Why Copyright?

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/01/michael-geists-movie.html


A week ago, a Canadian law professor Michael Geist released a 45-minute video "Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law." The video features many notable people from authors and teachers to musicians and business owners. Each person expresses their opinions about the extremeness of copyright in the 21st century. Making a documentary on copyright is ironic because films of this genre are often hammered for ridiculous "infringements." While some may argue that nobody cares about America's little sister up north, I think that since the whole world is connected via the Internet, every country's policies are relevant. Geist started a FaceBook group Fair Copyright for Canada that has nearly 100,000 members. This group just celebrated its first birthday yesterday.

The video begins with dozens of people introducing themselves one by one. This makes for a very boring introduction and almost turned me away from watching any more. But Michael Geist finally addresses the issue. Over the summer, Jim Prentice proposed a bill for new order for Canadian copyright policy. This would-be-first-bill-of-its-kind did not succeed in the end, but he successfully put copyright on the public agenda. Apparently there was an unprecedented amount of discussion about the future of copyright and the problems of the system today by both in the Canadian House of Commons and by people around the world.

Many of the individuals in the video bring up great points. A musician exposes that copyright "laws are there to benefit corporations, not creators," which was obviously not the original intent of restrictive legislature. Copyright should be about maintaining a balance, but each year this toss up between creator and consumer gets more and more skewed. In science, publishers read each other and build upon the work of others so that, collectively, progress is made. This is called plagiarism if you do it the wrong way. Plagiarism laws are good in themselves and should be applied when people take someone else's work as their own. But when someone's goal is to take preexisting work and make it better or build upon it, while giving credit where it is due, common sense and the law differ, especially with film and music. Another good point brought up is that digital rights management (DRM) is limiting the lifespan of our media. In effect, we are crippling the ability to preserve created works for the future.

But is Geist actually making a difference? He is doing a good job raising awareness of the flaws of overprotective copyright laws. But is there anything to show for it other than an online community who can join together and complain? So far, I don't see much result. However, if this video gets the right exposure and the government seriously tries to amend this problem, a solution may not be far off.

- Jordan Morsberger