Free Culture.

[swestrup]

Traditionally, human culture has been a cooperative act, with each new wave of artists building upon and borrowing from the best that has come before. Current copyright laws actively interfere with this process. Shakespeare is rightly called one of the greatest writers of all time, but he freely borrowed from all of the greatest works of literature of his time. I don't think he would be the shining star of English Literature that he is, had he had to start from scratch, as most writers today are forced to do.

Now, most of my life I've been producing intellectual property for one company or another, and most of it is copyrighted. I have yet to see a case where this has benefitted the company that holds the copyrights, and I've seen quite a few cases where this has worked to the detriment of another company (and never a competitor). So, while I don't think that current copyright law is as severely broken as, for instance, patent law, it still needs an overhaul. The Disney corporations of the world are using their considerable lobbying skills to try to lock in ownership of the culture that geniuses like Walt Disney did so much to foster.

This is, however, not a simple issue and there are many arguments, good and bad, on both sides of the debate. Anyway, one of the major voices on the side I believe in, Lawrence Lessig, has just released a book on the subject called Free Culture, and in the best money-where-your-mouth-is tradition, he's letting people buy the hardcopy or just download the pdf for free. Since he has released the book without hindrance, someone has taken the full text and stored it in a Wiki so that the next edition will have been jointly edited by the public. If that's not a clear example of the sorts of things being stifled by current copyright laws, I don't know what is.

Comments

[auriam.livejournal.com]

It sounds good to me.. after all.. what's wrong with 'derivative works'?.. like, the way Harry Potter's publishers are suing some Russian author who wrote a similar Russian story, with their own cultural iconography.. is there something WRONG with a "non-totally original idea"?.. after all.. all ideas are just combinations and recombinations of what's come before.. there's no such thing as something utterly unlike anything else. Derivative? Sampled? Built upon? Elaborated? Those are all enhancements and creation of new material and ideas.. I see nothing wrong with that..