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Well, I guess the main point of contention is, do you really own what you
write? To play devil's advocate and carry the argument to an extreme, all
the words we use are in the dictionary--can Daniel Webster (& his heirs)
claim copyright to the entire English Language? Obviously not.
How about ideas? We are all the heirs of philosophers and writers and the
whole of our various civilizations leading up to the 21st century. Part of
what makes our heritage so rich is the amount of stuff in the public domain,
from Plato to Aristotle to Shakespeare to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Think
of how much Shakespeare alone has been reworked and re-presented in various
ways and forms, and look at how much rich theater we have, as a result.
Then, take a look at the court ruling of last spring about the novel that
was a re-telling from a different character's perspective of Gone With the
Wind. The first court ruling put an injunction on the publisher and author
to prevent the work from being published, solely because the heirs of the
copyright owner for Gone With the Wind took them to court. Fortunately, on
appeal, that case was overturned... and the book was allowed to be
published.
So at what point do you take ownership of what you create? Not at the word
level... not at the idea level, since you cannot copyright an idea (that's
patent law!)... the historical defining point was at the expression of the
idea. Only never, ever in history, was that expression considered something
you "own"... Copyright is not ownership of an expression--it's the right to
copy it. And the purpose, according to the Constitution, was primarily to
provide an incentive for content-creators to create something for the use of
the public at large. It's not inherently owned by you as the writer--it's
merely a way of providing you an incentive to create, so that everybody
benefits from your insight. The benefit to you is secondary to the benefit
to the public.
Without copyright protection, all of us are out of work... but with too
much, we lose the free exchange of ideas that leads to genius in the first
place.
Regarding Napster, Mary Deaton writes:
> In some sense there are two issues here: the ethics of
> plagiarizing the work
> of someone else and the legal issue of stealing something that does not
> belong to you. I also think it is disingenuous to say that Napster did not
> deny artist's rights. Those copyright holders who wanted Napster
> closed down
> were certainly protecting their own financial interests, but how is an
> artist going to earn royalties if people take the music and do not pay for
> it? How will the recording company pay the royalties? And how will artists
> control the distribution of their work, even if they have made a business
> arrangement with a recording company to help with the
> distribution of their
> work?
>
I don't have any answers here. I would suggest, however, that this is a
simplified way of presenting the issue--there's a lot more going on here.
Now, don't get me wrong... I'm as interested as any writer in getting paid
for my work (and the more pay, the better!) And I buy all (well, almost all)
of my software, and am more conscientious about observing licenses and
copyrights of others than anyone I know... but the fact is, the general
public doesn't care at all... they just want to listen to whatever they
want, use whatever software they want, copy whatever articles for use in
their classes... swap tapes (and now CDs) with their friends, e-mail
interesting stories to their friends, "steal" other people's work in all
kinds of ways. Is the general public wrong?
I don't know how we're going to make a living in the future, but I will
suggest that hording what we write because "it's mine! Mine! All Mine!" and
forcing our audience to pay through the nose for the privilege of receiving
our divine wisdom isn't going to lead to success. It'll just piss everyone
off.
I agree with Glenn... Micropayments need to happen--we need to have an easy,
cheap way of collecting some reward for our efforts, but not worry about
people copying our work. If people are stealing what you create, you must be
doing something right!
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