“The concept of the copyright law was to promote sharing of knowledge, however will large corporations fighting over ownership and control of materials hinder the growth of new, creative and innovative ideas?”
Before delving deeper into my blog, I would like you to pause for a second and think - What would the world be like without copyright laws?
This is the very same question I found myself analysing by the end of my latest lecture on intellectual property, creative commons and DRM.
Without copyright laws authors, artists, scientists and such like would not be able to protect their work in which they have vested personal time and effort. Not being able to protect pieces of work, ideas, inventions and so forth would eventually lead to the creators of such material losing enthusiasm in creating as their material will simply be copied, stolen and manipulated; and worse the creator of the material will not gain from this in anyway. Its this fundamental point which brought me to the realisation that copyright laws play a huge role in protecting the creation of society and allows us to create and maintain our culture. By protecting work of artists; scientists and authors, more work is circulated through society as there would be more to gain in both financial and moral aspects from the creation of their work. Perhaps more importantly, this process aides society as a whole by creating more consumer choice, a means to better education and forging the way for better standards of living.
However, it would seem that the very same copyright laws that once enhanced creation and innovation could now hinder the progress of such ideas. This theory can be clearly illustrated when analysing conglomerates such as Microsoft and Apple.
When companies such as Apple create new technologies, patents are applied for and the copyright of the product is set in place. However; by protecting the technology under copyright law, it can be said that this may hinder the growth and development of new and innovative ideas. By gaining copyright on a product or intellectual property the owner of the material can sue anybody that tries to copy or use the material in any fashion. In his book ’Moral Panic and the Copyright Wars 2009, William Patry agrees with the idea of control of material owned by conglomerates by stating, “To make money, you have to serve customers, not sue them or control them” . The argument here seems to be as follows; we all follow templates in subject genres, how can we develop ideas if we cannot do so? It would seem that in order to develop new pieces of work, we must develop on previous ideas however this process is becoming more and more difficult due to the fact multi-national corporations main concern is making profit.
Its this exact philosophy that may eventually see an increased slow down in the creation of new ideas, and furthermore on a larger scale may hinder the progress and development of society as a whole.
