Collegiate Times

The fortification of content and media via copyright is not contained within the United Kingdom ? the United States has years of experience in the field. Ridiculous, time and tax dollar-wasting lawsuits to decry copyright infringement have been going on for decades within our magnificent legal and political systems.

Currently, Google?s Book Search project (formerly known as ?Google Print?) is under fire for their initial start-up attempts at organizing a great deal of books into an easy-to-access digital format. Google is getting specific authorization from participating publishers and gleaning much of the public domain content available for the effort. The competing argument from the American Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers is well-summarized in claiming that Google is profiting from authors? work and that Google is not asking for permission from authors prior to digitizing and storing their work. Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor and renowned Creative Commons advocate, says these claims are unwarranted.

For instance, Lessig?s book ?Free Culture? quoted myriad sources, he says. Since he took other authors? work, he was sure to give them credit in the closing portions of his book. However, he certainly made a profit from the book while never once asking their permission to use their material. Did Lessig violate standards of fair-use in his profiting from others? work without asking their consent? Absolutely not. Did Dan Brown, author of ?The Da Vinci Code? violate standards of fair-use by profiting from Baigent and Leigh?s book ?The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail?? Again, no.

So, what is the fuss all about? This is an open & shut case, right? Maybe, maybe not. Our society is gradually losing ground in keeping our creative commons a free territory. While I can rip, mix and burn a CD I purchased without fretting, according to American law, were I to try the same thing with a DVD, I could be thrown in prison for near a decade and/or be fined upwards of a quarter-million dollars. The same-sized objects that are accessed by the same hardware in my computer are protected by vastly different standards and legislation.

Other media publishers (text and music, for starters) are trying to get the same protection that film producers have. The lawsuit against Google?s Book Search is an example of such.

The field of copyright law is rife with absurdities and senselessness. Law professor Jessica Litman has said that the ordinary person could hear of typical copyright legislation and respond with, ?There can?t really be a law that says that. That would be silly.? While we, as a culture and people, strive for individual expression, we must be attuned to protecting the core of our freedoms of fair-use and creative commons. The future depth, degree, and diversity of our culture does depend on our freedom to innovate.