Let’s Not Be Afraid of Copyright

Culture has always been about the spread of ideas. Our lives are enhanced by the myriad of products that happened because of the organic nature of ideas: great ideas will get absorbed automatically by the community. We have been able to sustain ourselves as a human race because we are able to transform our ideas into reality and create a difference in our lives.

Enter copyright (and its resulting counter-product, piracy). Since the advent of copyright, the damage committed to our culture has been incalculable, because it’s an abstract yet very real issue. Copyright inhibits human culture more than it promotes it, yet many people (who have vested interests in copyright) keep claiming that it’s essential to guarantee the livelihoods of creators.

I accept the argument: we do need to respect the creator and the creation, and if it is protected with copyright then we would do best to obey it. But there’s a hypocrisy that comes along with every copyright owner: those that own a copyright and expect everybody else to respect it, may not necessarily respect the copyright of others. This I feel is especially true with up and coming content creators.

Free culture (for me, but not for you)

The reason why I’m bringing this up is this: several months ago, a friend of mine was inspired to write a short story based on a song I made (a song which is freely available to stream or download). I appreciate the idea very much, and her story adds a dimension to the song that wasn’t there before. I urged her to upload the short story on her Facebook notes (she only sent it to me via private email), but she hesitated for some time. I asked her why she hasn’t yet, and one of her arguments was: a friend of hers said her short story might get “duplicated” (aka reproduced and distributed without permission).

I also have a group of hobbyist writer friends (though some of them have officially published works, most of them still have day jobs). They write plenty of good short stories, and each time they attach a corresponding image as an illustration. I keep wanting to ask them to please write the proper credits for the image owner, since they leave that detail out (and I’m pretty sure they didn’t make it themselves). They publish on their individual Facebook notes.

The problem is this: we are afraid other people will violate our copyright, but we’re already violating the copyrights of other much much larger artists. Come on, let’s be grown up about it and admit that our song, book, and movie collection isn’t 100% obtained from legal sources (it may actually be the reverse: 100% obtained from non-legal sources). How can we stand to be this kind of person: who says that copyright is harmful for culture, causing us to disrespect the copyright of established artists, but then expect our own works to be protected with copyright! This is blasphemy, I tell you!

Our game, your rules

Here is the way I play this game (and I encourage you to do the same): I’m an advocate of free culture (as in speech [1]), and use Creative Commons licensing for all of my works; and at the same time I respect works of other artists that are licensed with full rights reservation. It means, that although my own work is freely available to consume, reproduce, distribute, remixed, and even used in commercial projects, I don’t enforce my own beliefs on other people’s works and “steal” them without permission. That’s what I call being graceful: playing the game according to the rules of the competition, but still maintaining a competitive edge.

The good news is there are plenty of other artists like me, who have decided to release their works under a Creative Commons license. But as you can see from the stories I share above, my friends are still in the dilemma of only respecting copyright when it serves them an interest. Isn’t that the very basis of corruption in governmental and legal institutions?

Anybody can play by their own rules; it takes a real winner to win by the adversary’s rules. I think it’s completely achievable, to win with such grace. We need to start by respecting how the others play this game.

Even Sita can do it:

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*@cameronmizell (jazz guitarist) has kindly made his first album free to download. If you need some jazz, here’s a nice healthy dose of it:

*I just saw the movie “Nine” yesterday. Here’s my 140-character review of it.

[1] As said by Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software movement