Ad Age Explains How Copyright Is The Buggy Whip Of The Digital Age

from the time-to-move-on dept

Michael Scott points us to a rather surprising (given the source) piece in Ad Age asking if copyright is "the buggy whip of the digital age." Of course, most regular Techdirt readers will not be surprised to find that I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. It's a tool for a very different system that isn't needed. If anything, I'd argue the situation is worse than with buggy whips. At least with buggy whips, they could just fade away as the automobile grew in importance. Buggy whips couldn't get in the way of the automakers. Copyright, on the other hand, is regularly used to stifle and hold back new forms of creativity and to silence expression.

The article itself, by Judy Shapiro, is really a conference report from an event called "The Collision of Ideas 2010," put on by the Copyright Clearance Center. It looks like they brought in a lot of fantastic speakers, highlighting how copyright law doesn't fit well with what content creators are trying to do, and how it's often being used to actively harm content creators. For example:

Mr. Hoffman, the filmmaker, gave a presentation where he confided how challenging current copyright laws are for artists. As an example, he gave us detailed insights into the challenges he had creating his critically acclaimed Sputnik documentary. He explained that half his budget was spent on copyright fees alone. Most unfairly, he had to pay exorbitant copyright fees to a network for old news footage they did not even have but which David himself had spent time to ferret out. David openly concluded that, "it was better to open the floodgates" and let anyone use his content than constrain its distribution.

Unfortunately, Shapiro is getting beaten up in the comments on that piece by folks who are doing the kneejerk thing of saying "but copyright is good, because otherwise who will create!" Still, it's good to see that this debate is reaching a wider and wider audience through conferences like this one and in the pages of AdAge. While you can always expect the kneejerk response from folks who have always been told that copyright must be good, the more people examine the actual issues, the more they'll recognize that as a tool, it's current design is woefully misguided and very much against the principles for which it was created.

Filed Under: buggy whip, copyright