Copyright — Can A Price Tag Be Placed On Intellectual Property?

One of the biggest and most influ­en­tial quotes I picked up from watch­ing Steal This Film II was from Mark Get­ty, the CEO of Get­ty Images — which was, “Intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty is the oil of the 21st century.”

We now live in a world where the con­tin­u­ous shar­ing of ideas, infor­ma­tion, and art through tech­no­log­i­cal means is the basis of how the world stays con­nect­ed. How­ev­er, a major hin­der­ance when it comes to tak­ing hold of “intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty” has come to be copy­right control.

The sur­vival of jour­nal­ists in this infor­ma­tion cli­mate is going to be an uphill bat­tle. Yes, aggre­gat­ing oth­er news sources is an act of copy­ing. How­ev­er, at the same time is still is an act of shar­ing — just as the need to lis­ten and talk is an act of shar­ing by imi­tat­ing each oth­er. Jour­nal­ists always need to be aware of their sources and how they go about cit­ing what’s theirs and what isn’t, which is of course rule of thumb.

As for news orga­ni­za­tions and aspir­ing jour­nal­ists break­ing into the field, they both must reach an under­stand­ing that the Inter­net is every­body’s biggest com­peti­tor. Why? Because it is the most decen­tral­ized news source out there — and it is necessary.

In this day and age, peo­ple should only be pay­ing for tan­gi­ble things — not ideas or infor­ma­tion in which you can nev­er real­ly touch or pos­sess. It’s a free-for-all net­work of free flow­ing ideas and infor­ma­tion that is good for soci­ety, because it elim­i­nates the poten­tial for unjust gate­keep­ing by putting a price tag on things you want or want to know.

A per­fect exam­ple would be the Fairey vs. AP case, where an indi­vid­ual sim­ply want­ed to take what was in cyber space and cre­ate some­thing of his own. AP cracked down on what Fairey had done to the Oba­ma “Hope” pho­to, claim­ing he had not sought out prop­er per­mis­sion when alter­ing it to the extent he had and went on to sue him.

The same sit­u­a­tion can be applied to the film, where aspir­ing music pro­duc­ers will­ing­ly post their instrumentals/beats online for free down­load. They encour­age oth­ers to use what they’ve cre­at­ed and make it their own, because they feel the Inter­net’s decen­tral­iza­tion was meant for this sole pur­pose of shar­ing ideas with zero boundaries.

This is why I feel AP took legal action too far, because nobody should be able to tell you what you can and can­not do with what you find on the Inter­net, regard­less of what­ev­er copy­rights there may be. What makes the Inter­net so amaz­ing is the poten­tial for mil­lions of authors is endless.