Julianna Yau’s blog

A question which has been chasing me for a while is “Why are you interested in copyright?”. This question has been met with much humming, hawing and unsatisfactory gibberish from me. I suspect that I have been trying to answer the question too literally, and I’m never quite sure what kind of information is being sought by it. Do people want to know why I find copyright to be a fascinating academic pursuit? Or do they want to know my position on copyright as a stakeholder? Or is the information I provide to them up to me?

Perhaps one of the main issues is I find it difficult to explain my fascination with copyright law, or law in general… or why I my hobbies involve not scrapbooking but copyright legislation. Perhaps it’s something as simple as my enjoyment of a complex intellectual puzzle. After all, copyright involves law, philosophy, business models, creative output, and now politics and technological advancement. Explaining my delight in such a delicious piece of intellectual candy is a feat unto itself, and I know that “copyright is complex and I like that” isn’t the revelatory response which will satisfy myself or my inquirer.

Trying to provide a succinct and articulate summary of my position on copyright… what I want copyright law to do for me as a creator and a reader/listener/viewer is difficult, but I suspect more possible. The challenge with this is my multiple-role as an individual creator, an enjoyer of other creative works, a supporter of technological advancement (who believes tools are what we make of them) and an active member of various artists’ groups which represent a myriad of artists working with different media, business models and concepts on what copyright should and shouldn’t do for them.

Before we can do anything, what I think we need (and what I want) is to get some agreement on what needs to be done. One may think that’s an obvious first step, but it feels like we’ve gone around in circles before stopping to do that. The blog and events like CopyCamp have been good for facilitating these discussions, but it’s always difficult to get all of the stakeholders involved. Even some of those who are big stakeholders and have strong opinions may not always be involved, whether it be a scheduling conflict or a discomfort with the core group which manifests through social connections.

I strongly believe in two things:
1. Everyone’s needs can be met (particularly creators’ reuse of other creators’ work).
2. The only way that can happen is to be open to everything being a possible target for change.

Too often, we allow ourselves to limit our view on what can be changed. One of the roadblocks we constantly hit is how difficult it is to get clearance/licensing of a work to be appropriated (or simply included in a larger work, e.g. a song in a movie). This single difficulty is the cause of many creators feeling that they should not be required to compensate other creators for use of their work. Typically (but not always), creators who creatively reuse works do not have a philosophical problem with crediting, by name and/or with money, the creator (sic; specifically and not always the right holder) whose work they are reusing. So rather than deciding that what needs to change is the infrastructure (or lack thereof) for clearance/licensing of a work, they simply look at changing the scope and intent of copyright law. This type of tunnel-vision is wholly perplexing to me, even knowing that the ideal solution is not always entirely possible. Should we not be starting with the most ideal solution and making the necessary adjustments to it for practical reasons, rather than starting with an imperfect proposal which is riddled with compromises?

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