Some Scattered Thoughts on Copyright and Privacy

Copyight & Choking Creativity

Lessig’s TED presentation on copyright law certainly resonated with me, and left me with much to think about. While I very much respect where he is coming from, I have several concerns about his proposed solutions.

Corporations not Creators Own Copyrights

First, he argues that artists and creators should allow more freely available content into the marketplace. This makes sense, and I agree that this is necessary for movement toward his vision of a “legal” read-write society. What I question, however, is whether in today’s economy artists and creators are really in control of their work. Often artists sign away their rights (or at least some of their rights) to corporations –agencies, publishers, record labels, etc. While they may still gain profit from their work and have some limited control over how the work is used, it is the corporation that must give permission and make the content freely available. It is the corporation that will sue if copyright infringement occurs, and it is the corporation that has a vested interest in making sure the content is not freely available.

Copyright is Confusing

Lessig alludes to Creative Commons in his presentation, though he doesn’t go into a discussion of it. I strongly support the ideals of Creative Commons. However, I don’t see it as a feasible solution that will end “Copyright abolitionism” that is so rampant among youth (and many others), simply for the fact that it is too confusing. If you are remixing 10 movie clips with a song plus multiple photographs, and perhaps look at 100s of objects to decide which is best for your creation, think how time consuming and limiting it is to try to figure out the allowances and restrictions that are on each individual item. Even with Creative Commons labeling, it can be extremely difficult to discern how and when the item can be used, who to ask for permission, etc. I just don’t see young people taking the time to investigate this for each item.

I agree with Lessig that in this “Age of Prohibitions” youth will continue to be driven (or choose to) live life “against the law” simply because it is too hard and limiting to follow the law, and because the risk of prosecution is relatively low. The lessons of a previous age of Prohibition (remember speakeasys?) showed that in the end it was necessary to reconsider the law because it was impossible to prosecute everyone who has breaking the law, and only the gangsters and bootleggers were profiting. I wonder if digital copyright law might not be a similar case.


Does Participating in Society Today Mean Forgoing Privacy?

I’ve been thinking lately about the ways in which privacy is defined and does or doesn’t exist in today’s society. I have recently received a spate of privacy policy statements in the mail from various credit cards, banks, and businesses that I use the services of. In order to participate with nearly any business or web site, or to have a presence in the online world, etc., etc. we must sign away certain rights to our personal information. Many of us do this without thinking—often feeling that we don’t have a choice. And in many ways, I don’t think we do. How can one really avoid putting their information into the public sphere without becoming a recluse?

Even if you were able to somehow avoid working with any business or organization that had access to personal information, you would still be confronted with the massive amounts of public surveillance that goes on worldwide. I can’t remember ever signing or seeing a privacy policy about how an ATM or convenience store or city street camera can use my image. While generally these images are only released upon a crime being committed, how are images being stored, by who, and for how long? Is there any law saying that the owner of that surveillance tape could not use it to make a profit? If a celebrity sits down in a restaurant with someone who is not their spouse, could that restaurant sell the tape to a gossip outlet like TMZ?

I realize I am stretching things a bit here, but it is an interesting question. How much of our right to privacy do we give up just by leaving our house, whether virtually or physically? How much right to privacy should we expect to have in the public sphere? And will the legacy of our culture in the distant future be the massive amounts of surveillance images that we are leaving behind?

Also wanted to share this link to an intriguing map about surveillance from http://www.privacyinternational.org/. I was going to post a copy of the picture here, but decided in the light of copyright discussions this week, I would just link to it.