Intellectual Property, Copyright and Free

Over the years I've held various positions with regard to copyright and paying for non-physical information. With the Times in the UK opting for a paywall and a website which is effectively all user-generated content that I frequent often also moving towards a subscription based model I have been thinking about where I stand again. I hold conflicting opinions, as I am both a producer of copyrightable material and a consumer of that material. I'm going to lay both of these bags of snakes out straight and see what they look like.

Copyright as a Consumer

As a consumer I want to pay as little for something as I can. There are some items against which I attribute a higher value and it is easier to pay a premium for, in my life I consider paying top-euro for a laptop money well spent. On the other hand I am not much of a music aficionado and as such I place no premium on music.

A major concern I have is the length for which copyright has been extended. I have yet to hear a good argument for why copyrights can last for the lifetime of the creator, and longer in some cases and yet we only grant patents for 20 years. Why is a creative work that enriches people's lives granted more rights than an invention that has the potential to truly help people's lives? It doesn't make any sense to me.

In my opinion, a social contract and a market contract existed with copyright: I created something and after a short period of time it became publically available for the enjoyment of society. That contract has been changed, allowing works that were close to becoming public now being held back from consumers. The contract has been violated to the detriment of consumers so it is not hard to see why we, as consumers, feel cheated and some may use that as justification to acquire these items for free via other channels.

Copyright as a Producer

I write code which can be protected via copyright, and potentially the underlying mechanisms can be protected via patents also. It is this area where I am truly conflicted. I believe in the free market, I believe an inventor/creator should be rewarded for their work, capitalism runs through my veins. I want to maximise the amount of revenue I can get out of the work I do.

I write about the challenges I have with code and I post the solutions I have developed. From that perspective I have certainly not protected my code very well.

As I write this and I consider what I do as a developer, I am coming to the realisation that the value I currently provide is not based on the underlying code but in the changes it brings to my clients. My clients have no preference for one language over another nor do they want to see a line of code, they want to know what I have developed will perform as agreed.

My Final Thought

The conclusion I have come to is that copyright is an important part of the protections available to producers, but it has been distorted in favour of producers so strongly that consumers no longer consider it fair and balanced. This is what has led people to violate copyright, I am reminded of a quote:

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." – Princess Leia, Star Wars