I have occasionally highlighted concerns about copyright and its implications on society. But why does copyright matter? Good question…

Knowledge is a resource which we all use to some extent in order to live. Bacon’s saying “knowledge is power” might be rather cliché but it has a certain amount of truth. Influentially, Plato valued knowledge above material concerns. This is neatly summed up by George Bernard Shaw:

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

Most forms of artistic expression fall within one tradition or another. Virtually all artistic works incorporate elements of earlier works. Example: Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet drew heavily on verse written 30 years earlier by Arthur Brooke (and he based that on a traditional Italian story). Another example: Beethoven’s 9th symphony uses the poem “Ode to Joy” written by Friedrich Schiller. ALL art draws on previous work to some extent. Even new art forms like photography draw on painting for inspiration (and to seek acceptance as an art form at all). How many films are based on books? Conclusion: past artistic works is a foundation for new artistic works. If you restrict access to artistic reuse, you restrict what can be done artistically.

The sound recordings of Beatles become public domain on or around 2013. This means anyone can reproduce and enjoy the Beatles songs without charge. This does not mean people can record their own versions as the score and lyrics are under copyright for a looooog time – I think 70 years after death (and some of them are still alive) in the UK. Guilbert and Sullivan operas are an example which are completely in the public domain. People may adapt and stage this without obtaining permission – after all Guilbert and Sullivan are well past caring. This incidentally introduces a practical problem: for an obscure artistic work, how can we check when the author died? This leaves many original works in a limbo of unknown copyright (so called “orphaned works”). This aspect needs reform to make it clear when it is public domain, for example copyright lasts for X years after publication or Y years after creation.

There has been recent controversy over a Canadian web site that distributed music scores which are out of copyright – at least out of copyright in Canada (which is a generous 50 years after death).

“Within two years – without any funding, sponsorship or promotion – the site had become the largest public domain music score library on the internet, generating a million hits per day, featuring over 15,000 scores by over 1,000 composers, and adding 2,000 new scores each month.” BBC

Unfortunately, they were still in copyright in Europe. So this Canadian was “breaking” a law in another country but was not in any way based in Europe. After legal threats from Universal Edition (an American company) the site was closed. The obsurd conclusion: a web publisher must comply with every law in every country in the whole world!(!!!!) Clearly this is absurd since many countries have absurd laws and one cannot hope to obey them all.

I suspect the problem is caused by international trading organizations forcing their dogmatic pro-market agenda on the world. Example: when copyright laws are harmonized between countries to assist in free trade, they are always changed in favour of business. This policy is rooted in US thinking, which Noam Chomsky summed up brilliantly: “The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government is to protect property from the majority, and so it remains”

One organisation which as worked tirelessly for the publics rights is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The “copyleft” movement is also a significant counter movement that I applaud.

Another example: scientific journals charge subscriptions for readers but (as far as I am aware) generally do not charge to publish. The articles are copyright. This is a RIDICULOUS state of affairs, since most journal articles are university groups which are funded by public money. So the public have to pay the scientists to do they work and pay a second time to get the published article! Also, this might be affordable to large institutions in richer countries, but is unaffordable to the majority of institutions in poor countries. What we need is a “pay to publish” model that allows free distribution of scientific results.

As Max said in the movie Pi: “I’m trying to understand our world! I don’t deal with petty materialists like you!”

Well said, Max, well said.

Anti Citizen One

PS. This site is all under a creative commons license which is “copyleft”.