Copyrights

I have often wondered about people sharing content on the internet.  So many great ideas are, seemingly, given away for free.   In his book, Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky writes, "Life teaches us that motivations other than getting paid aren't enough to add up to serious work.  And now we have to unlearn that lesson, because it is less true with each passing year.  People now have access to myriad tools that let them share writing, images, video - any form of expressive content, in fact - and use that sharing as an anchor for community and cooperation." (Shirky, 2008, pg. 105).
Take Wikipedia, for example, what a noble, selfless and useful endeavor.  (Of course, Wikipedia is a breed onto itself).

As I read Alm's and Edwards et al. articles on the conflict and contradiction that have been born and bred between copyrighting claims and social media tools that, for all intents and purposes, encourage participants to violate copyright laws. Pinterest, identified by Alm as a second generation platform, actually caters to user-copied content as opposed to user-generated content.  So does Twitter with retweeting.  Of course the point is that legislation has not kept up with technology.  Certainly the examples of judicial ruling on the cases Alm includes in the article seem arbitrary and confusing.

An interesting point cited in the Edwards et al. article indicates that "the growth in illegal downloading has been accompanied by a rise in legal sales of digital content (Andersen and Frenz, 2010).  The article also cites many content producers who actually want their content copied and circulated.... to some extent.  They view it as an additional promotional benefit.  But what about those who depend on copyright royalties for their support?  This issues are complex to say the least.


The dilemma springs from the fact that social media supplies us with the primary, cheapest (free is very cheap) and most effective ways for anyone who wants the content they create to "get out there" and be seen and heard.  However, it is a double-edged sword since the means they use to arrive at the ends they want also violates their very ownership of the content because no truly enforceable copyright control currently exists nor can the extent of the duplicating of copyrighted content itself be controlled .

Guess I'll hold back on posting my million-dollar idea on the web until the dust settles on the copyrighting and litigation issues.