Copyright and the Internet

Since its inception in 1989, the World Wide Web has done more for the human race than any technology since the printing press.  Its influence on the world is instantly obvious as regards communication, commerce, and abstract matters such as critical thinking.

As with any new technology, however, there are those who have shown disdain for the issues surrounding it.  Piracy has always been something of an issue, but the Internet has made it more relevant than ever.

In 2005, when DVD was "all the rage," the website MegaUpload was founded in South Korea, allowing users to download movies—that is, content ripped from DVDs.  The site was shut down in 2011, but many other websites performed similar stunts prior to the streaming revolution.

There are many other instances involving other forms of art.

Why music rights?

As noted in the previous post, all pre-1923 works are in the American public domain.  That includes such instantly familiar tunes as "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," and "Jingle Bells."  Yet every actual recording, regardless of release date, is protected by copyright.

To use a pre-existing song in a movie or on a TV show, the producer has to receive permission from the artist(s).  A 2009 book on low-budget filmmaking claims it may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to use a single song by a band as famous as The Beatles.  But less renowned artists—say, ones you would not usually hear on the radio—are comparably cheaper.

Compilations by "various artists" claim to have the original recordings of the songs they present, but in truth, some are either by cover bands or consist of re-recordings by the original performers several years later.  Such anthologies usually (frankly) stink, but the compilation process would probably be more difficult had they used the original versions.  In fact, the 1969 hit "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" was a duet between The Supremes and The Temptations, perhaps to make recording less complicated, as they were both Motown acts.

As with copyright in general, music rights are neither as democratic nor dictatorial as they could be, but they serve an overall good purpose.

Copyright law: friend or foe?

No doubt copyright law has been valuable to America's (and the world's) studios and publishers in a few ways.  For example, by forbidding the redistribution of material without the holder's permission, our system ensures that credit for a creative work, and money earned thereof, will be given to those who made it.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998) has also been useful in that it provides a cutoff point for copyright protection.  Under this law, all pre-1923 works (including literature, artwork, and movies) have entered the public domain, and the process will start again, year-by-year, in 2019.  It can be particularly useful for republishing material (free in this case), and because video sharing sites and e-readers have made it superfluous to spend money on public-domain films and literature, respectively.  For example, Shakespeare penned his bibliography over three hundred years before the cutoff point, so one publisher has taken the liberty of translating his archaic jargon to plain Modern English side-by-side.

Not all copyright law, however, is always considered to be for the greater good.

YouTube is the number-three website in the world, having paved the way for informal videos as a communication tool, and yet many users claim that it preys on videos that violate copyright, however flagrantly.  For instance, The Nostalgia Critic, a popular Web series featuring a man who humorously lambastes unpopular films of the eighties and nineties, debuted on YouTube in July 2007 but was forced to relocate to a popular-culture site, That Guy with the Glasses, due to the episodes constantly being flagged.

Copyright also gives a publisher or home video label the exclusive rights to make its property available to the public.  Hence, one example of an impossibility under current U.S. copyright law is an omnibus of every film in the Terminator franchise.  The original is owned by MGM, the second installment is owned by Sony, and all films from there on are owned by Warner Bros.  Personally, it baffles me as to how series like these, with different copyright holders, could not have a joint release from just one studio (or publisher).

The examples in this post are just four examples of how copyright law can affect the entertainment world.  Many others exist, and the quality of their influence has been debated as well.  The ensuing posts will typically be about other ways in which people can enjoy elastic things, but somewhat more will come on this issue.