and each follows its own copyright laws as Ovalle demonstrates.

There are attempts to tackle the problem and one notable effort is Creative Commons, a group which was set up under the ‘Free Content’ movement banner (Martin, 2007). To cater to both creators and the public, Creative Commons aim to provide flexible ways of sharing data without hurting the IP rights of their creators (http://creativecommons.org). Works are credited as they should and creators can choose to share their works in ways they see fit.

Though the group does not dabble in copyrighting software, it sufficiently covers areas of traditional creative work like music, film, photography and literature. The end result is a portal whereby users can consume data for free and share data whenever they can without having to worry about copyright infringement.

In my opinion, copyright infringement in the digital landscape has not been fully understood by users themselves. I find that it does not help that copyright laws in relation to the digital world vary from country to country. But I believe through education, we will be able to know the limitations and both creators and the public can work together towards resolving the matter.

References

Litman, J. (2004, September 20). Sharing and Stealing. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=472141

Manjoo, F. (2004, April 8). The mouse who would be king. Salon.com. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/04/08/copyright_culture/index.html

Martin, R. (2007). Remix culture: a rights nightmare. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://www.abc.net.au/catapult/indepth/s1645533.htm

Ovalle, C. (2005). An Introduction to Copyright. Information in Cyberspace, 2. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/%7Ei312co/2.php