IBSH GIN

First actual global issue post!

Before we talk about the issues, it’s important to understand what copyright and patents are.

In a nutshell: they protect the incentives of creative people. Or, at least, those are their intentions.

If you have six minutes, here’s a great video from CGP Grey introducing copyright and discussing some of the issues surrounding it, particularly the counterproductive extensions of copyright lengths.

If you don’t feel like watching a video, here’s a rundown of why copyright is a thing: If you spent a few years writing a book and publish it, you want to be able to earn money from selling the book. Therefore, you don’t want people to be able to copy the book and sell it cheaply; otherwise nobody would pay to read your book. Without these restrictions, people wouldn’t be willing to devote their lives to books or other creative endeavors, because they’d go bankrupt. And society would be worse off without the creative output of these individuals. So, society sets up copyright to motivate creative individuals to create.

That’s what the idea is. Fine and dandy, right?

But there is a flip side: creative works inspire other creative works. Nearly all creative works are built on other creative works. That’s part of the creative process.

So when copyright is enforced too strictly, it ends up acting against its original purpose: while it was intended to protect and encourage creative works, it can also prevent creative works from ever existing, by banning them if they are based on other works. And just because something is based on other works doesn’t mean it’s any less valuable for society to have. To give just one clichéd example (cited by both the above and the next video), Disney is well known for taking public domain stories and fairy tales and turning them into amazing movies. Does that make Disney movies any less valuable?

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