I haven't had internet for a couple of weeks so this is the first chance I've had to do my online presence.
Copyright is a huge money making machine these days, everything from the Happy Birthday song to DNA is copyrighted.
When Lessig states that creators are "building on the creativity that went before and that surrounds them now." He makes the very valid point that new ideas are made from old ideas, the issue with this is that people are copyrighting all of these old ideas and making it either impossible or expensive for people to be creative and inventive and improve what already exists.
Don't get me wrong, I think that copyrighting of artist's original works is fair and just and downloading things free off the internet isn't giving the artist what they deserve however, when I read the article about the copyright infringement over synthetic DNA which could potentially slow scientific advances which help to cure diseases I was really shocked. Copyright should be used to protect those who have contributed a new idea in some way, not in a way that is detrimental to society.
Lessig definitely outlines the need for copyright but I guess the question we always continuously ask is, where do we draw the line? How far do you go? Elise wrote in her blog about the case between Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree and Down Under sounding similar, but it is crazy how they get suedover that and nothing else. If I remember correctly, Deuze wrote in his article that lawyers simply do not have enough time and resources to win such a case of copyright. So when does it end?
ReplyDeleteCopyright is such a complicated issue. How far do we go? Imagine a world where we were able to copyright our names... imagine being an expecting parent and scrolling through the billions of names on the list to make sure you get an original one. In some cases, I am sure inventors feel like they are scrolling through the never ending list of patents and copyrights. And as dimity has stated above Deuze states and it is obvious lawyers do not have the time and resources to accommodate endless copyright cases. Unfortunately I believe the issue will never be resolved.
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