The Burden That is Copyright

Well, I had a load of interesting thoughts yesterday and I’m kind of thankful I held off blogging them, because looking back, some of them are quite embarrassing. I was researching into copyright last night seeing it’s a bit of a touchy subject, and I have a few creations that I’d love to share with the world, but can’t. Of course, having a few screws loose and very little restraint I went and typed up a great big rant on how copyright law sucks, and this and that… Throwing the odd expletive into the mix just for the sake of it. Luckily a little voice in my head gave me the idea to sit on it for a few days, go to bed, and re-read the article in the morning. Lucky, indeed. It was kind of crap, and ill-informed and all the rest. Essentially, I’m going to rewrite my findings from the perspective of today in the hopes that… Well, in the hopes I can get it off my chest.

Copyright in general sucks for the end user. In Australia, copyright is automatically applied to anything that someone creates, and lasts their entire lifetime plus 70 years. Don’t ask me who controls the copyright after you’re gone, but that’s the way it is. Essentially, if Bloe Joggs created a recording of her voice and put it on the Internet for everyone to use, it would still be copyrighted for the 50 odd years left of her life, as well as another 70 for good measure. If someone wanted to use it in a ring tone, song, presentation, whatever… They’d have to wait around for one-hundred and twenty years. That’s a fair (Read: unfair) amount of time.

Considering copyright’s automagic, if someone creates something and doesn’t release it with a license… Or doesn’t declare it into public domain… It’s still copyrighted and they can still reserve rights, regardless of whether they plan to or not. So if this person dies in a fire, for example, unless I’m mistaken whomever the copyright is transferred to can suddenly demand royalties. This just ends up being both a sticky and tricky situation for people like me, who have unknowingly sampled copyrighted material.

Of course, I’m not pretending to be an expert: I’m just regurgitating things I’ve gathered from repositories such as Wikipedia. I’m kind of hoping I’m wrong, but essentially I know that I’m not going to be able to release my music until at least 2132. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not planning on being around then. Let’s just hope there’s going to be a shakeup (Or preferably: Break up) of copyright law sometime in the future. When there is, I can tell you, you’ll be the first person to hear my music.