QotW3: Sharing, Copyright & Creative Culture

With the creation of an idea or object comes the protection that all creators are given - copyright. Even though many countries have enforced the Copyright Laws, there are still many cases of online piracy, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and copyright infringement cases on the Internet. According to a report in BBC News in 2002, "over 2.6 billion music files [were]downloaded illegally every month" ("Spears warns against piracy", 26/09/2002, para. 4). With an increase in the number of copyright infringements, in 1998, the United States of America (USA) came up with the Digital Millenium Copyright ACT (DMCA). However, many people are not happy with this new law because of the Digital Rights Management (DRM).

I agree that copyright laws are extremely important because it "encourage[s] the creation and wide dissemination of a wide variety of works" (Litman, Nov 23, 2003, para. 1). However, I feel that in order for both the creators and the public to be contented with copyright, the DRM software of the DMCA should either be scrapped or changed. This is because by maintaining DMCA, the creators' works in the digital world will still be protected by the copyright law, and at the same time, the users rights will not be violated.

Firstly, what is DMCA? DMCA is a law that was passed in 1998 by the USA. The two main purposes of it is to "make it a crime to circumvent copyright access except in narrow circumstances", and it "gives copyright owners the right to control access to works in which they own copyright" (Ovalle, 2005, p.10, para. 2). With DMCA, comes the software DRM, which refers to "several technologies used by publishers or copyright owners to control access to and usage of digital data or hardware, and to restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work or device" ("Digital Rights Management", February 2, para. 1).

The first problem with the DRM software is that it can exceed the "statutorily-defined period of time any copyrighted work becomes part of the public domain for anyone to use freely" ("Digital Rights Management", February 2, para. 21). Normally a work that is copyrighted will be protected by the law for a limited time of the span of the creator's lifetime and an additional 50 to 70 years after. After which, the work is put into the public domain for the public to freely use it. The reason for the time limit for the creators is so that the they "can benefit financially from their creations, which should provide them an incentive to continue creating" (Orvalle, 2005, p. 2). For the public, the time limit benefits them because "the authors and inventors [will] continue creating original works that these creators may not have otherwise developed . . ." (p.2, para. 3).

However, the current DRM software is not programmed with any time limits, and this causes the work to still be copyrighted even when it is suppose to be in the public domain for the public to use.

Another problem with the software is that it obstructs the user's rights of Fair Use. Fair use is a "doctrine in the law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, . . ." ("Fair use", 2007, para. 1). Unfortunately, the DRM software restricts the copying of any part of the work, because it cannot "determine if a given use is fair, because fair use is decided on a case-by-case basis based on a number of criteria that technology caanot measure" (Ovalle, 2005, p. 10, para.5). This then prevents the user from using any part of the work, even if it is for educational purposes.

The last problem that the software has is that it prevents the user's rights of the First-Sale Doctrine. The doctrine allows the user to sell his or her copy of the work without the creator's permission, as long as the user does not keep a copy of the work.

Therefore, in order to keep both the creators and the public content, I propose that the DCMA should still be used. However, the current DRM software should be taken out and replaced with a software that will not prevent the users from exercising their rights and will follow the time limits of the copyrighted work.


References:
Digital Rights Management. (2007, February 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 3, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digital_Rights_

Fair use. (2007, January 31). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 3, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fair_use&oldid=104484212

Litman, J. (2003). [On-line]. Retrieved January 30, 2007 from the World Wide Web:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=472141

Ovalle, C. (2005). [On-line]. Retrieved January 30, 2007 from the World Wide Web:http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312co/10.php

Spears warns against piracy. (2002). [On-line]. Retrieved January 30, 2007 from the World Wide Web:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2283072.stm

Image:
http://www.duke.edu/~nem3/cps001/project/copyright_global.jpg