Copyright, Copyleft and Creative Commons

Copyright as we know it was established in 1709 so writers and publisher can gain protection against copying their work. Since that time a lot have changed and it can be argued that Copyright has lost it purpose in many ways.

It’s alleged now that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has sued or threatened to sue about 28.000 people for copyright infringement. Most of these people are college students and teens!! Which make a person wonder is this right or wrong. Especially in our digital age. According to the International Federation of Phonographic industry, the global music industry sales had fell by 10% in 2009. Most the blame is on the illegal music downloading of course. So, it look right from the industry`s prospective to sue everybody. Mark Mulligan, Online distribution of music analyst said: “The music industry has been fighting hard against piracy for over a decade, but they haven’t managed to stem the flow” Link. He believe that the reason is because technology is moving to fast  for the Music industry and young people now believe that music is free and they never experienced saving money to buy a record.

Remixers also are targeted for a lot of law suits from the music industry and here things get complicated because remixers think of their self’s as artists and they claim that their work is based on fair use of other copyrighted artists work and that led to what’s called Copyleft  which look like it`s against Copyright but its not. Copyleft basically means that a person who owns a copy of any kind of copyrighted work can reproduce it or adapt it but with the acknowledgments for the original author. Copyleft also refers to any work in the public domain that not copyrighted and free.

Copyleft movement is adapting new idea called Creative Commons. It`s considered as a huge cultural revolution for artists and inventors. Creative Commons or CC means the work could be licensed to be reproduced, adapted or used in anyway by a legal agreement which determines how much and in which ways it can be used, Link. however there some questioning about CC that how is it different from fair use and why would anyone give away their own work.Tom Merritt, executive editor, CNET.com, has argued these concerns in this Link

Copeyleft and Creative Commons are shouts against copyrights laws that limited inventions and creativity and made it only for profit, and forgot the true propose of copyright that was made to protect the rights of inventors and encourage them.

Stanford professor Lawrance Lessing the founder of Creative Commons explains in this Youtube video: