Copyright

I believe that copyright law is in need of change. I believe that it is very important to protect the intellectual property rights of authors, songwriters, artists, etc., but I also think that copyright law as it stands now is too restrictive, and actually restricts creativity and the exchange of ideas.  I think that an author has the right to protect his work from being unfairly copied, but not the right to have total and complete control over how her work is used. I believe that once you publish your work, you have to expect people to want to use it in certain ways.

One example is the subject of the Opposing Viewpoints article that I read, online music sharing. One of the articles mentioned that when radio first started, the recording companies tried to stop that, too. Now it has turned out to be a huge benefit to the music industry in terms of publicity. I believe that if the recording companies were more reasonable in allowing licensing deals with P2P file-sharing networks, like they finally did with radio, they could get the best of both worlds: they could receive more exposure for their artists, and still make money off it.  The head of RIAA wrote in his essay that file-sharing hurts up and coming artists, but I think they actually have the most to gain off it. P2P networks can expose consumers to artists they may not have otherwise heard of, and they may buy their music in the future.

Another example is derivative works. Obviously, if I write a book, it is not write for you to write a book that is a total ripoff of mine. But what if you add a new spin to it? An example of this is the lawsuit J.K. Rowling filed against a librarian who wrote a Harry Potter encyclopedia. When it was online, she not only allowed but even endorsed it. But when he wanted to publish it as a book, she sued to stop it and won. One could certainly argue that he was adding enough to her work to make it permissible. He spend a great deal of time organizing information from her books in encyclopedia form and adding analysis. The book performed a very useful function as a reference tool. If I had a question about, say, Hippograffs, instead of having to go through each Harry Potter book looking for my answer, I could consult the Harry Potter encyclopedia. Rowling’s lawsuit seemed to be mainly motivated by plans to write her own encyclopedia. One could argue as author, she should have “first crack”, as it were, they librarian had spent countless hours compiling this information before she even announced plans for her own encyclopedia, and I would say that most fans who bought his version would still buy the “official” one whenever it came out. I don’t know if it would be “competition” so much as a complement to her version.

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