The sorry state of copyright, and a reminder to keep your thinking fresh
eriksr on August 11th, 2008
Cory Doctorow, science-fiction auteur and chief Boing Boing blogger, has an interesting article up at The Guardian that starts with a note about a deal between the music industry and internet service providers, but goes on at length about the evolution of the struggle between copyright holders and the businesses — or people — who want their content.
It got me thinking back to many years ago, when I was a freelance journalist. I enjoyed the last, best days of a profession that had a great real of respect for copyright. This was back when writers were able to charge extra for their work appearing online, before everyone had a Web site. But then something happened — publishers became hungry for content. All that copy was going to attract eyeballs, and eyeballs meant advertising dollars. Publishers printed their writer’s work online with impunity, rarely bothering to ask for permission or even to notify the writers.
We’ve all forgotten what copyright was about
And then, as if my day couldn’t get any cheerier, I came across this post from copyright lawyer William Patry. Patry announced that he is ending his blog, partly because “The current state of copyright law is too depressing”. This quote in particular jumped out at me:
Much like the U.S. economy, things are getting worse, not better. Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners.”
Thanks, William, for summing this up so beautifully. When I first read up about copyright more than ten years ago, I remember learning that it one of the motivations for it was to help keep things fresh. Without copyright law the world would be flooded with derivative, unoriginal work (just like at all the Winnie the Pooh crap out there) is poison for businesses — people want the fresh and new.
This is an analogy for your life
Sorry state of affairs aside, Patry’s dirge is both a warning and a reminder: Don’t get bogged down trying to preserve something that is failing, don’t stop learning, and don’t be evil. Reminds me of Google, but its a good mantra to keep in mind in your daily life, be you marketer, public relations professional, or otherwise.
