Copyright and Wrong
Why should the average person care about copyright? Don't let corporations and governments fool you: copyright isn't meant to protect individual artists. At least not in its present form. Not anymore. While perusing the web last week, I stumbled onto a short post on the Fast Company weblog about the Eiffel Tower and the public domain:
The Eiffel Tower's likeness had long since been part of the public domain, when in 2003, it was abruptly repossessed by the city of Paris. That's the year that the SNTE, the company charged with maintaining the tower, adorned it with a distinctive lighting display, copyrighted the design, and in one feel swoop, reclaimed the nighttime image and likeness of the most popular monument on earth. In short: they changed the actual likeness of the tower, and then copyrighted that.
From: Fast Company Now
I'm not even sure how to react to this, apart from sheer outrage. The purpose of the public domain has been circumvented so that the city of Paris could make a little more money from its most celebrated icon. In essence, any amateur photographer (including me) who might want to take photos of the Eiffel Tower and share them with others (whether for free or, say, as prints or postcards) must now get permission and probably pay royalties to the city of Paris. That's a big slap in the face.
The Copyright Loophole
Think this is a one-time event? Think again. Ever notice how many remakes of movies come out every year? I can think of several recent ones off the top of my head: Ocean's Eleven, The Manchurian Candidate, Planet of the Apes. These aren't just the result of a collective lack of originality in Hollywood, they're a calculated attempt by studios to maintain control over the copyrights for a work in perpetuity. (That and a shameless attempt to capitalize on new markets with the same old materials instead of investing in riskier, but more original new works.)
You can find the same thing in publishing - ever check the copyright on a book and find multiple dates? That's because the book was reissued multiple times in order not only to provide new copies to new readers, but also to lengthen the period of time before the copyright expires. And again in music with greatest hits collections, boxed sets, special editions, and so on.
The Corporate Copyright
When a work is created, its copyright belongs first and foremost to the artist (except in the case of work made for hire where the artist is creating something under contract). But the best way for an artist to make money from his work (book, movie, music, or otherwise) is often to find a distributing company or publisher (think movie studio, recording studio, publishing house) and give them the rights to their work. An artist may be able to choose which rights they give/sell, but very often these distributors will require most or all of the rights in order to enter into contract.
I may be taking a small leap here, but I'd say a large percentage of the creative work for sale is copyrighted to the corporations who distribute it and not to the individual artists who created it.
Where Does This Lead?
Unlike individuals, corporations can exist in perpetuity so long as they make smart business decisions. In the current state of things, nearly all material created from (if I remember correctly from my college copyright law course) 1928 onwards falls under copyright, automatically. Any artist who wants to use or reuse copyrighted material should first seek permission or risk litigation. To the average Joe, this may seem irrelevant, for when do they ever use copyrighted material illegally? Well, think of that home video you put to music - did you have a license for the song you chose? Think of your vacation photos from Millenium Park in Chicago - did you have permission to take photos of those sculptures?
Currently, the length of copyright for works owned by a corporation is 95 years (for published works). So, for instance, a film that was created in 1928 (the cutoff year after which copyright renewal becomes automatic) is protected until 2023. Works created after that are protected for at least 95 years after the registration of their copyright. Anyone want to place bets on whether there will be a frenzy of legislation to increase the term of copyright before 2023? At the rate that corporations are moving, there will be no public domain works for the last century except by explicit donation from copyright owners. And that is a scary thought indeed.
About this Entry
This entry was posted on
Monday, February 7, 2005 at 06:53 PM under the categories:
Copyright, Creativity.
Comments
1. On Friday, Feb 25 at 4:39 PM, Daniel said:
Wouldn't much of what Jane and Joe Q. Public fall under "fair use" anyway, regardless of the state of a source's copyright? Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, which, if I remember my probability theory correctly, has a probability of about eleventy-hundred million; but seems as if putting Macarena over my home video of a plaid-clad poodle dancing in banana pudding shouldn't get me jailed as long as I don't make any money off of it (or I cook the books enough that it's not evident that I do).
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