I have a friend who is rather fond of anarcho-capitalism. (I am not an anarcho-capitalist, but I’ll always listen to other people and their views.)
A year ago, he challenged me to imagine a world without copyright. At first I thought, “I am all about copyright!” but the more I thought about it…I realized…I really wasn’t.
Recently, this friend brought to my attention an infographic about how most of what Amazon sells is either in the public domain, or released since the rise of the popularity of print-on-demand books and self-published e-books. (You can see that here.) He asked what I thought about the graph on his Facebook wall. I replied, and soon I had an invitation from Stephan Kinsella to expand on my thoughts and write a guest post for the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom.
I think it’s my first guest post, and I enjoyed writing it.
I’m curious what others think about copyright and writing.
I got wised up about the emptiness of copyright early on. In the Sixties I was married to a sculptor, Bob Scriver, who sold well and was VERY conscientious about registering everything for copyright. In those days he made Koroseal molds (very difficult) and we cast via Roman Block investment lost wax (also difficult). Then black tuffy PVC and ceramic shell casting was invented and suddenly it was easy to turn out cheap castings. Why bother with making one’s own sculpture when it was so easy to make molds of pre-existing objects that already sold well? The market for Remington bronzes, for instance, is totally shot because they might be castings of castings of castings.
You can ride a horse until it figures out it can buck you off anytime.
Prairie Mary
Mary Scriver
Valier, Montana
Mary: Thank you so much for your reply. The very thing you talk about is why I started thinking about copyright differently. While I have never registered a copyright with the US Copyright Office, I used to make sure I put a copyright symbol on everything I wrote. I used to bristle at the very thought of somebody using my work in a way other than how I intended. I definitely don’t begrudge those who do this; I think it’s natural when one puts so much time and love into something that they want to protect it.
I don’t believe one shouldn’t be angry when their work is copied — I get that, but as you point out, there comes that time when you realize you can’t stop it. Not that I’m all about rolling over and accepting it, but at least in my case, it becomes a matter of how I spend my time: tracking down those who copy my writing and facing the uphill battle to stop them, or just keep writing as much as I can while balancing a day job and time doing other things. For me, I write as much as I can in the hope that I will reach a point when people are excited enough about something new I’m doing to wait for it. The one thing creators at least still have on their side is that initial release. After that, yes — people will copy.
There was a reply to my guest post stating that I clearly can’t think straight and that the reason I haven’t had to enforce copyright is that copyright exists and prevents others from copying my work. That’s like saying, “There are no thieves because we have laws about stealing.” While I haven’t seen somebody take something I’ve written here, put their name on it, and call it their own, I’ve seen entries from The Juggling Writer taken and used in full on other sites. Usually it’s a false site trolling for keyword hits in the hope of cashing in on ad money. I know it’s almost not even worth the effort to stop it.
All one needs to do in the case of writing and music is look at a bit torrent site to see that the person who replied to me is wrong. You can find pretty much whatever you want, for free. I’m friends with writers who have comic book series and novels on bit torrent sites others have put there. In most cases, with the ability of people to get their work for free, they’ve also seen a rise in sales of new work as people become hooked on what they do. I’m not one to say, “Because it works like this for some, it works that way for all,” but I’m bright enough to know you can’t hold back a wall of water with your body stretched out before it and the hope you won’t be washed away.
Where I have my biggest problem with copyright is when I look at how even with it, there’s no stopping people from copying your work. It doesn’t protect those it was intended to stop, but large companies lobby politicians and use it against others. When you see a mom whose kid downloaded a handful of tunes facing a 6-figure settlement against her, it seems a bit ridiculous. When a group of student filmmakers plays by the rules and gets a licensing deal to make a film based on a previous work and a movie studio doing something similar and uses copyright law to threaten them, it’s wrong to me. When somebody uses a piece of music in the public domain recorded by an artist releasing it under a Creative Commons license and a large company lays claim to it…that’s wrong.
Copyright doesn’t seem to protect small creators, but it definitely seems to be used by some large companies and organizations to coerce and suppress people. It’s a broken system in my eyes.
And at least worth thinking about other ways of doing things. When a legit malpractice case in a state like Texas resulting in a death brings in less money for a grieving family than a ruling in favor of a music label over downloaded music, it seems things are a little skewed.
This recent copyright controversy reminds me of what happened to the band “Men at Work” a few years ago.
SFW version: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/5939883/Men-at-Work-sued-over-stolen-riff-in-Down-Under.html
NSFW version: http://buckfrain.wordpress.com/tag/norm-lurie/
I’m getting all riled up again just thinking about it. “Down Under” was Men at Work’s signature song, their biggest hit, and their tribute to their homeland. I’m willing to bet the thieving opportunistic slime who sue them never wrote a song in his stinking life. He obviously cares nothing about music and cultural heritage, just how much money he can steal.
I like the Creative Commons stuff. It gives people the right to reuse, remix, and make their own works of art with yours as a jumping-off point, so long as they say “hey, this is where I got this from.”
I do almost all of my writing under Creative Commons.
CMS: Yes, stuff like that, although it is a bit amusing to see a recording company on the other side of what they sometimes do. But it really shows that its the artists who are usually caught in the middle.
Shawn: Agreed. Creative Commons licenses seem to work best for many. The interesting thing about CC licenses is the way you can look for them. It makes finding what you need–at the level of use you need. By that, I mean if I want a work I can use for commercial uses, I can filter for that and those who want attribution are excluded.
It’s a good system.