Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
James Boyle, law school professor & copyfight activist, one of the founders of the Creative Commons movement, wrote The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (free legit download) points out (emphases added):Copyright law wasn't designed for individuals; it's a form of corporate regulation intended to allow a flourishing entertainment and education industry. It was never meant to be relevant to college students, except in the sense of "someday I might be published, and when that happens, copyright law will let me choose the terms I'll accept in exchange for publication."
The problem is that the law hasn't caught up with the technology--the law was based on the premise that copies were expensive to produce, and therefore the only way to make copies that competed with authorized ones, was with a corporation's resources--printing press, movie theatre, sound studio, etc. A single person hand-copying chapters of a book to mail to his friend in the army wasn't worth noticing. Neither was the "copying" of music involved when someone sang a popular song at a dinner party.
Now, however, the casual copying that people have *always* done, has become instantly sharable worldwide, and instantly reproducible effectively for free. And the law never had a specific exemption for noncommercial copying done by individuals--because when the laws were designed, those copies were so rare as to not need specific mention.
Of course most people are oblivious to copyright law. It wasn't designed to matter to them. How much do most individuals know about commercial kitchen health regulations? Would they think that if they have friends over for dinner, even if they're not charging, they're "in the food industry" and therefore should have to match those standards? If the friends each offer to pitch in $10 for pizza and beer, does that make the host an illegal restaurant?
Copyright law is an aspect of corporate business law that's suddenly been inflicted on individual activity, and most individuals are quite reasonable in their desire to ignore it. The growing encroachment of business law into casual interpersonal life is just surreal. |
This is a really interesting perspective. Thanks for writing it.
(I find myself repeatedly trying to give you karma for your posts, but the system tells me I must spread it around a bit more. Hence, the public shout out.
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