Copyright is a fundamental topic for everybody intending to publish any kind of content. In my previous post I wrote about legal pages for bloggers, now I want to take a closer look at Copyright.
Property is a complex cultural conception and this is not a philosophical or sociological essay. However, let's take a minute and think about the idea of Intellectual Property. What does entitled someone the right to own an idea?
Ideas have existed since the beginning of humanity. It was just until the XX century that the notion of owning ideas become a legal reality. (Quite a short time, if we consider that ideas have existed for more than 12,000 years)
In theory, according to Wikipedia:
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.
This sounds like something great for creators! If I create something, it looks reasonable that I, the creator, have the right to decide what to do with my creation.
Well... Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse in 1928. Today, I don't have the right to post here a photo of the famous mouse. We can see that this goes beyond the creator, because the real business isn't creation but distribution.
The business of distributing cultural creations (specially music and movies) is incredibly huge. And, ironically, creators can lose the rights of their own work, see the case of Taylor Swift.
Creative integrity 💡
However, even if the entertainment industry sometimes takes copyright laws in a malicious way, that doesn't mean that we should discard this issue.
It is important to protect our content and respect other's creations.
Everything that you read, listen, or watch on the Internet has an author and you must attribute them. There are some exceptions like memes, which are true public domain.
Information is a valuable good and creators deserve a fair compensation for it (I don't want to talk about social media making money with user´s information 😡). Don't forget to include the links to your sources in your posts. Learn how to quote other's content properly. When reusing text, photos, or music, be sure that the author allows it.
Let's imagine a future where big corporations don't misuse copyright laws and creators receive a fair retribution for their creations.
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My inspiration for this post:
This guy (video in Spanish)
See you soon! 😺😺😺
