I have decided to create an animated video to give an overview of the history of copyright and it relates to the development of filesharing and hiphop/remix culture. Kind of a visual essay.
Taking information from the sources I have recorded on this blog, I collated a script to act as a voiceover for the animation:
We live in a time when the culture we enjoy, and that of our parents, is owned and controlled by corporations. Copyright law has made engaging with the images and sound we consume difficult at best, and illegal at worst. Cut and Paste culture is at risk, but it wasn't always this way…
Prior to the Statute of Anne, all works were in the public domain. If you wanted to take someone's story and make a play from it, you could. If you wanted to create a translation, you could. Culture was advanced by building on the work that came before it.
The Statute of Anne was passed as an act of parliament in 1710, putting into place a copyright term of 14 years for creative works, with an option to renew for another 14 if the author was still alive.
However, at this time, only 5% of works were registered, meaning that the other 95% immediately fell into the public domain and could be freely built upon by other creators.
Today, most books fall out of print within a year and then are traded in the used book market, outside copyright regulation and financial gain for the publisher. Despite this, they are still protected by copyright law for a large term that limits how their content can be used.
In the first 100 years of the formation of the USA, the term of C was changed only once. In 1831, the initial term doubled from 14 to 28, making the maximum copyright protection 42 years.
Then in 1909, the renewal term also jumped to 28 years, totalling 56 years maximum
This remained the norm until 1962, at which point congress began a path that would see them extended the terms of copyright 11 times. They rose again, and again, and again, and again, and again until 1976, when it rested at the life of the author plus 50 years or 75 years from creation of works owned by corporations.
Here, its important to mention a technology that was fundamentally at odds with culture being locked down for this length of time: sampling.
Sampling became the new, most efficient creative tool to transform and build upon works of the past to create new statements. Hip-hop pioneers utilised it to craft their style by sampling and manipulating the breaks from old funk records. Allegedly, the most sampled drum beat ever is Clyde Stubblefield's performance on James Brown's Funky Drummer.
Hip hop begin as a largely performance based art, centring around local parties. In this context, sampling recorded music did not need the permission of the recording artist. By the 80s, Hip-hop became a carefully crafted genre centred around recording. Utilising increasingly inventive combinations of sampling and rapping, this use went largely unregulated until hip hop started to reach mainstream appeal and became big business, attracting lawyers of the record companies to enforce copyright law and demand compensation for the "clearing" of samples. This made the legal application of the technique difficult for the vast majority of DJs and artists who had been practising within the genre without a high level of financial success.
In 1998, the "Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act" aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act (as it delays the time until micky mouse will enter the public domain) expanded terms by 20 years. Making the copyright protection on works the life of the author plus 70 years or 120 years after creation for work owned by a corporation. From 1973-2003 the average term has nearly tripled from 32.3 years to 95 as a result. In addition to this, all works serve the max term, regardless of whether the creator wants this to be the case and C exists even if the author does not mark the work copyright or pass available copies
It is in this period of time that a technology evolved which would challenge and change the role of copyright forever: The internet. On the internet, everything is copy. When you send an email, it is generating a copy, when you load a webpage, it is downloading a copy to your computer. Copyright was no longer only just applicable to publishing of protected work, it was applicable to every digital act that invokes content; textual, visual or audible. This is why giving a CD to friend is a legal act but the same activity online is a crime. With this massive increase in the control that could be had over copyrighted works, also came protocols such as bittorent and P2P that allowed super efficient sharing of files directly between network users, without the need of a centralised, corporate broadcaster. control was both given and taken away from both sides. The internet also put an end to the age of passive consumers. Now everyone is involved in the amateur (i.e. for fun) critique, interaction and production of content.
In 2001, Creative Commons was born to seek to redress the situation that creators could not chose how their work is used. Instead of "all rights reserved", it lets users (or licencors) make use of a "some rights reserved" licence. For example to grant permission for work to be remixed or manipulated for noncommercial uses. The implementation of these tools is creating a healthy, and growing digital commons, full of work that can be consumed, copied and built upon within the boundaries of copyright law.
The story doesn't have to end here though. All of this video, from the sound to the vectors and the AfterEffects file have been made freely available under CC0 No Rights Reserved licence, meaning anyone can take this work, remix and build upon it for any purpose they see fit. Enjoy.
Voice-over recorded and EQ'd
