A New York Times op-ed today (2/15/11) by Scott Turow, Paul Aiken and James Shapiro (“Would the Bard Have Survived the Web?”) uses William Shakespeare as exhibit A in their case for copyright, noting that theater flourished in 16th century England because playwrights were able to make money by charging people to enter their theaters.
This they translate into a sweeping argument against attempts to reform copyright law, disparaging
a handful of law professors and other experts who have made careers of fashioning counterintuitive arguments holding that copyright impedes creativity and progress. Their theory is that if we severely weaken copyright protections, innovation will truly flourish. It’s a seductive thought, but it ignores centuries of scientific and technological progress based on the principle that a creative person should have some assurance of being rewarded for his innovative work.
It’s actually not counterintuitive at all–and, in fact, Shakespeare is exhibit A here. Many of Shakespeare’s most famous and beloved plays, written in the late 1500s and early 1600s, borrowed heavily from other works that, under current U.S. (or British) copyright law, would have been off-limits to him. (In turn, many of those works were themselves based on other sources in a long derivative chain of what today would be called massive copyright infringement.)
Shakespeare’s classics Romeo and Juliet, Othello, As You Like It and Measure for Measure, among others, were based on works of fiction published in the decades before Shakespeare’s career. They thus would have been illegal under current U.S. copyright law, which keeps works out of the public domain for 70 years after the death of the author, or a total of 95 years for works for hire. Copyright protection for decades after Shakespeare’s death would have had no impact on his ability to produce work and limited impact on his incentive to do so–while the inability to retell contemporary stories would have directly restricted his creativity.
Turow, Aiken and Shapiro warn, “We tamper with those [copyright] rules at our peril.” Too bad lawmakers hadn’t gotten that warning earlier; they’ve extended copyright from 28 years to a maximum of 95 years over the course of U.S. history, and have lengthened it by 39 years just since 1976 (Extra!, 8/10). It’s impossible to say how many literary masterpieces have not been written as a result.
The founders themselves recognized the stifling effects of intellectual property monopolies granted in perpetuity–that’s why such protection was supposed to be available for only a limited time. Work-for-hire copyrights should have the most limited protections of all, because the actual creators of the work usually aren’t getting a dime from it beyond the wages paid while they were working, yet huge corporate interests that sit on a goldmine of work-for-hire creations use the very big money they get from those creations to purchase legislators in order to forever extend their control of those creations. Disney always leads this jackal pack, which is particularly offensive, because Disney, over its long history, has made a fortune from public domain properties.
This was a terrible, terrible article. It is interesting to note that at present the fashion industry has involved itself in a big push to more strongly enforce copyrights. Funny how the weaker enforcement of the past didn’t seem to stifle creativity or capitalism in that business. Has the Times ever published anything by Lessig or any other champions of loosening copyright protectionism?
Shapiro is so far off the mark. The exchange of ideas at the time made the works so exciting and stronger. Taking a mediocre idea and making it a brilliant one. If copyright laws like these existed then there would be no Shakespeare.
Don’t get me started on the estate of James Joyce and the novel Ulysses. Just skim through the annotated book and try to find something that is not lifted from some where else.
Sad sad article.
The reason for the extensions is obvious. Clearly they are geared toward corporations. Giving individuals copyright for more than 30 years does little or nothing to provide incentives to individuals. Where all of this comes from is companies like Disney, who was the main lobbyists for extending the copyright in order to PREVENT HEM from having to engage in NEW creative development.
And that’s the deal, it actually impedes creativity for two reasons: 1) Because it makes is so more people can’t expand on the ideas, and 2) because it prevents copyright holders from having to do additional work, they can just sit back and rest on their work from multiple generations ago.
Look, I agree with copyright, but it should be 20-30 years, not 70+.
There is no reasonable argument that extending a monopoly beyond 20ish years given anyone incentive to be more creative.
Another article calling the article into question:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110215/11165113112/would-shakespeare-have-survived-todays-copyright-laws.shtml
To borrow from the Bard …
Twould be far fewer things in heaven and earth, Horatio, if our dreams be chained by these fools’ philosophy.
Here’s a link to my own blog post in response to this article:
http://noartwithoutheft.blogspot.com/2011/02/shakespeare-capitalist.html
Though I agree that 70 years after death is too long, I feel strongly about the need for copyright laws. An author’s work belongs to the author. It is their vision, their words, and their property. Creation of a literary work boils down to more than putting words on a page. Tremendous effort goes into world building, character development, creating original and interesting plot lines. I don’t believe that books belong to the people, but belong to the author to be shared with people.
This is really a poorly thought-out column. Shakespeare would have done just fine under current copyright law.
One cannot copyright facts, only the way those facts are expressed in the work. You cannot copy the language used to express the facts.
Nor is the borrowing of presumed facts in another’s work of fiction by necessity a violation of copyright.
One cannot copyright plots, only the language used to express them. The plot of Romeo and Juliet has been used many times, the finished works of which exist under copyright protection, yet the plot still remains free for use by other authors. Ditto for Huckleberry Finn.
One cannot copyright titles. Nor ideas or notions within creative works, only the exact wording of them.
In other word, you can’t copy someone’s work and call it your own. You can’t publish the book without the author’s express permission to do so.
Somehow Ms Hollar thinks this a terrible idea, one that stifles creativity and innovation. Yet, there has been no dearth of either in American letters.
It is discouraging as well. at a time where the majority of writers are seeing their income from published works dwindling (from smaller advances, more onerous royalty clauses in contracts, and the fall-off in book sales), that FAIR would be pushing the notion that what little income protection writers do have should be diminished further.
As for the length of copyright, yes, I do want to sit back on my laurels and enjoy the fruits of my labor. If you can keep a number of books in print that continue to sell you might be able to make enough bread to supplement your social security. And sure, why not pass along that copyright to your children? Twenty years only? Please give me a break. The fellow who suggested that must be fifteen years old and believe 20 years to be an eternity.
Julie Hollar has obviously not written anything she considers valuable enough or original or creative or unique enough to warrant preventing others from profiting from her hard work. She might not be so critical if she wrote a best-selling novel that every studio wanted to adopt into the next Oscar-winning feature film starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. I wonder how Ms. Hollar would react if anyone could take her novel, change the characters’ names and then cut a deal with Warner Bros. before she had the chance?
There are reasonable and unreasonable limits to some things. I agree that 95 years after an author’s death is a bit excessive, but I wouldn’t mind the though of my descendants being able to profit off my life’s work instead of just greedy publishers, studio executives and other writers too lazy to come up with their own story ideas. And I hardly think Shakespeare would’ve had trouble coming up with story ideas even if there had been any such think as copywrighting in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. (Was there?)
I guess Ms. Hollar is so conditioned as an exploited journalist that she thinks since she never retains the copywright to anything she scribbles for FAIR no one else should either. FAIR is much more generous with the copyright of its written articles because it has a much nobler goal than profit. That’s their choice. However, don’t fault others for wanting to profit from their writing (or recording or filmmaking or whatever). Better the artist profit from her or his labors than “The Man”.