Battling Copyright Ignorance
By Jonathan Bailey • Jul 28th, 2009 • Category: Articles, Punditry  photo credit: thisisbossi |
A recent study out of the UK found some striking numbers when it comes to copyright understanding and compliance in the country.
First, it found that 50 percent of men and 38 percent of women had never paid for any online content. Furthermore, sixty percent of adults said that they felt musicians shouldn’t be paid when their music is downloaded on the Web and the number increased when asked about TV producers and filmmakers.
However, what was most striking to me was the number of people who didn’t understand copyright law and how it works on the Web. Three-quarters of the people who responded said that they felt they had no rights to the work they posted on the Web and over half said that anything on the Web was basically a “free for all”.
Though the study comes from a potentially biased source, namely Telindus, a network solutions provider that deals with piracy issues as part of their business, the responses to these questions seem believable to me. In the four years that I’ve run Plagiarism Today, the one thing that has held consistent has been a lack of understanding about copyright law by the majority of people I meet.
This, more than anything, has been the root of the copyright strife on the Internet and has created much of the headache that Webmasters and users deal with on a daily basis. Furthermore, it represents one of the greatest failures of all sides of the copyright debate and is something that must be addressed before any solutions or reforms can be enacted.
The Nature of the Problem
Copyright has been in the news as it relates to the Web for nearly ten years. The first time most people hear the word “copyright” used in conjunction with something on the Internet dealt with the Napster case, which unfolded between late 1999 and 2001. Many will remember the “Napster Bad!” series of online cartoons that rose to popularity by lampooning Metallica, which had sued Napster in 2000 (after the RIAA had already filed suit).
Since then there has been dozens of other major copyright news stories. The RIAA lawsuits against individual file sharers, which includes the Jammie Thomas case and the Joel Tenenbaum case, The Pirate Bay trial, The Grokster case, The Shepard Fairey lawsuit over the “Hope” poster and the list goes on. This doesn’t count the lesser-known cases that also drew mainstream media attention, such as The Lane Hartwell controversy and the Lara Jade Case among others.
Despite all of this news coverage and a PR push by all sides, very little, if any, progress has been made in terms of educating the public. Part of this is because those in the news have taken a greater interest in name calling and pontificating than providing actual information. They are trying to win their cases, both in the courts and in the courts of public opinion, not save the world from copyright ignorance.
However, average net users can hardly be blamed for not understanding copyright law. Up until about 15 years ago, most people lacked the technology and resources to commit a major copyright infringement. Smaller ones, such as dubbing rented VHS tapes for personal use, were rarely enforced. Copyright has not been taught in schools, unless one goes to college and gets an appropriate degree (law, journalism, advertising, etc.) and through most of the law’s history, the average layperson has had no reason to be aware of it.
In short, laypeople walked on to the Web, essentially becoming publishers, without any understanding of the rules of the game. Then, they found themselves in the middle of a war where they don’t know what is being fought over beyond the propaganda coming from both sides.
Now many are taking sides without a full picture of what they are fighting for, or against.
Preaching to the Choir
I recognize well that, when I blog here about copyright issues I am, essentially, preaching to the choir. Yes, some who disagree with me read this site, but for the most part this site seems to attract readers who are at least aware of the basics of copyright law and are looking to protect, track and/or license their content.
However, I am reminded of how unique this audience when I go to a conference or social function and mention what I do. It seems that, at many of these events, the way to be popular is to have answers to copyright questions. Unfortunately, most of the questions are very basic and could have easily been answered by a cursory read of the U.S. Copyright Office’s site or even a copyright myths page.
For the most part these are bright, intelligent people that are very skilled in their fields. But they are woefully unknowledgeable about copyright, even as they publish to the Web, use other people’s content and have their work copied.
This creates two separate problems on the Web. First, most people are not aware of their rights in their own works. the second is that they unintentionally infringe upon the rights of others. Both of these things cause strife and frustration with the current system and often cause people to lash out without fully understanding what is going on.
You can see this if you search for “copyright AND YouTube” on Twitter. When videos are taken down or are blocked internationally due to licensing agreements, users seem to blame YouTube or copyright law itself. There is little understanding of why the videos are taken down/restricted and even less understanding about how to avoid these issues.
When it comes to copyright law, it seems that many are more likely to lash out either at the law itself or those required to enforce it. This is true even when a simple understanding of the rules and small change in behavior could have avoided the incident completely.
This goes on to fuel much of the hatred on both sides of the copyright debate and works to prevent real dialog form taking place or real progress from being made.
Bottom Line
In the end, any and all copyright reform, if it is going to work, needs to be built on the back of a robust understanding of the existing law. Those who fight without understanding risk creating a far worse environment but no widespread reform can or will happen without strong support from the people.
Intelligent people with a robust understanding of the law can, should and do disagree on what the future of copyright law should look like. However, when they have fought for the hearts and minds of those unfamiliar with the law, they have done so largely with buzzwords, slick marketing campaigns and big promises, not actual information.
This is why I’ve started keeping a copy of the Copyright Office’s “Copyright Basics” PDF on a thumb drive everywhere I go. I give it to anyone who has questions about copyright law as a relatively quick way to get a good baseline understanding. The fact the PDF is in the public domain doesn’t hurt either.
Without this understanding, we’re like a city full of drivers that has no understanding of what the rules of traffic are, constantly getting more and more heated over the congestion and accidents and fighting on how to best reform the system. Copyright rage, much like road rage, is unproductive, especially when it doesn’t come with an understanding of the laws involved.
We have to fight that ignorance before anything can improve and that will be a battle fought one person at a time.
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Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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I really wish there was a way we could get education about copyright into high schools where it's needed.
The misconceptions seem to go to both extremes. Either people think everything is free (to use in any way without payment or permission) or they think copyright prohibits almost anything. I cannot begin to wrap my mind around how to make the fair use doctrine intelligible to most citizens.
Too true Jonathon. I'm really shocked that nearly every manager I have run into in my work (and during my MBA program) has given little weight to copyright, and even in an MBA unit “Law for Managers” it was a very cursory part of a general lesson on IP – which failed to mention some critical points (mainly due to lack of time).
I have to admit, most of what I've learned about IP is through PlagiarismToday as its provided an ongoing base of current knowledge about what's going on. Without that knowledge then businesses are flying blind. Mostly its because they are playing osterich – it won't happen to them. Not a healthy way to run an organisation into the future.
Sadly, I think this is part of the problem too. Here's why:
Why designs the copyright curriculum? Who decides what is taught in the little time available and how it is taught? Though copyright isn't as controversial as sex education, the two are analogous in many ways. Namely in that they have both been politicized to the point the actual facts are less important than the objections various parties raise about the instruction.
Both the RIAA and the EFF have created copyright curriculum for schools and there are many different lesson plan plans for students of all ages, some going as low as 2nd grade. However, the EFF and RIAA plans are far too political, both coming from a preexisting viewpoint, though both are accurate they pick and choose the facts to present based upon how they think copyright *should* work.
The Copyright Office has also tried. You can view their efforts here: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/copyrightmystery/ But an adequate description of the teaching tool would require more obscenities than I would be willing to place.
The USCO, the only unbiased source, can't do a decent job. It's already overburdened and overstressed, and other parties are too quick to inject politics. Doing that, would open up lawsuits and still not teach the full picture.
No one without an axe to grind is willing and able to step up the challenge of creating a good lesson plan and pushing it into schools. Copyright education, it seems, is another victim of the same war that has hurt everyone else.
Simplest thing would be for teachers teaching internet related or photoshop classes to incorporate it in lessons where’s there’s already an issue of students using other people’s photos for projects. Every year I see student art shows full of copied work. I’m guessing the adults aren’t educated enough to know either. But somehow every English teacher I ever had was clear about not accepting anything plagiarized.
Agreed that would be a big step in the right direction. The problem here is that, as you pointed out, the adults don’t often understand that law either. It seems the “smartest people in the room” when it comes to schools and copyright are librarians. Making me wonder if a good first step would be getting librarians to educate teachers to educate students.
I think that will be one of the greatest challenges. The reason being that fair use is a doctrine even attorneys disagree on, I fear how they are going to make this simple enough for individuals. It probably is the greatest single issue to high quality copyright education.
The ostrich problem is indeed a big one. It's fed by the fact that, even the companies that do the most to flout the law, only a small percentage see any consequence of importance. In the U.S., this is partly because of the way the copyright system is slanted, namely that you can't sue without a registration or collect full damages without one, but also the nature of IP enforcement in general.
Sadly, burying your head in the sand is a viable strategy for many from a cost perspective. They can do so and, odds are, they'll save money not having all that pesky training and, not suffer any ill effects.
Sad, but true.
Sadly, I think this is part of the problem too. Here's why:
Why designs the copyright curriculum? Who decides what is taught in the little time available and how it is taught? Though copyright isn't as controversial as sex education, the two are analogous in many ways. Namely in that they have both been politicized to the point the actual facts are less important than the objections various parties raise about the instruction.
Both the RIAA and the EFF have created copyright curriculum for schools and there are many different lesson plan plans for students of all ages, some going as low as 2nd grade. However, the EFF and RIAA plans are far too political, both coming from a preexisting viewpoint, though both are accurate they pick and choose the facts to present based upon how they think copyright *should* work.
The Copyright Office has also tried. You can view their efforts here: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/copyrightmystery/ But an adequate description of the teaching tool would require more obscenities than I would be willing to place.
The USCO, the only unbiased source, can't do a decent job. It's already overburdened and overstressed, and other parties are too quick to inject politics. Doing that, would open up lawsuits and still not teach the full picture.
No one without an axe to grind is willing and able to step up the challenge of creating a good lesson plan and pushing it into schools. Copyright education, it seems, is another victim of the same war that has hurt everyone else.
I think that will be one of the greatest challenges. The reason being that fair use is a doctrine even attorneys disagree on, I fear how they are going to make this simple enough for individuals. It probably is the greatest single issue to high quality copyright education.
The ostrich problem is indeed a big one. It's fed by the fact that, even the companies that do the most to flout the law, only a small percentage see any consequence of importance. In the U.S., this is partly because of the way the copyright system is slanted, namely that you can't sue without a registration or collect full damages without one, but also the nature of IP enforcement in general.
Sadly, burying your head in the sand is a viable strategy for many from a cost perspective. They can do so and, odds are, they'll save money not having all that pesky training and, not suffer any ill effects.
Sad, but true.
Sadly, special interest revisions to copyright law and lack of protection for public domain have been fatal to public respect and understanding. Copyright is to protect INDIVIDUAL IP, by continuing the Disney line of “eternal” copyright and totally discounting the Public Domain, the concept has been perverted into something that no-one respects. Copyrights should be issued to the artist ONLY, and only extend for a set number of years after artist/creator’s death for protection of the family. that is it. no corporate copyright. problem fixed. public respect restored. system repaired.
While I agree that there are major issues with the way modern copyright is set up and used, I don’t think this is the solution.
The reason is that, for example, a Hollywood picture is a work created by 1000s of artists working together. Without some kind of corporate control over the copyright, licensing and distribution becomes a nightmare. Furthermore, without corporate copyright, there won’t be any motivation for corporations to invest in the creation of copyrighted works, thus individual artists would have to fund everything themselves.
We need a moral rights system like the one that exists in Europe that protects the rights of the individual artist separate from the corporation, but a complete abolition of corporate copyright is not the answer. However, a scaling back of the term may definitely be in order. 95 years for a corporate authorship is a very long time.
I appreciate your logical response, Jonathan. I admit that there is an emotional component to my prior post, and that you raise some valid points. I would support a revision of the US copyright laws that set a fixed period for corporate copyright to, say, 25 years (or a similar period), while extending individual copyright to lifetime of the artist plus 15 years (or something similar). This would allow for corporations to recoup their expenses, and profit from their ventures, protect the individual artists and families, and at the same time respect the concept of a Public Domain too. Thanks for the dialog, you have added to my personal perspective on the issue.
In fact, these people understand copyright completely and exactly how it works on the web.
Why are people copying things on the web? Why do they view even their own works as being “worthless”? Perhaps it is because, put simply, they are worthless. Or at least, no reasonable monetary value can be placed on them.
How much is a book worth? A modern novel can probably be compressed into less than 1MB of data. Throughout history, this was quite a lot of data, and it cost quite a bit of money to copy and distribute that to people. Copyright was an enforceable and rational concept because information was a scarce quantity.
But now? 1MB of information can be transmitted in seconds, to anywhere in the world, ad infinitium, for a cost that is virtually zero. How much is 1MB of information actually worth to anyone? $10? Ludacrious. $1. No less ludacrious. $0.01. Still excessively priced. The reality is that we don’t have denominations which can value information anymore. As time goes by, even massive data files like HD movies (50GB) and databases will see their worth evaporate. Yes, this means that there will be no incentive to produce certain works, but this has happened to many goods before.
So when people are told that they can’t copy certain information because it is copyrighted, what are they going to think? The internet is a torrent and telling people that it is wrong to copy files is like telling them it is wrong to collect rainwater(In some places, collecting rainwater is in fact against the law). You can pass such laws but the reality is, reasonable people will not obey them.
Copyright in its current form is an unreasonable prohibition on the rights of people. When data is so cheap, so easily obtained, so infinitely reproducible and so easy to find, it is nonsense to suggest that data be considered a sacrosanct form of property. The forces of reality have caught up with the concept of copyright and the concept must either adapt or perish in the modern world.
The future form of copyright must be constructed soon, because the current one is likely to shatter under the strain of the digital age.
Hey Jonathon – Any new updates, decisions on the Lara Jade case? It has been a while since there was any news on thi.
I checked up on it a few weeks ago, the case was still going back and forth. It had survived an initial jurisdictional challenge and was still being fought.
The latest major development was that Bob Burge, one of the defendants had, for a time, stopped responding to all court activity and nearly had a judgment declared against him but found new counsel to take up the case and is fighting on.
At least that was the latest as of a few weeks ago.
I checked up on it a few weeks ago, the case was still going back and forth. It had survived an initial jurisdictional challenge and was still being fought.
The latest major development was that Bob Burge, one of the defendants had, for a time, stopped responding to all court activity and nearly had a judgment declared against him but found new counsel to take up the case and is fighting on.
At least that was the latest as of a few weeks ago.