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Dataphile
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Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:55 pm

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Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:56 pm

What Is Copyright?

A copyright is a protection applied to a work (which may include anything - a song, a drawing, a book, a computer program, a blueprint, or a sex position - okay, maybe not that one) which gives the creator exclusive use, the right to modify it, sell it, copy it, or do whatever else he or she desires with it while restricting what everybody else can do with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:

to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies (mechanical rights; including, sometimes, electronic copies: distribution rights)
to import or export the work[citation needed]
to create derivative works (works that adapt the original work)
to perform or display the work publicly (performance rights)
to sell or assign these rights to others
to transmit or display by radio or video (broadcasting rights)

Dataphile
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Dataphile
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Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:57 pm

Copyright: Pros, Cons, and In-Betweens

Ever copy a CD for your cousin?
Or send your friend a freshly converted episode of South Park?
Mod your Xbox to play downloaded games?
Download an MP3 of Jonathan Coulton's cover of Sir Mix A Lot's "Baby Got Back"?

Yes? Congratulations! You're a criminal! Go turn yourself in so you can be tried with and charged for piracy! One of the cons of copyright is that there's no sharing. If you buy a CD, you don't own the music. You own a right to listen to that music. If you lend your CD to your friend, that's fine. But if your friend then rips that CD to iTunes, he's a thief, and you're a pirate. And there's no rum left.

If a rapper releases a CD for $9.99, and one person buys a copy of that CD and a $7.99 spindle of blank CD-R's, and simply gives away a copy of the CD to everyone who asks, then the rapper has made... $9.99. If the rapper was an independant rapper who isn't confined to a record label, he made the album in his spare time, and also happens to have an $80,000 per year job in a biology lab, then it may be no big deal to him. But if the rapper is, say, Eminem, then he'll be pretty pissed! After all, that's his job! And he still owes the record company royalties. That's a pro of copyright. It keeps people making money. If you like Eminem's music, you should pay for it. (Of course, I listen to almost no rap and chose Eminem arbitrarily, so the only money he's getting from me is if my friend says, "hey, Joe, can you get me that Eminem CD for my birthday?" But since I'm not pirating the album since I don't want it anyway, he's not losing any money on me, either.)

So in a nutshell, if you share content protected by copyright, then you'll be sued for every penny you have. And then some.

Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:59 pm

Open-Source, Copyleft, and the Creative Commons

Open-source is most commonly associated with the Free Software Foundation. A number of people upset about software copyrights got together and developed a free software license. This allowed the source code (or, what makes your program tick) to be shared with anybody who wanted to use it. Not only that, but they could tweak the code a bit, apply a few changes to the appearance, and release their program as an entirely new application. And it's all legal.

They dubbed their new method of licensing a copyleft, or, the opposite of a copyright.

The Creative Commons took things one step further, though. A new group of people decided, why stop at software? This group of people came up with the Creative Commons, a means of applying open-source ideas to non-software projects. For example, a musician might make a drum loop and release it to let anybody who wants to use it rap with it, add a guitar, tambourine, kazoo, or singer, and release it as a band track. Or an artist may make a dinner plate out of clay, and take a picture of the resulting dish and release the photo to people who would like to edit in a picture of bacon and eggs, or even share the steps that he or she took to making the dish. At Arts of the Midnight, we are strong supporters of open-source, copyleft, and the Creative Commons, and strongly urge you to license your work under the Creative Commons. This will allow other guild members to edit, improve, or change your work, as well as offer constructive criticism that may make you look at your own creations in a whole new light. After all, if the sky is the limit, why obstruct the path?