Copyright laws are understandable, artists should have control over the things that they create. Recently though, we have seen more and more cases where these copyright laws have been holding people back from creating their own works and using others works as aids. Just as Dan Hunter notes in his article Why cash and copyright are bad news for creativity, “copyright is a legal system built on a premise that tends to reduce creative output, rather than increase it.” We have seen time and time again that when people have the freedom to use someone else’s work and change it and make it their own, great things can come of it. For example, the movie “It” was recently redone and it was a box office hit. Even though the storyline was the same, they were a lot more creative with the filming and they made it even better than it was before. By taking away the freedom to remake things, copyright laws are taking away our opportunities to take something good and make it even better. Just as Adam Conover says in his video How Mickey Mouse Destroyed the Public Domain, “Remixing the works of the past is an essential part of how we create new culture, and this same process brought us so many of your favorite characters.” This is what the public wants as well, because without those freedoms we wouldn’t be able to have things like “Ice Ice Baby,” the newer “King Kong” movies, and all of the “Romeo and Juliet” remakes (most importantly the Leonardo DiCaprio version). Copyright laws tend to be ridiculously long as well, just as Joe Nocera noted when he said “More than a century ago, copyrights lasted for 14 years — and could be extended another 14 if the copyright holder petitioned for an extension. Today, corporate copyrights last for 95 years, while individuals retain copyrights for 70 years after their deaths.” Stifling these creative minds is doing more harm than good, and while there are some decisions to be made about monetary compensation and revenue limits, we should definitely start having more open conversations about this in congress instead of just shutting everyone down. As Lawrence Lessig said in his TED Talk in 2007, “Never before in the history of human culture has it been as professionalized, never before as concentrated. Never before has creativity of the millions been as effectively displaced.”
Sources:
https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity#t-147701
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/business/09nocera.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiEXgpp37No
http://theconversation.com/why-cash-and-copyright-are-bad-news-for-creativity-34696
Laurel Drain 