"Copyright." What first comes to your mind when I say that word? Maybe some vague ideas about intellectual property, or maybe some understanding that you cannot distribute a modern movie online. Copyright is an form of property that is assigned to a creator when they create a work. This is distinct from regular forms of property, like real estate, which are tangible (its a physical location) and limited (there is only so much of it). Copyright, in its modern form, exists to stifle creativity and enrich mega-corporations.
What is intellectual property? Lets ask the United Nations. They tell us: "everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author" (Article 27, Universal Declaration of Human Rights). They make the argument that you should own your creative works, no different than you own your physical works that you create. On the surface level, this can make sense. You spend real energy making a creative work, and should have some legal protections. After all, the person who built their house has legal protections (you cannot take it over, nor destroy it).
The United States' first congress passed a copyright act (of 1790). Borrowing the wording from Wikipedia:
The stated object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14-year term should the copyright holder still be alive.
There are two major features of this copyright act. First, the term is only 14 years. That's it. A renewal could bring that up to 28 years, but notice the qualifier at the end: "should the copyright holder still be alive." While this act doesn't explicitly get rid of copyright protections at death, it does imply that death is significant and ends any future consideration of additional terms.
Lets look at today's copyright law. It cannot be too different, right? The most recent law was passed in 1998. As before, here is Wikipedia's summary:
[The 1998 act] ... further increased the term length to the life of the author plus 70 years or 95 years after publication (or 120 years after creation, whichever is shorter) for works made for hire.
Oh. Copyright is over 100 years now. Seriously? We went from our first copyright law, which treated death as the ending point for negotiations of extension, to now granting an automatic 70 year extension of copyright. Now, copyright is a corporate thing, as no sole author gets any benefit from copyright protections after they have passed. This effectively turns "copyright" from a system where for a limited time you, the author, got exclusive say over your works, to a system where works were owned by companies for over 100 years after initial creation. The original system at least tried to balance out the concept of a public domain with exclusivity rights, 28 years is more than enough time for you to make your money or whatever with your work.
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| Chart showing the duration of copyright in America. Notice how today copyright is over 3x longer than it was originally. CC BY-SA Tom Bell & others |
One last question - how do today's copyright laws stifle creativity? For one, very little ideas are de novo, or completely original. Instead, it has been human tradition to build on the works of others, whether that is in the form of borrowing entire settings and characters, or in the form of similar themes and ideas. A great example of this is the epic poem Odyssey. If the original Greek (if that was even the original poem) was still considered "copyrighted", then we wouldn't get Christopher Nolan's adaptation to the big screen. His retelling adapts the story for modern times and makes it an allegory for many issues our civilization is facing. This is creativity at its finest, something that wouldn't be possible without the public domain and reuse of existing stories.
So... what can we do about it? Well, as the copyright holder of your own works, you can opt out of this system. You could choose to dedicate your works to the "public domain," in effect saying you relinquish control over your work and allow anyone to do as they wish to it. But, if you prefer a middle ground, there is one too. The most well known of these are the "Creative Commons" licenses, which give away certain rights, while keeping others. The CC BY license, for example, allows for anyone to reproduce, modify, or reuse your work as long as they provide attribution. All of my content on this blog is under that license.
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