Copyright

I handed in my second digital media assignment last week. The essay I decided to cover was...'What's at stake if copyright was to reform’. Up till this assignment I hadn’t considered the outlining factors of copyright, I was aware that in my personal time I was breeching copyright protection, such as watching movies illegally online, downloading music, and copying pictures online. Cory Doctorow’s question really made me think deeper into the issues of copyright.

First steps...
To begin the process of exploring how copyright affects us individually and the society, I researched into a few academic sources such as web journals and books. I interestingly came across Andrew Keen’s ‘The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’ Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting our Economy’. In this Keen expresses his negativity towards ‘open source’ sites such as Wikipedia, and revised versions of original texts e.g. annotated and translated versions of Charles Dickens novels. My initial reactions to his argument that ‘revised and annotated versions of the original sources, is what destroys the meaning of its original creation’, this links directly to copyright. I completely disagreed with his views. If copyright was stricter and that an original creation cannot be remixed/revised, then we can only personally reach a certain understanding/connection with text. Amateur annotations and recreations can lead the consumer personalisation to the product.
I also read Doctorow’s online journal which gave me a new and better understanding of the influences of copyright. I devised an equation from his theory. Culture=creative work=copyright. Majority of creative people post their products online which gets picked up and copied. It is important to share a creation in order for the work to grow. I found an interesting quote that ‘if culture loses the copyright law, the reason for copyright dies with it’. The internet will simply weaken and struggle if P2P sharing was to disappear, as sharing itself is a culture.

‘Liquid version’ is what Kevin Kelly suggested as a way to digitally share material online, e.g. scientific journals and research. I found myself agreeing with this idea, although it throws out the ideas of traditional printing, but nonetheless my preferred option of receiving information. On the other hand sharing exclusive research online is vulnerable to fraud.

After this assignment I have learnt the significant reasons behind copyright, such as preventing recreation of original material, copying and promoting it as their own, and artist release rights. Overall copyright can be viewed as a serious and tedious issue. We as the audience may feel that breech of copyright are harmless despite committing an illegal act. But it’s a serious offence and very damaging for the media industry; it causes a major profit loss in the film and music industry.

I have always been aware of copyright issues surrounding illegal downloads and watching films online. But it’s a digital culture that I’ve grown up with; to scrap all illegal entertainment sources online would simply kill off majority of its audiences. Copyright will never disappear, and its powers will never be reinforced so that illegal downloads, copying, and sharing will come to an end. Because if this ever happens, a generation will die and cause much more damage than leaving copyright laws as it is.