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Talking about copyright I have mixed thoughts and feelings about this topic. First of all I personally think that human beings are born with the innate instinct of private property. Even babies defend what belongs to them. That is something intrinsic to human being essence. Any living thing (plants, animals, and humans) lives to transcend and the natural way to do it is by reproduction. Human being essence is based on its animal and rational nature. So humans like to transcend not only in a biological way but they also have a natural inclination to transcend through their acts of thought (ideas and creations). This type of transcendence comes also with a natural need of recognition. And that is where interests and many other kinds of conflicts are born.
With that being said, I would like to play Devil’s advocate and I would like to ask a couple of questions:
- Who owns an idea? Who has the right to do that? Aren’t ideas universal?
- Why only one person or a group of people can have the right to use, modify or change the version of a song, film, photography, etc.?
- How have human beings evolved through the years? Aren’t the cordless phone and the cellular phone a modified version of the original corded phone? Isn’t part of the evolution to improve or change things, ideas, and processes that already exist? Why are we limiting that, is it about respect to the first person that developed an idea or is it about control? Where is the line between recognition and control?
With all those questions in the air I would like to say that I personally feel more attracted to the creative common license philosophy that allowed creators to share their work in a frame of conditions that they could personally establish.
Good questions, Luz. For the idea, I think anyone can copyright the idea as long as you have a visual proof concept that the idea is your. One way you can do this is to right the idea down on the paper and seal it in the envelope, send it to yourself. This way you will have the envelope stamped from the post office with the date you copyright the idea. If your idea isn't out there yet, you may claim it in the court I believe.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason we have copyright law in place to prevent chaos and give the confidence level to the author that their work won't be stealing by anyone. Imagine you work hard on a thing for hundred of hours, and someone who just comes by claims your work as their work. This is the fear that anyone will have in mind when they create their work.
And yes, we all are human, and we have things we want to protect - our work is one of the things we want to protect and defend.
Wow Luz! I actually have the same thoughts as you about this topic. It is so hard to determine why or how we can judge if copyright should be extremely private to the point where we can stop using valuable pieces of art that can be so meaningful in education because of some too rigid copyright laws. I also think that we should be able to share ideas and creations as long as we are credited properly but I also think that if we don’t take measures about our work we can lose many opportunities for not being recognized as the author. Plenty ideas have been stolen because people ignore the importance of getting work license under fair conditions that identifies you as the creator and owner of that creation. I don’t believe everything should be limited to the extreme and I also don’t believe that masterpieces should be out of reach because of these laws.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree that the creative commons license seems to be the "best of both world". It allows the artist the protection they need from having their unique pieces or work to be stolen out from under their feet just to have someone else make a fortune off of it, while allowing that same artist to share their ideas and their creativity with those in many other fields. As you point out this is how our society has evolved. If we never have the ability or the creativity to build off of and spring creativity from the experiences we share around us, we would remain stagnant.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important to be able to experience what others have to offer, but I also think it is important to acknowledge and give credit when the experience offered to us is directly effected and molded by the work of someone else.
The overly litigious or slap happy judicial system revolving around these issues is obviously of great concern on both the users and the creators end. But I do feel that both ends are dangerous. What if we got to a place where if you photographed or filmed a building you had to be granted permission by the architect in order to use it, or in order to sing "Happy Birthday" to your child you had to first send away and pay the fees to be able to do so. We would so quickly have our hands metaphorically cuffed behind our backs that we would be stifling the experiences of our society as a whole.
I agree with you Luz, that recognition is a large part of this. I would like to believe that that is a bigger issue than the financial gains issue, but I think that if we as artist of any kind, get into the habit of paying homage and the due respect to those around us.
It can get very very deep if one is going to invoke human necessity for recognition or sense of property. If one goes that deep there may be no hope for consensus amongst interested parties. But you do hit on one of the problems being that our system is connected to an outmoded business model (that you need big money for distribution of works of art) and the law is tipped in the direction of protecting business interests to the possible detriment of our social need to create and reinvent our cultural stories.
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