DIGITAL CONTENT, COPYRIGHT AND CREATIVE COMMONS

Over the last few years the production and distribution of digital content over the Internet has been changing traditional copyright principles all over the world. Some of the arguments are that with the digitalization era there no “space “to be possessed, the cyberspace is a much more controllable environment than the real physical world and in what ways this affects traditional copyright principles.

Although we still have physical property in the world, such as land, cars, industries etc, The value of digital content, especially with the popularization of the internet, begins to surpass the value of the traditional property. As Nicholas Negroponte once said: “The world of atoms to the world of bits”.

There is a conflict between the Hegelian theory of the property rights being as more of “Will and Creation” and the modern economic theory witch is adopted in the United Kingdom and other countries that sees the property rights more in terms of efficiency.

The surpassing of digital contents value could be clearly explained with the John Perry Barlow’s argument “Wine without Bottles”. What Mr. Barlow says is that the property protected by copyright needed, before the technological revolution, a carrier, like a bottle or a CD to be used or transmitted to individuals. He compared it with Wine.

The value of the wine is not in the bottle, what people seek when buy a wine is what is inside, the contents of the bottle. The same principle can be applied to copyrighted material. What we seek when buying a CD, for example, is not the plastic shining object. We want to hear the music in it.

With the increasingly new technologies, the carrier is no longer needed. The CD was replaced with a computer with internet access and the reproduction of copyrighted material can happen almost instantly. What Barlow says is that individuals can have, nowadays, the wine without the bottles.

Barlow asks: “If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can’t get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?”

For him lawyers and “old” industries are trying to enforce traditional copyright laws in the digital environment in a way that this is always going to fail, because the digitalisation of materials can change in various forms of copying and distribution. “Digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, where property law of all sorts has always found definition.” His argument is that in the past property law has protected the bottle, not the contents. Now that we can trade the contents without the bottle, traditional property law is doomed to fail.

The cyberspace is not a controlled environment where we can simply stop people for infringing copyrights and therefore the production and distribution of digital content will continue to infringe the laws despite all the efforts of controlling the digital space with traditional copyright principles and laws.

Barlow argues that the economic theory of copyrights can no longer survive in cyberspace and that acts such as developments such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) will fail. Only the Hegelian theory of the rights being part of the “self” has future in the digital space.

An American lawyer and professor Lawrence Lessing believes that Barlow asked the right questions but his answers were wrong. He believes that cyberspace is all about control not freedom. He compares digital environment with the eighteen-century British system of the Commons and Enclosure

The “bottles” are being replaced by digital “bottles” much more controllable than the physical ones. He argues that when the Internet started, some individuals thought that it would give irrestrict freedom to all laws and the Countries would not be able to enforce control over it.

Lessing believes that they were wrong. Cyberspace is being more controlled than ever and that technology allows absolute control.

In the digital environment if you close a door nobody will cross it, and if you do cross it the law is much easier to enforce than in the real world.

Moreover, according to him, copyright will perpetuate with laws such as the Sonny Bono Act and creativity and innovation will be forever changed and restricted by people who have copyrights.

So the traditional copyrights principles and laws could be easily be used to erase creation and innovation of our lives.

What professor Lessing argues is that creativity is even more controlled than before by the copyright system. Creativity and innovation always builds on the past, people take their previous experience and transforms it. Since people who own traditional copyrights are stopping such transformation, creativity is being stopped at its core.

Can there be a solution to this? What will be the future of controlled cyberspace and no freedom to create and innovate? Free societies are known to enable the future by limiting the past, not controlling the present. If ours is less, than we will be less as a society.

Even though copyright is denied we still cannot be sure if we can use the work because copyright © still exists. Some say still do not work. Professor Lessing and other thinkers started a project that may be future for digital content and copyright.

The Creative Commons (CCs) sets copyrighted material through a licensing regime. Creative Commons does not deny Copyright, it still exist, but thorough licensing before hand the owner of the copyrighted material allow certain uses of his works as long as it follows some rules that is set up in a contract that everybody who uses the work has to accept.

Since Creative Commons uses a Contract it can serve as proof for any litigation the parties may be involved.

Therefore, we can conclude that much has to be done yet in order to adapt and regulate the traditional copyright principles and laws to the cyberspace and its digital contents. However, efforts are taking place and some very creative solutions, such as Professor Lessing’s Creative Commons licensing regime can lead to a future where cyber-relations and copyright can get along without any prejudice to the interested parties.