On Monday 26 November 2007 20:32:49 Tom Loosemore wrote:
> It takes patience, time and - most importantly - evidence to
> demonstrate that re-use can be a good thing for all concerned.
Even then, consider:
* Copyright was created as a mechanism to benefit the public as a
mechanism to encourage an author to create work, based on the premise
that they have exclusive control of their work's copying which they can
charge for. The public benefit because it encourages people to invest
time an effort on the risk aspect of producing content (since to do it
in a realistic timeframe does require upfront investment of time &
effort full time, which has a real cost)
For the sake of this email, I'm considering that the primary intended benefit
to society & the author.
It appears to have a secondary benefit for an author/originator:
* It allows that author/originator to be clear that their work is not
misrepresented or changed in a way changing their intent & words
(either accidentally or maliciously).
It clearly has the negative effect:
* Derivative works based on another work are generally difficult to do
without hitting a licensing nightmare - though CC is making (practical)
inroads in changing this.
Due to this negative effect, it appears to also be a massive positive boost:
* It appears to enforce diversity. If you want to write a new book for
example, you have to write a _new_ book.
Whatever imbalance in the system at the moment, this last point, to me,
appears to be an interesting benefit. It also strikes me as potentially the
very most beneficial aspect of copyright, and one that appears very easy to
overlook in any rampage to demand "everything must be remixable". (even
if as noted it seems to have obvious downsides)
Michael.
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