The Copyright Law Definition - Report Example

Copyright protects a work of an artist, composer or programmer in which it excludes others from copying or publishing literary, dramatic, musical, artistic or software works (Pressman, p.5). It allows the author to have exclusive rights over his work. These rights include: reproduction right, that is the right to make copies of the protected work, distribution right, that is the right to sell or distribute copies of the work, the right to create adaptations, that is the right to use the same work as basis for a new work, and performance and display rights, that is the right to perform or display a protected work (Fishman, p.6) He can sell, lend or give it away depending on what he would like to do with his work. These rights can actually be transferred or assigned. The primary purpose of the copyright law is to encourage authors to create and write original works and materials for the development of the intellect and arts while placing a monetary value on the work. This would allow writers to have a source of income, depending on how he would use the copyright. For example an author writes a romantic novel, sells it to a publisher and gain royalty for it. He also sells it to be used in a play or movie and he receives monetary exchange for it. If someone copies his words without his permission, he can sue the person for infringement and collect monetary damages. However, copyright only looks into protecting not the idea itself but how it is presented. One example is a program written by a programmer. That can be copyrighted, but it doesn’t mean that someone else cannot write another program which will bear the same results and output as that program. It also does not cover works other than those with artistic expression. Phone books and forms are not considered to be works that can be copyrighted. A copyright can cover the said work throughout the author’s life plus 70-95 years from its publication, depending on the country or if it is an anonymous, pseudonymous or work made for hire. It is quite inexpensive and easy to register a copyright and the length of time it will take for you to have a certificate that your work is copyrighted does not take years. When the copyright expires, the work is placed in the public domain. The public domain is a pool of works where the public can obtain information and ideas. This is where federal documents, works without copyright and works that have lost their copyrights go. Works in the public domain can be used even without permission since it is already owned by no one. The above indicates how copyright can be used to the advantage of the author. On the one hand, copyright is a monopoly. It is a monopoly of artistic and original expression, which the public cannot use for about a century or so. Copyright differentiates public from private domain. Since copyrighted materials cannot be borrowed or copied without the owner’s permission, it can be concluded that it is a private material wherein the public cannot easily obtain. There should always be a legal transaction with the owner before one can actually copy the artistic expression or the material itself. Since copyright has a distinction on what it is protecting, the expression rather than the idea, it establishes more the borders between private and public. A copyrighted work has only the rights to protect the expression used in expressing an idea but it does not protect the idea from used over and over. The distinction between the idea and expression emphasizes more the distinction between private and public (Rose, p.140). This indicates that copyright merely protects what is private, that is the words or design used, whatever artistic expression is used, but it cannot control whoever can use the idea as copyright does not protect ideas from being used. However, even if it allowed to ideas over and over, copyright still impacts intellectual and artistic works in the sense that there is a limit to how you can express an idea because there is a copyright on certain ways of expressing it. Though it promotes creativity, copyright may also hinder creativity. Because an artistic material or expression cannot be used for about a century, new writers cannot use those copyrighted expressions. However, the problem is how will everyone know that someone else already used that expression when not all the copyrighted works are published. Since not all literature are available for public viewing, there is no guarantees that what one thinks is original is in fact truly original. The logic of copyright is the protection of original works. However, current literary thought emphasizes that words pervade and enable one another (Rose, p.3). This implies that literature cannot stand on its own original words. Somehow, at some point, it will use another work as a basis of its credibility and justification of the idea or thought that it tries to establish. And since copyright protects the artistic expression, the words that the author used and not exactly the idea that it perpetuates, then one may be able to just redesign the expression and then use. With this, there is a gray area in copyright. Another gray area is the use of the artistic expression or how the author used his words to create his masterpiece in normal casual conversation. There is no tangible evidence that it is used, but will this be breaking the copyright law since the work is still being used, in verbatim. Because of copyright, the essence of a transcendent masterpiece, the notion of a work that can speak to its reader directly, and can be passed on from one person to another, disappears (Rose, p.3). Since the artistic expression cannot be used and utilized without permission from the author, then the artistic expression has no transcendence. It will not be able to move unless the copyright expires. It is within this sense that there is monopoly in copyright. Copyright involved protecting economic interests since authors were allowed to sell their work, having the rights to do anything they wish to with their work. With this, matters of property and matters of propriety intersected (Rose, p.81). The author had perfect control over his work, gaining authority and power over it while gaining monetary exchange for it. Copyright, being a part of intellectual property law, determines when and how an individual can capitalize on his own work (Pressmna, p.17). This implies that copyright does not only cover the rights of the author in gaining the appropriate respect, honor and fame with his own work but it also covers an economic right that only the author can take advantage of. In the sense, their work becomes not only their propriety but also their property (Rose, p.81). There is always the socioeconomic factor when copyright is considered. This entangles more a copyrighted work as a legal property and as a commodity (Saint-Amour, p.13). Rose describes copyright as an institution built on intellectual quicksand (p.142). This signifies that copyright impacts not only the literary concept but as a property, it also shapes the commercial and evaluative circulation of literature (Sanit-Amour, p.12). It is considered to as such because of how copyright does not recognize the implications of monopolizing artistic expression for about a century and how it can actually limit artistic expression. This proves to be detrimental for its purpose of pursuing works of creativity and originality. Copyright can drag down the intellectual capacity of humans. Although copyright ends after such a period of time, and there is ample supply of ideas and knowledge in the public domain, what is limiting is the way an idea is expressed. The point is that copyright is a monopoly, same as a monopoly of trade wherein products are locked down and committed to be traded only to some societies and not to everyone because of economic implications. The same happens with intellectual property. There is a monopoly of intellectual capacity wherein literature is held as a property more than propriety because of the economic implications for the author and its handpicked publishers or gainers of economic value of the propriety, like the family upon his death. It has been suggested by Gervais to revisit the exceptions and limitations of copyright in order to address the issue of monopoly (p.73). It indicates that should be a balance of rights between the author and the users. Instead of promoting and pursuing a level of creativity and originality in everyone’s work, since literature tends to overlap within each literary text, copyright limits the aesthetic expression. Instead of being able to use another’s work as basis for one’s work not meaning to copy it in its entirety but to improve and develop the artistic expression placed on a new subject, copyright controls aesthetic expression and intellectual distribution of these expressions. Although an owner of the artistic may use, adapt and derive his own work, protecting still his monopoly over the artistic expression, others may not use it as much as the author can (Fishman, 2008, p.8).And this is where copyright becomes an institution built on intellectual since it drags down thoughts into the private domain where no one can make use of it and no one would be able to develop it to a better aesthetic expression. References Fishman, S. The copyright handbook: what every writer needs to know, 10th ed. CA: Nolo, 2008. Gervais, D. A Canadian copyright narrative. Copyright law: a handbook of contemporary research. MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc., 2007. Pressman, D. Patent it yourself, 13th ed. CA: Nolo, 2008. Rose, M. Authors and owners: the invention of copyright. MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Saint-Amour, P. The copywrights: intellectual property and literary imagination. London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Read More