Julianna Yau’s blog

Money.

Ah, money.

I think I’m ready to think about how money plays into the copyright game.

After mulling over the issue, it became clear that the financial stability of creators and other members of the creative community (educators, disseminators, producers, historians, and a whole host of others I simply don’t have space to list) is a topic unto itself. Much of the recent discussion around copyright, TPMs/DRMs, file sharing (authorized and unauthorized) and other relationships between technology and the production and dissemination of art look at financial remuneration as a part of copyright rather than the whole of copyright. I would like to propose instead that we look at copyright as a part of the financial remuneration of creators. This, of course, will mean that things like moral rights, which are currently legislated as a subsection of the Copyright Act, may not belong there. I will later look at how these different creators’ rights fit together, and whether they should remain in the hierarchy presented by the current Copyright Act.