I have come up with a phrase that describes what I feel the laws of digital media should uphold: “freedom without sacrifice.” That is, uphold the freedom of knowledge, freedom of speech and freedom of creativity, without sacrificing our privacy or the economy. This can apply to many issues in media law today: copyright and property protection, net neutrality, the list goes on. On paper, it seems like an idealistic pipe dream.
I’ve thought about how the laws of the media mirror the physical laws of real life. The world of media is a place that IS essentially a digital version of the world. It IS a whole other world… as real of a world as the globe itself, and it is governed by laws we must equally obey.
Media as it relates to the law is of utmost importance, and I am concerned about many aspects of it. Privacy in particular is one thing, as I have always been a private person online…and of course, we all want our private information to be secure. Monitoring of creative and informational web content is also of great concern to me. How much monitoring is too much? Net neutrality and “free use” are two things that have been fundamental in keeping the openness of information and entertainment online, but there are still plenty of issues with protection laws that could obstruct these legal doctrines.
Copyright laws have been around well before the DMCA ruled. Protecting a property: a song, a character, a film and ensuring compensation for these properties’ creators and distributors, is, in my opinion, an absolute economic necessity. But how far should it go before works enter the public domain? Apparently, it can go pretty far, if Disney has anything to do with it. They have allegedly managed to influence the extension of US copyright laws in order to retain the rights to Mickey Mouse, particularly his 1928 debut short, Steamboat Willie.
Music copyright laws tend to be even more strict. To relate this problem to my central topic of television, a sizable amount of vintage TV series have yet to see the light of day on DVD or streaming video because of the astronomical costs of distributing music owned by others that were used in these programs. The distribution rights of this music was negotiated decades ago, before anyone could even dream of the idea of watching any episode of a TV show anywhere, at any time. This thoughtful article from Vox explains it all.
However, even public domain works can still fall victim in many ways to copyright laws. Consider the works of William Shakespeare. His numerous works are not copyrighted per say, but individual ideas concerning or inspiring his work may be protected legally. The complexity of copyright laws concerning Shakespeare (which you could apply to many kinds of public domain works) is detailed very well on this entry on the Trademark and Copyright Blog.
My concern with copyright laws is this: art and media should be accessible to everyone, yet creators also need to be fairly paid. The “free use” doctrine has remedied much of this by providing a good middle ground, especially within the realm of the internet. But are we doing a disservice by being stingy about our copyright laws?
As I mentioned earlier, privacy is a big concern of mine. I have always been a careful digital media user. I try to stay as anonymous as possible, likely from the fear that in the digital world, one is NEVER truly anonymous. Therefore, I’m not sure if I will modify my media usage very much. If anything, I will try to open up more, especially once I enter the professional world. The internet has definitely made the world smaller and has made our knowledge greater, yet it has also made things much more complex.
