Free culture or not?

The U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows public domain content to be removed from the public domain is troubling. Content creators now have an additional burden when trying to sort out rights and obtain permission to use images, music, and other elements critical to effective learning materials. For example, some music that was previously in the public domain, is now back under copyright, however, the material does not necessarily come with a notice to that effect. Compositions that were once free to play in concerts, now require permission and may entail paying royalties. Supreme Court justices have set a nasty precedent here.


The original intent of copyright law, it seems, was to provide protection to authors and artists for a limited period, after which works would be available to the public. Over time, the period of copyright protection has lengthened, and with the possibility of renewals, copyright protection can become interminable.


I came across a thought-provoking quotation from U.S. copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig that I wanted to share:


... we come from a tradition of ‘free culture’ – not ‘free’ as in ‘free beer’ (to borrow a phrase from the founder of the free-software movement – but ‘free’; as in ‘free speech’, ‘free markets’, ‘free trade’, ‘free enterprise’, ‘free will’ and ‘free elections’. A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a ‘permission culture’ - a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past. (Lessig 2004) 


Our 'free culture' is increasingly becoming a 'permission culture.' As an author, I appreciate the copyright protection afforded to me by law, but I understand that eventually I have to let go of it. The opportunity to eventually make my work available in the public domain is an honor, not a burden. I suspect that many authors agree, but corporate interests might not. I'm thinking of Disney, TimeWarner, and similar corporations. The are the "powerful" referred to Mr. Lessing.


In the digital age, intellectual property takes on more complex nuances. To become knowledgable consumers and informed citizens, students should become familiar with copyright concepts. Instructors can initiate this discussion in conjunction with the issue in Chapter 8: What Happened to Fair Use? and extend it to the controversy surrounding the Supreme court decision Golan v. Holder, No. 10-545 in which the court set a precent for pulling works out of the public domain and reinstating their copyright.