As with many other previously insignificant aspects of law, copyright law has been transformed with the explosive growth of the Internet and its capabilities. A group of politically active Swathmore students realized this when, in fall of 2003, they managed to get a hold of inter-company emails sent with Diebold Election Systems, the largest electronic voting machine production company. These emails discussed clear problems within the software and the vulnerability of the computer network to hacking. The students decided to publish these emails on the web. However, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.), legislation that ensures regulation of intellectual property, prohibits such an action.

The D.M.C.A. holds Internet service providers, such as Comcast and Verizon Wireless, liable for the content those ISP customers upload. As such, a company threatening to sue (as Diebold did) could manipulate ISPs to take down the content in question. That is exactly what happened, and had it not been for the negative press Diebold received as a result of the conflict, the content would still be unavailable to the public. Stories such as these have been occurring with increasing frequency as the ever-tightening copyright laws become more relevant to a world where intellectual content is easily accessible to almost anyone, anywhere. Besides the D.M.C.A., a new piece of legislation that affects copyright laws is the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, which adds 20 years of protection to both old and new copyright laws.

Predictably, movements working against this direction of change have formed to attempt to redirect copyright laws to become looser and less restrictive. The “free culture movement,” also known as Copy Left, is made up of lawyers, scholars, ad activists who believe that if copyright laws continue expanding and becoming more restrictive, society will face disastrous results. Copy Left claims that the original intent of copyright legislation was to encourage creativity and ingenuity, and that current copyright laws function only to discourage such behavior and monetize successful property. According to Copy Left, ideal copyright laws would allow intellectual property owners a brief period of time during which they have the exclusive right to profit from their creations. When this period is over, the intellectual property is added to a public domain of such content, or a “cultural commons.” Copy Left argues that no person has ever created from nothing—all work has been influenced and inspired by work that came before it. According to them, by limiting the ability to work from past creation, we limit future content and creativity. Copy Left warns that if things continue as they are, copyright laws will incrementally affect even the smallest transfer of property, like reading in a library, or ripping a song from a CD.

Orginial copyright law was technically included in the Constitution by Thomas Jefferson, who considered it a necessary evil. Jefferson claimed that ideas were only the property of the creator until they were expressed, at which point they become the property of everyone. However, he viewed copyright laws only as a way to motivate people to create. As time has gone on, though, and information has become more of a commodity than it ever has before, copyright laws have become increasingly stringent. The time intellectual property is protected from the start of copyright has become increasingly longer. As it stands at the moment, there won’t be new material entering the public “cultural commons” anytime soon. Small technicalities in wording of laws written decades ago also affect copyright laws for technology that didn’t exist before, such as with the 1909 Copyright Act, before which copyright was written as the exclusive right to “publish” a creation, but was changed to prohibiting others from “copying” property—relevant to modern techniques of being able to copy content exactly using Xerox, computers, VCRs, and the like. In the 1970s, a legislative revision made it unnecessary to formally register or renew a copyright in order to comply with international copyright standards, as long as the content was “fixed in a tangible medium.” This is become an important issue in considering the technical aspects of computers and the web.

Lawrence Lessig, one prominent member of Copy Left, is public in his attempt to deregulate copyright so that it returns to the state Thomas Jefferson intended for intellectual property. He claims that corporations and media want to monopolize free thought, and the American people must not allow that to happen. In the Supreme Court case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, Lessing contributed to the plaintiff’s argument against infinitely extending a term of copyright. The defendants of the case won, a huge step back for Copy Left. Lessig also helped found Creative Commons, an organization that helps creators who want less severe copyright laws applied to their creations so that others can benefit from them. The organization has helped develop software for that purpose, as well as making themselves known in the international community.

Copy Left also stresses the necessity of understanding the nature of consuming media. The organization claims that people don’t just want to consume, such as with radio, television, and other broadcasting technology. Instead, they claim that people want to interact with media, an idea that is fully supported with the wild success of the web. Yochai Benkler supports this idea with a statistic comparing the income of the recording industry to the income of the phone industry—phone companies receive more than 20 times the revenue that recording companies receive. He claims this proves a preference to interact as opposed to consume.  As such, Benkler puts the ideas of Copy Left as economically sensible as well as morally right. He predicts that the recording industry in on their way out due to the lack of interaction in their products.

Opponents of Copy Left fear that were copyright laws to become less strict, the creators would suffer. Jane Ginsberg, an opponent of Copy Left, supports the idea of a society in which permission is required to copy any form of creative content. She claims that only creators can truly understand the importance of copyright laws, in ways that corporations and consumers can’t. Opponents believe that strict copyright laws provide a sense of logic and security to an often emotionally-driven culture.  However, William Fisher of Copy Left has devised a system for compensation that would support the ideals of unrestricted copyright laws, one that would potentially provide the same amount of stability. It would basically run on a popularity system—the more specific content is used, the more compensation is given to the creator, all run from one central office. The money would be derived from the sales of copy-assisting products, such as DVD burners and blank CDs. Current media industries that have been shown this system have received it well and with interest, due to the direction those industries are headed in. However, Fisher says it is unlikely for such a system to take place in the US until the current system breaks down. For now, second-world countries are the most likely proponents for this system, because they will not have signed international copyright protocols, nor do they have the desire to. Copy Left equates itself with Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, the book credited with huge leaps in the environmental movement. They are trying to raise awareness of copyright laws today and where those laws are headed. They claim that before anything can be down to save public domain, it must be accepted and understood.

As a victim of plagiarism myself, it’s difficult not to side with the idea of stricter copyright laws. Creating is an amazing and difficult process, and a creator definitely forms and intense personal relationship with their creation. That said, there is no argument to the idea that all creators are affected and inspired by what they have seen before them. I put everything that I have experienced and seen into my designs, and it would be more than selfish to rob future generations of the same ability—it would be criminal. When I truly think about my designs and the future, I think I’ll be happy as long as I get credit for my work. Anything more than that—alteration, or usage, or reference, should be allowed to the public. To  Jane Ginsberg, who believes that only a creator can understand: as a creator myself, I do understand the bond, but I also accept that nothing I’ve ever created would have been without the work of my predecessors and peers. Who am I to rob others of what I myself would fight for?