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Political SOPA opera
Copyright legislation serves to benefit only large media companies, while ignoring independent artists who share work digitally
Even after the protests of major websites such as Wikipedia brought attention to the censorship issues raised by recent anti-piracy acts in Congress, little attention has been given to how something like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would protect the rights of artists besides movie stars and musicians. Why does this concern you? Because you probably have intellectual property that is still going to be stolen, regardless of the legislation Congress was considering. The content you post on social media, such as your Facebook photos, should be treated as your intellectual property and bound by the same copyright principles as music sold by record labels.
People who know me joke that my camera is like a third arm. I delight in taking a camera with me wherever I go because I enjoy seeing friends' reactions to pictures that I post and tag on Facebook. Photography is an important facet of archiving and sharing my experiences with others, but what bothers me is how cavalier people are in taking my pictures and using them outside of their legal domain on Facebook. Legislation which focuses mostly on banning access to websites which host pirated materials would help protect the music and film industry, but it would do nothing for my situation.
The PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which requires ISPs such as Comcast to ban access to certain Internet domains which contain infringements on copyright, would need to prevent access to Facebook entirely if it were to attempt to protect my rights as an individual photographer. Facebook comprises a large portion of Internet traffic in the United States, reaching more than 40 percent of global Internet users, according to alexa.com. If SOPA and PIPA were to be carried out consistently, they would render the Internet close to useless since nearly every website contains complexities regarding intellectual property which the government simply does not have the resources to patrol.
For example, when I post pictures to Facebook, I do not give up my copyright or other legal rights to my photos. I do, however, give Facebook the right to use my images throughout the web. This allows my photos to be used as other users' profile pictures.
Does it matter that my intellectual property rights as an amateur photographer are protected since I am not making money by offering my material for sale? Unlike other artists who stand to lose royalties if their property is pirated, I actually gain utility from having people access my content for free. People viewing and interacting with my photos helps give me feedback so I can improve my portfolio in the future. But when people modify my pictures by cropping, color adjusting or otherwise, it potentially disassociates me from my content and typically alters the overall effect I intended for the picture to have.
I am not an acclaimed artist with a reputation to uphold, but I do spend valuable time digitally processing and refining my work before I publish it, which is why I am disappointed that the proposed intellectual property laws affecting my Internet experience as a whole will not help protect my personal intellectual property.
Photographers who make a living selling their artwork online have much more to lose. In a TED Talk about the effects of PIPA and SOPA, New York University Prof. Clay Shirky says, \n"In the end, the real threat to the enactment of PIPA and SOPA is our ability to share things with one another." Whether or not PIPA and SOPA are enacted, some people will still copy; the laws will just force mediums such as Facebook, Flickr and YouTube into the business of trying to police user content. This maintenance of content will be a hassle for websites, many of which will take a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to the management of intellectual property if these laws are enacted.
With prices of some lenses alone topping $6,000, photography equipment costs can exceed the price of a new car, requiring photographers to reach as large an audience as possible to sell their artwork for profit. With outlets such as Facebook restricted by laws that add friction to the sharing process, sales for start-up photographers could be negatively affected. Without these sales, small photography boutiques cannot afford to pay for new lenses, software or employees, and their net creativity output will decrease.
My problem with SOPA and PIPA is not that the government gets discretion to control that bastion of free speech, the Internet. Rather, it's that the content protection these bills would provide would only benefit the same large media and industry companies which have been lobbying since the introduction of the tape recorder.
Andrew Kouri's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.kouri@cavalierdaily.com.
Commentary
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B
(02/03/12 8:35pm)Report
1. Copying is not theft, it has never been theft, and it is absurd to call it theft.\n2. Telling people not to use their computers to copy things is the equivalent of telling people not to drink their own tap water.\n3. You admit that people sharing your own work has increased your exposure, and thus your chances of turning your art into something profitable. Yet you call it theft and say that you are shocked by the way people just copy your photos.
Let us not forget the reason we have copyrights at all: to improve the public's access to art and science.
A
(02/03/12 9:40pm)Report
I agree that we have copyright to improve the public's access to art and science, but I believe you mischaracterize the mechanism by which copyright is designed to do that. Copyright protects art and information (be it printed or a .jpg) from being unlawfully appropriated (stolen) by one without the right to use it. Because creators have this protection they will be more likely to share their work with the public, knowing they have mechanisms for control and payment, and thus we all benefit and have more access to other's thought.
1. Copying is theft when one has rights to intellectual property.
2. Wildly inaccurate.
3. Imagine I'm some sort of artist and I shared with you some of the things I produce to spark interest in what I create. Does that give you the right then to take everything I produce from me?
B
(02/04/12 12:10am)Report
Copying is fundamentally different from theft, because nobody is deprived of their property when a copy is made. If you are a photographer and I copy a picture you took, you still have the picture, and you can still do what you wish with the picture. If I enter your home and take whatever copies of the picture you happen to have, then you do not have your picture, and I do -- and thus I stole it. Copying may make it harder for you to profit from your creative work, but so does competition from other artists, other sources of entertainment, a bad economy, etc.
The copyright system was envisioned in an age when copying creative work required specialized industrial equipment or substantial effort on the part of whoever was making the copying. It was a regulation on industry, not on individual behavior, and it is designed to be settled by the court system. Things are very much different today as we actually expect people to have the equipment needed to copy art, entertainment, and other information in their homes -- there is no way the court system could handle the volume of cases if even 1% of the copyright infringement that occurs today were to be prosecuted. We need to rethink that system; even the author of this article agrees that there is no way that people are going to stop copying things.
The tap water analogy is very much fitting. Everyone has tap water in their homes, and when people drink tap water they are unlikely to buy bottled water. Tap water can be used for purposes other than drinking -- cleaning dishes, clothing, showering, etc. -- and we could, if we wanted to, accuse people who drink their tap water of stealing from bottled water companies. How is this any different from the current situation with computers and the Internet? Everyone has a computer and an Internet connection, and computers can easily be used to make copies of creative work -- yet we call people thieves for using their computers as copying machines.
Somehow, though, bottled water companies turn big profits, even though they have no legal recourse when people drink tap water instead of buying bottled water.
Frankly, I suspect that you violate copyrights all the time, without every realizing it. I would have a hard time believing you if you claimed to have never sang "Happy Birthday" to someone in a public place -- a song whose lyrics are still under copyright. Have you read all your software licenses, and are you sure that you are in compliance with each one? Are you sure that every copy you have made of some text, music, or photo fell under "fair use?"
It is absurd to think that individual people can be expected to follow copyright law while also living their lives. People copy things that they see and hear, and they are not going to stop, and we should not expect them to stop. Society is going to have to figure out another way to give artists and other creative workers incentives to create and propagate their work. The world is different today than it was when the printing press was invented, and it is time for a new system that better fits the realities of today's world.
As a final thought: Imagine I am some sort of stagecoach driver, and you have a car. Does that give you the right to not pay me for my services?
Marvin Edwards
(02/05/12 12:13pm)Report
Interesting. I view a copyright as similar to a patent. It protects the owners ability to profit from their own work, by controlling who may reproduce and sell it. I think the emphasis should be to restrict the selling rather than restricting the copying. I think some documents allow copying for personal use, but not for resale.
Anyone who publishes anything on the web should already know that it can be easily copied. It is effectively bestowed as a gift to anyone who has access to view it. But attempts to sell the copy should be restricted.
Online magazines and newspapers often provided limited free access, but require a subscription fee and sign-on for full access.
I think facebook allows you to restrict content access to your friends. So, if you open it up to everyone, you do so with full knowledge and consent to copying (you can capture any screen image and paste it into the Windows Paint application).
About SOPA and PIPA, I don't really know enough to comment. 'Cept that if Wikipedia is against it, they probably have a good reason. I do support and use Wikipedia.