Why Copyright & Patent Laws Go Against How We Create

from the in-ten-minutes dept

We've written about Kirby Ferguson many times before. The filmmaker behind the absolutely awesome Everything Is A Remix series of videos, has just posted a 10 minute TED talk he recently did, which you absolutely should watch. It very simply explains how the nature of both creativity and innovation revolves around building on the works of others, but that both copyright and patent laws are based on the exact opposite belief -- that creativity and innovation springs wholly new from one's head, and thus deserves some form of property rights. Whatever you do, find 10 minutes to watch this video: It goes through how nearly all of Bob Dylan's early songs were actually copies of others' songs (which is funny because Bob Dylan is a name that is frequently cited by copyright maximalists as an example of the necessity of copyright law). And it's not just copyright that he talks about, but patents, highlighting Steve Jobs' hypocrisy, talking at one time about how it's best to take the best ideas of others, but then also going ballistic about Google copying aspects of iOS in Android. He also points out how Jobs lied about claiming to have invented multi-touch, by showing Jeff Han's famous TED demo of multi-touch technology a year before the iPhone launched. And in that video, Han admits that multi-touch has been around for decades. The key point he makes in the end is that the system is broken because of the combination of a few factors that conflict with the fact that everything is a remix. When you mix laws that fundamentally treat creative works as property, with the massive rewards and huge legal fees associated with court cases, combined with the cognitive bias people have against others copying themselves (with a complete blindness for the fact that they are always copying others), you have a system that fundamentally does not work and cannot work.

Filed Under: bob dylan, copyright, culture, everything is a remix, inventions, kirby ferguson, patents, remix, steve jobs

When We Copy, We Justify It; When Others Copy, We Vilify Them

from the everything-is-a-remix dept

We've written multiple times about Kirby Ferguson's excellent Everything is a Remix project that has produced three videos highlighting the problems and history of intellectual property and how copying and derivative works are a core element of culture and invention. He's now released the fourth and final installment in the series, and it's a great summary look at the general problems with intellectual property law today. The key theme is that the theory (treating ideas, inventions, content, etc. as a form of "property" -- in the minds of many copyright and patent system supporters) simply doesn't match up with reality (where almost everything is a derivative work of some sort). What the video does nicely is highlight the hypocrisy of it all. As he notes brilliantly, when we copy (and everyone does copy), we justify it. When others copy, however, suddenly we attack them and vilify them. A perfect recent example of this, by the way, was former NYT executive editor Bill Keller's bizarre defense of the NYT copying and posting a work covered by someone else's copyright, just days after his own column came out in support of greater legal enforcement of copyrights.

As he notes, this is psychologically understandable. It's all about "loss aversion." People feel a sense that they "own" something which they really do not -- and that's often boosted by the concepts of intellectual property that really spread the idea that you can, in fact, own an idea (and, yes, technically neither copyright nor patents apply directly to "ideas," but that's a nuance that most people fail to grasp when they see how content and inventions are considered "owned" under the laws of today).

The video then talks about the continued expansion of copyright laws, and the more nefarious effort to continue to ratchet things up through trade agreements like ACTA and TPP. But he also points out that this is somewhat ironic, since in its early years, the US refused to sign similar trade agreements, and was a "pirate nation" that ignored copyrights from around the globe.

The video doesn't just cover copyrights, but digs into patents as well -- with specific attention paid to broad software patents that do little to contribute any knowledge to the world, but instead take broad concepts and seek to lock them up for the purpose of suing and trying to extract settlements from those actually creating and innovating.

From there he breaks out the original purpose of both copyrights and patents under the US system. In both cases, they were about benefiting the public: to encourage learning or to promote the progress of "useful" arts (inventions). But when the laws fail to do that, then we should see the system as broken and seek to remedy it.

All in all, Ferguson's series is a great introduction to many of the issues we cover around here. I don't fully agree with everything in all of the videos -- and the latest one has a slight undertone suggesting that capitalism and markets in and of themselves are bad (which I think is conflating a few different issues). But overall the videos are fantastic -- and in terms of production quality, it seems like each one in the series is better than the previous one. He keeps maturing as a video maker, which is cool to see. Ferguson is now moving on to a new project, called This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, for which he's raising funds on Kickstarter, so check it out.

Filed Under: copying, copyright, everything is a remix, intellectual property, kirby ferguson, loss avoidance, patents, property, remix

We Need To Let Go Of The Idea That Our Creations Are Utterly Ours

from the they're-not-and-have-never-been dept

We've written about Kirby Ferguson's excellent Everything Is A Remix project, and the folks over at On The Media have a nice interview with Ferguson. The whole thing is worth a read (it's pretty short, actually), but there were two great quotes that I thought were worth highlighting. He's asked if he's "sympathetic" to copyright holders, and responds:

I'm sympathetic to most of them. It's natural in our culture to want to protect what you feel you worked hard for or invested in. Unfortunately, I don't think it's as natural to be aware of the innumerable ways we take from our culture in order to create these things. We need to let go of the idea that our creations are utterly ours. Creating something new entitles us to some rights, but not to perpetual monopoly, which is the direction we're headed in.

That bolded part is the key. People have a natural inclination to give themselves more credit for their own work, and diminish the contributions of everyone who came before them whose work was instrumental to their own. I definitely recognize the natural instincts there as well, but I agree with Ferguson that it's important, culturally, to get past that.

He's also asked where he'd like to see things go "culturally in terms of copyright and patent laws" and he answers:

I think we have to stop conceiving of remixing as a kind of theft. It's not theft, it's not piracy, it's a legitimate effort to make something new. That effort deserves some respect, if not for the results, then for the intent. So I think step one is to stop treating remixing as theft and bring the penalties for unauthorized remixing back down to earth.

This can't be said enough, even though it's rarely said at all. I've explained in the past how insulting it is for people to make criticisms like "create your own!" when they see amazing creative new works built by remixing the works of those who came before. If you can't respect amazing creations built off of others' work as being something amazing and new, then you lead a culturally deficient life.

Filed Under: culture, ideas, kirby ferguson, remix