Discussion on Intellectual Property

The actions taken by many companies in the United States have got me thinking about intellectual property and its role in society. My last post was about how intellectual property laws concerning music are being abused in the United States.

Research into the abuse of intellectual property has lead to me literature that shuns the whole idea of intellectual property such as Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture (freely available of course). Lessig brings up points such as the fact that the amount of time a work can be copyrighted has changed multiple times. Originally a work was copyrighted for 28 years, then it could be copyrighted for 75 years, and now a work can be copyrighted for 95 years. This means that since our current copyright laws in the U.S. started in 1923, any work whose copyright was properly renewed has not entered the public domain yet. This means at the current rate of copyright law changing the copyright term may one day be limitless.

An unlimited copyright term is probably the worst thing that can happen to intellectual property law. An unlimited term for copyright means that any new creation which is based on a previously copyrighted idea will be subject to royalty fees. If in 50 years people want to make things that are loosely based upon other works created a long time ago, they will have to pay royalty fees to create their work. With this cycle, people will eventually run out of completely original and new things to create and basically everyone who creates something will need to pay up.

Intellectual property laws discourage the creation of new works that are not completely original. Anyone who creates a derivative work could potentially be sued. The 'fair use' clause of copyright law should exempt some works from paying royalty fees. Fair use should cover educational uses and non-profit uses. Apparently filesharing and educational YouTube videos do not fall under this fair use clause.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 added another layer of evil to intellectual copyright law. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection methods in order to modify software or equipment that you own. This means that by modifying many electronic devices or pieces of software for your own personal uses you may be breaking the law. The most ridiculous section of the DMCA is the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act. Out of all the sections of the DMCA, this section has probably caused the most unnecessary court cases targeting innocent consumers.

One solution to the abuse of intellectual property is to abolish intellectual property from the law completely. This would hurt large companies and benefit consumers. One could argue that it makes sense for certain things to be copyrighted. Intellectual property could still be protected when absolutely necessary by including a contract of use that one must agree to when acquiring a particular item. This would make intellectual property unprotected by default, which allows for more incentive to create derivative works.

Abolishing intellectual property completely is not a feasible solution in the United States today. Our copyright laws are too deeply rooted. However, finding an optimum length for copyright terms and abolishing acts such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act would help our situation. The optimum length of a copyright term would enable the creator to seek great financial reward but would allow the work to enter the public domain in an appropriate amount of time so new derivative works could be freely made. A Cambridge student claims to have calculated the optimum length of time for a copyright term to be 14 years. Hopefully someday our government will encourage creation and progress of intellectual property by lowering the copyright term for new works.