If you listen to the loudest copyright drum-beaters, the need for reform of the Copyright Act is all about downloading music files and people recording movies on a camcorder.
In the mail today was a DVD, by one Darryl Moore, of Aurora, Ont., which reminds us that dashing into copyright reform without thinking is a lot more than music and movies. The DVD, which Mr. Moore has mailed to members of Parliament who will soon be considering a revised act, demonstrates how the woes of Hollywood and the music industry can obscure the unwanted consequences of what those industries demand.
Called Death by Copyright, the DVD is a little amateurish in production, but it more than makes up for that limitation in the carefulness Mr. Moore used in selecting its content. It features a lecture by law professor Laurence Lessig of Stanford University, who champions the rights of individuals over corporate interests, a couple of appearances by Richard Stallman, father of the Free and Open Source Software movement, University of Ottawa law professor and Toronto Star columnist Michael Geist and even a bit of satire from political comedian Rick Mercer.
The DVD is designed to sway parliamentarians toward a more thoughtful approach to the copyright issue, now that the government has tipped its hand enough to show the public it has listened very closely to corporate lobbyists.
For instance, Lessig emphasizes something that should surprise most people — ultra-tight copyright law makes intellectual property so valuable that even those willing to pay for the rights to use some material will be facing colossal fees; for a 3.5-second clip of a scene in an opera house showing musicians playing chess, which involved a distant TV screen playing an episode of The Simpsons, a documentary filmmaker found he could clear the rights for a mere $10,000, a multiple of the proceeds he could possibly hope to get from the film.
Such claims will surprise many artists who in the past have imitated or lampooned copyright material without retribution; when the value of IP goes up, humourless lawyers will suddenly appear with outrageous demands.
Lessig also notes that the push toward the current U.S. copyright law was started by the Disney corporation, which was facing the prospect of the first Mickey Mouse film, Steamboat Willie (1928), falling into the public domain in 2003. But, he notes, Steamboat Willie itself borrowed heavily from an earlier film, Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr., which makes the Disney position hypocritical What he doesn’t mention is that Disney’s fortune was largely made using material (Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle Book) that would not have been in the public domain had the copyright laws of the time been like the ones Disney demanded, and received.
Mr. Moore has created a website, Death by Copyright, as an online resource, which contains some of the material on the DVD.
If there is anything wrong with the DVD, it’s that it will take some time to watch it all; I doubt many MPs will find the necessary time. And those that do are likely to be a self-selected sample of opponents to the bill.
Let’s hope that some sense of sanity can be brought to bear on the drafting of this bill. Mr. Moore’s effort is a big step in that direction.
