Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks, Jonathan Strickland. Here. No normal intro for today.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a rerun because I'm under the weather
Speaker 1: and it's a crazy holiday week with Thanksgiving week here
Speaker 1: in in the United States, and uh, it just all
Speaker 1: my efforts to put together a new episode kind of
Speaker 1: fell apart. But I do plan on having a news
Speaker 1: episode tomorrow, and in the meantime, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: leave you without anything. So I looked back on last
Speaker 1: year and there was this episode about copyright and fair
Speaker 1: use I did, and I thought, hey, I'm gonna essentially
Speaker 1: plagiarize myself and copy myself, so why not do the
Speaker 1: copyright and fair use episode. It originally published on May one.
Speaker 1: I think it's an important topic to really educate yourself
Speaker 1: about in the tech space in particular, as uh, the
Speaker 1: Internet in general and the Web really specifically have created
Speaker 1: the foundation for rampant copyright abuse. And you know there
Speaker 1: are multiple sites that story. So let's listen to this
Speaker 1: episode that published last year on copyright and fair use,
Speaker 1: and I'll chat with you again really soon. It has
Speaker 1: been a while since I've done an episode about the
Speaker 1: concepts of copyright and fair use. And after I keep
Speaker 1: seeing the phrase no copyright infringement intended over and over
Speaker 1: on places like YouTube and Instagram, I figure it's a
Speaker 1: good time to tackle this again. Because people continue to
Speaker 1: pretend like copyright infringement only applies under very specific circumstances
Speaker 1: and that with just a little bit of verbiage you
Speaker 1: can get around it, when really the opposite is true.
Speaker 1: And since the Internet and technology allows for more opportunities
Speaker 1: for a copyright infringement, and because various governments and around
Speaker 1: the world have passed legislation to you know, specifically tackle
Speaker 1: copyright infringement, and companies have lobbied endlessly for more restrictive
Speaker 1: copyright rules, I think it fits the scope of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: particularly since a lot of these laws were formed in
Speaker 1: reaction to changes in technology. So first, let's kind of
Speaker 1: define what copyright is now. Essentially, copyright guarantees the creator
Speaker 1: of a work or an entity that has been designated
Speaker 1: by the creator of the work, the right to profit
Speaker 1: off of that work, the right to make copies of
Speaker 1: that work and then distribute or sell them, or you know,
Speaker 1: you just you own that intellectual property. No one else
Speaker 1: can come and make copies of it without your permission.
Speaker 1: The works in this case range from the written word
Speaker 1: to music, to paintings, sculpture, uh to digital files. I mean,
Speaker 1: copyright now applies to lots of stuff. Clearly it didn't
Speaker 1: apply to all of that in the beginning, but something
Speaker 1: that has evolved over time. It does not include inventions.
Speaker 1: Those are covered under patent law. And then you also
Speaker 1: have things like trademarks, which make things more complicated. I
Speaker 1: might talk about trademarks and copyright in a future episode
Speaker 1: to kind of talk about how those complicate things, because
Speaker 1: companies have tried to use trademarks in order to extend
Speaker 1: copyright protection. But trademarks last in perpetuity. Copyright only lasts
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time, at least in theory. We'll
Speaker 1: get to all that. So along with the right to
Speaker 1: profit from intellectual property comes with it protections against others
Speaker 1: who are taking a work and profiting off of it
Speaker 1: without permission. Now you can see the value of this
Speaker 1: concept right away, I imagine. So let's say you are
Speaker 1: a musician and you write a song. It was your work.
Speaker 1: You created the whole piece, You wrote the music, and
Speaker 1: you wrote the lyrics and you plan to earn money
Speaker 1: through this song. Maybe you're going to record it to
Speaker 1: some form of media and then sell copies of the song.
Speaker 1: So you filed a copyright for the song, which gives
Speaker 1: you the exclusive rights to make copies of it uh
Speaker 1: in whatever format you like, whether it's digital files or
Speaker 1: physical media, or even like sheet music. You can charge
Speaker 1: whatever you like for your work, though obviously if you
Speaker 1: go bonkers and you ask for a ridiculously high price,
Speaker 1: you aren't likely to get a lot of takers. You
Speaker 1: also have the protection should someone else start making copies
Speaker 1: of your song without your permission. Maybe they are performing
Speaker 1: it themselves, in which case they should secure a license first,
Speaker 1: or maybe they're taking your original recording and just duplicating it.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you created an MP three file
Speaker 1: and they just copy the MP three file endlessly and
Speaker 1: start either giving it away or selling it to people.
Speaker 1: You could sue that person, and in court you could
Speaker 1: prove that you hold the copyright to that piece of music,
Speaker 1: and assuming the court agrees that the copyright is legitimate,
Speaker 1: you could then seek damages against the person or entity
Speaker 1: that made the unauthorized copies of your work. Music is
Speaker 1: actually really a special case because you can have multiple
Speaker 1: copyrights on the work. You could have one for the lyrics,
Speaker 1: then you could have another for the musical composition itself,
Speaker 1: and that would mean that someone who wanted to play
Speaker 1: your music but change the lyrics would still potentially be
Speaker 1: liable for copyright violations. But we're going to get back
Speaker 1: to that a little bit later in this episode, but
Speaker 1: it is something to keep in mind. However, Then there
Speaker 1: are such things as mechanical licenses. This sets out the
Speaker 1: rules for stuff like playing recorded music in particular places.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever been to like a restaurant or
Speaker 1: a theater and you've heard music being played over the
Speaker 1: sound system, chances are that that place of business has
Speaker 1: paid out a license fee in order to be able
Speaker 1: to do that. Intellectual property rights get pretty complicated. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also depends upon the size of the venue. I
Speaker 1: might have to do a future episode to kind of
Speaker 1: talk about all the exceptions, because, as I said, it
Speaker 1: does get complicated, and in some cases, if it's a
Speaker 1: very small venue, UH, they can sometimes be exempt from
Speaker 1: having to pay the same sort of license fees that
Speaker 1: larger venues have to pay. And part of the argument
Speaker 1: there is that the number of people who would actually
Speaker 1: experience the music is much smaller because the venue is
Speaker 1: smaller anyway. In the old days, as in before the
Speaker 1: printing press, copyright wasn't really that big of a thing, like,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a big concern for it. There were predecessors
Speaker 1: for formal copyright, but truthfully, there wasn't much occasion to
Speaker 1: use them because the act of copying a work involved
Speaker 1: actually making a copy out by hand, handwriting the copy
Speaker 1: of a written work. This was a painstaking process and
Speaker 1: not something that could be done on any sort of scale,
Speaker 1: and so copyright wasn't as huge a concern just because
Speaker 1: infringement itself was not something that was easy to do.
Speaker 1: And to that the fact that much of the world's
Speaker 1: population was illiterate and there just wasn't a foundation for
Speaker 1: copyright infringement to really take hold. Then a smarty pants
Speaker 1: named Johann Gutenberg had to go and invent the movable
Speaker 1: type printing press, at least the European version. I should
Speaker 1: stress that Europe because the parts of the world were
Speaker 1: actually further advanced with printing technologies than Europe was. But
Speaker 1: this is the one that Western cultures tend to talk
Speaker 1: about because we get a little myopic. But i'll i'll
Speaker 1: set aside the commentary. So with the printing press, it
Speaker 1: became possible to set the type on the press and
Speaker 1: then print out sheets one after the other in relatively
Speaker 1: quick succession. Now, it still took time to set the
Speaker 1: press between pages because you had to change all the
Speaker 1: type out right. You had to remove all the type,
Speaker 1: set the type again, and then print the next sheet.
Speaker 1: So you would typically use the press to print a
Speaker 1: bunch of the same sheet in a row before you
Speaker 1: would reset the type and move on to the next sheet. However,
Speaker 1: you could also use a single large sheet of paper
Speaker 1: to set up multiple pages of text, and so you
Speaker 1: could divide up the quadrants of a printing press and
Speaker 1: change the type up so that you are actually creating
Speaker 1: multiple pages per press. And then you fold the paper
Speaker 1: in such a way that that makes all sense, like
Speaker 1: if you fold it once along a vertical line, so
Speaker 1: you you fold it in half vertically. Um, then are
Speaker 1: along the vertical access I should say, Then you end
Speaker 1: up with a folio that was a single large sheet
Speaker 1: of paper that would have one page printed on the
Speaker 1: left side, one page printed on the right side. You
Speaker 1: have a vertical fold in the middle, and then you
Speaker 1: can just keep printing those over and over again, and
Speaker 1: then you bind a bunch of those together and you've
Speaker 1: got a book. Or you could do a double fold,
Speaker 1: and you could have a quarto, which would also involve
Speaker 1: you having to make a cut along the horizontal line.
Speaker 1: But then you've got four pages per sheet, so you
Speaker 1: could do that, and that it means that with one
Speaker 1: press you're effectively printing four pages, and then you let
Speaker 1: it dry, you flip it over, and you can print
Speaker 1: another four pages. Very useful. So this was these were
Speaker 1: different ways that you could end up creating books fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: The process of publishing became much faster than with people
Speaker 1: doing it by hand, but there wasn't yet a formalized
Speaker 1: protection in place for the creator of the works, and
Speaker 1: at this point, the typical approach was for an author
Speaker 1: to receive a flat fee for their work, which would
Speaker 1: then go to a book printer to produce, so the
Speaker 1: printer would take ownership of that work from that point forward.
Speaker 1: Then it was just a matter of time before other
Speaker 1: printers would get hold of the book and start making
Speaker 1: their own copies, at least for books that proved to
Speaker 1: be popular for authors. There really wasn't a whole lot
Speaker 1: of profit in this approach. William Shakespeare, who you know,
Speaker 1: you could argue, was one of the greatest English writers,
Speaker 1: mostly known for his plays but also his poetry. He
Speaker 1: never sought out the printing of his plays. Others would
Speaker 1: give it a shot. Either they would try to copy
Speaker 1: down days as they were being performed and then go
Speaker 1: and print what they had transcribed, or they would try
Speaker 1: to get hold of the sides that actors were using
Speaker 1: in their roles, or a combination of the two. It
Speaker 1: was really only after Shakespeare's death that his friends got
Speaker 1: together and did their best to gather his plays and
Speaker 1: publish them. Now, based on what I know about Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: I suspect the reason that he did not seek out
Speaker 1: publication of his works was that it really wasn't where
Speaker 1: the money would be for him. He would get a
Speaker 1: pay the flat fee for every play he wrote, but
Speaker 1: more importantly, he was a part owner of the theater itself.
Speaker 1: Like the Globe Theater or the Rose Theater. He was
Speaker 1: part of the company that owned the theater, so that
Speaker 1: meant he would actually take a share of the box office. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, his main goal was to attract crowds
Speaker 1: to the theater. That's where the money was. But you
Speaker 1: can bet that if there had been serious money in
Speaker 1: publication back in those days, Shakespeare would have been all
Speaker 1: over it because a quick glance at some of the
Speaker 1: lawsuits he was involved with during his lifetime indicates he
Speaker 1: had a certain appreciation for the accumulation of wealth. So Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: great artist, also a business guy, and had publishing been
Speaker 1: a bigger business for the author, he certainly would have
Speaker 1: gone that route, I'm sure of it. Now, the printing
Speaker 1: press was a truly transformational piece of technology. It became
Speaker 1: easier to produce many copies of a work book. Printing businesses,
Speaker 1: which would evolve into true publishing houses, began to pop
Speaker 1: up all over Europe, and the powers that be, that is,
Speaker 1: the Church and the various governments of Europe viewed book
Speaker 1: printers as both an asset and a potential threat. Through
Speaker 1: the printers, these organizations could spread information quickly. The Bible
Speaker 1: was a very early candidate for printing, as the Guttenberg
Speaker 1: Bible proves and governments could use printing presses to spread
Speaker 1: information about laws and declarations and kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: printing presses also meant it was easier to print stuff
Speaker 1: that undermined authority. People who had a boned pick with
Speaker 1: the folks who were in charge could potentially spread their
Speaker 1: ideas and maybe find sympathetic souls who shared those same beliefs.
Speaker 1: So the printing press could enable existential threats to the
Speaker 1: power structure. And this is where we get a predecessor
Speaker 1: to copyright. Now, this predecessor wasn't so much about making
Speaker 1: sure the author of a book was fairly compensated. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was more about keeping printing houses under control. The
Speaker 1: basic idea was that any business that wished to print
Speaker 1: materials had to first secure an official license from, you know,
Speaker 1: the government of that region. These licenses typically meant that
Speaker 1: a specific printer would be responsible for the printing of
Speaker 1: particular works to the exclusion of all other printers. So
Speaker 1: you might say that this one printer can print this
Speaker 1: one book, and no other printer in the region is
Speaker 1: allowed to do that, so they have a monopoly on
Speaker 1: that specific title. In fact, they called the monopolies. These
Speaker 1: agreements would last a set number of years, which wasn't
Speaker 1: too different from the concept of modern copyrights. If any
Speaker 1: other printer was found to produce a work that some
Speaker 1: other printer had exclusive rights to, that matter could go
Speaker 1: to court, but this was all about the printing houses,
Speaker 1: not authors. England passed its first actual copyright law in
Speaker 1: seventeen This law changed things quite a bit. A publisher
Speaker 1: would have a fourteen year period of exclusive rights to
Speaker 1: publish any new book. Existing books that the printing house
Speaker 1: was already printing would enjoy protection for twenty one years.
Speaker 1: After that, the author of the work could choose to
Speaker 1: renew the copyright if the author was still alive. Otherwise
Speaker 1: the work would enter into the public domain, meaning any
Speaker 1: one would be legally allowed to make a copy of
Speaker 1: that work or use it in any way they liked.
Speaker 1: There were no longer any protections on that piece of work,
Speaker 1: and it was available for any public use. The United
Speaker 1: States wouldn't get its first true copyright law until nearly
Speaker 1: a century later, but let's be fair, there was no
Speaker 1: such thing as the United States in seventeen ten, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cut the Young Nations some slack here. The
Speaker 1: copyright law of the US followed closely in the footsteps
Speaker 1: of the Copyright Act of Britain, which was also known
Speaker 1: as the Statute of Ann as in Queen Anne. So
Speaker 1: the way that the US law worked was that an
Speaker 1: author would register their work with the U S District
Speaker 1: Court of their particular region, and they would in return
Speaker 1: receive an exclusive copyright for fourteen years, with the option
Speaker 1: to renew for a second fourteen year period, and after
Speaker 1: those twenty eight years, assuming that you actually renewed your copyright,
Speaker 1: the work would then enter into the public domain with
Speaker 1: the Statute of Ann and the Copyright Act of the
Speaker 1: US or at the point where authors would get a
Speaker 1: little more protection and a chance to benefit more from
Speaker 1: their own work. It was no longer the case of
Speaker 1: a one time flat fee in every instance. Now, I
Speaker 1: say authors, but often we're really still talking about publishers. Here,
Speaker 1: the publisher retains the copyright because the copyright allows the
Speaker 1: publisher to you know, publish the works. Otherwise, the author
Speaker 1: would have to grant permission for each printing. You'd have
Speaker 1: to have a license for it. It It all gets clunky
Speaker 1: right that the author has exclusive copyright to their work,
Speaker 1: they have to grant permission to whichever entity is creating
Speaker 1: copies of that work. You often see this reflected today
Speaker 1: in ways that are kind of confusing. When you agree
Speaker 1: to certain platforms, there's language there that seems to suggest
Speaker 1: that anything you post on that platform is that platform's property.
Speaker 1: But usually the reasoning for the language is to make
Speaker 1: sure that the platform has the necessary permission to display
Speaker 1: whatever it is you're posting, because otherwise, every single time
Speaker 1: you posted, you would have to have some sort of
Speaker 1: licensing agreement or something that would give permission to the
Speaker 1: platform to actually display the thing you wrote. It gets
Speaker 1: pretty complicated now. The same would be true for most
Speaker 1: music produced in the modern era. The copyright isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: held by the artist, but by a music label. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like how Thomas Edison made sure that his
Speaker 1: name was on every patent produced out of his business.
Speaker 1: He might not have had a direct hand in the
Speaker 1: creation of every invention. In fact, we know that he
Speaker 1: didn't have a direct hand and a lot of them,
Speaker 1: but he sure as heck made sure that his signature
Speaker 1: was on the patent to every single one, so that
Speaker 1: he had a right to each of them. Anyway. One
Speaker 1: of the consequences of all of this is that to
Speaker 1: this day, getting the permission of an author or artist
Speaker 1: in order to use their work typically isn't enough. That's
Speaker 1: because in many cases that individual creator doesn't actually hold
Speaker 1: the copyright to the work. It's more likely that some
Speaker 1: corporate entity will hold the copyright on behalf of that creator.
Speaker 1: So you really have to get the permission of whatever
Speaker 1: entity holds the copyright for any specific intellectual property. In
Speaker 1: some cases it might be an individual creator, in other
Speaker 1: cases it might be a big company. So let's say
Speaker 1: if you met an artist for Disney in a cafe
Speaker 1: and this artist told you, oh, it's totally cool if
Speaker 1: you use they're drawing of a popular Disney character for
Speaker 1: something you're doing, that's probably not good enough because that
Speaker 1: artist wouldn't even hold the copyright for that work. Disney would,
Speaker 1: and copyright laws would evolve quite a lot over the
Speaker 1: following centuries. They banded to include more types of works,
Speaker 1: as well as to allow for things like licenses, and
Speaker 1: without these considerations, it might be illegal to, you know,
Speaker 1: play playback an album without first getting permission of the
Speaker 1: music label, which is clearly absurd. You wouldn't have it.
Speaker 1: Where you bought an album, you went home, and every
Speaker 1: time you were to play the album, you first had
Speaker 1: to get permission from the music label to do that
Speaker 1: that just doesn't make sense. But that's the sort of
Speaker 1: stuff that actually had to be codified into law. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's not enough to just everyone agree like,
Speaker 1: oh well, that's absurd. It actually had to be written
Speaker 1: down somewhere and ratified. One of the biggest changes to
Speaker 1: copyright has been how long that copyright protection lasts. This
Speaker 1: also ties into how many capitalist societies treat corporations, which
Speaker 1: is uh ridiculously in my mind. So here in the
Speaker 1: United States in particular, corporations are treated legally like a
Speaker 1: per person. But if you think about that's kind of bonkers.
Speaker 1: More than kind of bonkers, I should say, people get old,
Speaker 1: people pass away corporations. Assuming that they are run well
Speaker 1: and they provide some sort of goods or services that
Speaker 1: people want or need, they can exist indefinitely. And a
Speaker 1: corporation that relies heavily on intellectual property is quite loath
Speaker 1: to give up that meal ticket, and so corporations over
Speaker 1: the years have lobbied hard to extend copyright in order
Speaker 1: to prevent the i P that they own from falling
Speaker 1: into the public domain. And then they can no longer
Speaker 1: exclusively exploit that i P. They could still exploit it.
Speaker 1: They could still sell stuff with it, just it doesn't
Speaker 1: stop anyone else from doing the same thing. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: most high profile of all these companies was one that
Speaker 1: seemed fixated on a particular mouse that I've already mentioned.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more after this quick break. Before the break,
Speaker 1: I t s that corporations played a huge part in
Speaker 1: lobbying Congress to extend the protections of copyright, and one
Speaker 1: of those corporations is the Walt Disney Company and the
Speaker 1: cultural phenomenon that is Mickey Mouse. The cartoon Steamboat Willie,
Speaker 1: which was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, was released in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight. Now, at that time, US copyright law
Speaker 1: had a twenty eight year protection limit, which could then
Speaker 1: be renewed for a second twenty eight year term, which
Speaker 1: would provide a total of fifty six years of copyright
Speaker 1: exclusivity to the owner of an i P. But then
Speaker 1: the i P would enter the public domain. That means
Speaker 1: that if copyright law had remained unchanged since Steamboat Willie,
Speaker 1: Steamboat Willie would have entered the public domain back in
Speaker 1: nineteen four Spoiler alert. As of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: Steamboat Willie is not in the public domain yet, so
Speaker 1: things did not remain the same. By the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the Disney Company was lobbying hard to change copyright laws,
Speaker 1: and I want to be clear, they weren't the only ones,
Speaker 1: but you frequently hear Disney specifically in regard to lobbying
Speaker 1: for copyright law extensions, and it worked. Congress changed the
Speaker 1: copyright protection so that copyrights that were held by individual
Speaker 1: authors protection would last the lifetime of that author plus
Speaker 1: another fifty years. So now we're well beyond guaranteeing the
Speaker 1: right of a person to profit off of their work.
Speaker 1: Right now, you're saying you're guaranteeing that multiple generations of
Speaker 1: an author's family can continue to benefit from the work
Speaker 1: of the author. The author will be dead and fifty
Speaker 1: years will pass, and until those fifty years are up,
Speaker 1: the estate will continue to benefit monetarily from that author's work,
Speaker 1: assuming that you know people are still buying it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if it falls out of favor and no one's purchasing anything,
Speaker 1: then those rights, while they're important, don't actually leverage into
Speaker 1: any kind of monetary gain. But this is where I
Speaker 1: start feeling a little weird about all this, because I
Speaker 1: think it's one thing to want to provide for your family, right,
Speaker 1: you want to earn money and help contribute to your
Speaker 1: family or households well being. But it's another to create
Speaker 1: generational wealth that removes the need for future generations to
Speaker 1: you know, make any sort of meaningful contribution themselves. There
Speaker 1: are lots of cases where the children of authors who
Speaker 1: were incredibly successful, uh, have themselves gone on to do
Speaker 1: amazing things, which is great. But there are also cases
Speaker 1: of people who just kind of, you know, never bothered
Speaker 1: to do anything because they didn't really have need to.
Speaker 1: They were all of their needs were already met because
Speaker 1: they were earning income on something that their parents or
Speaker 1: grandparents or great grandparents had done, and there never was
Speaker 1: any need for them to do anything. Uh. Not super
Speaker 1: helpful for the general society. Not very healthy in my
Speaker 1: mind anyway. For corporations that owned i P. It was
Speaker 1: a different story, right, because corporations don't die, so you
Speaker 1: can't say the life of a corporation plus fifty years.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the copyright protection extended the term
Speaker 1: for works that had been published before ninety eight to
Speaker 1: a total term of seventy five years of protection. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Copyright Extension pushed that that protection of Steamboat Willie
Speaker 1: to two thousand three because of that, because it was
Speaker 1: published in nineteen seventy five years later would be up
Speaker 1: to two thousand three. However, in nineteen Congress passed the
Speaker 1: Copyright Term Extension at also known as the Sunny Bono
Speaker 1: Copyright Term Extension Act, after the late congressman and musicians
Speaker 1: Sonny Bono Bono had passed away in an accident while
Speaker 1: Congress was hashing out this extension bill, so he was
Speaker 1: posthumously honored with the title of the the Act. This
Speaker 1: act extended the copyright protection for any work published in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three or later. And the extension meant that
Speaker 1: the copyright protection now went from the life of the
Speaker 1: author plus fifty years to the life of the author
Speaker 1: plus seventy years for those works that were created by
Speaker 1: an individual artist. And it meant for works of corporate authorship.
Speaker 1: You know, works that like Steamboat Willie from Disney, they
Speaker 1: went from having seventy five years of protection to either
Speaker 1: ninety five years after publication or one twenty years from
Speaker 1: the date of creation, whichever ended earlier. So you know,
Speaker 1: corporate corporations might create something but not yet publish it,
Speaker 1: So in some cases you would actually have a shorter
Speaker 1: period between time of creation and a hundred twenty years
Speaker 1: than time of publication. In ninety five years anyway, any
Speaker 1: published work before nineteen seventy eight would get an additional
Speaker 1: twenty years of copyright protection, so they went from seventy
Speaker 1: five years to ninety five years, and those extra twenty
Speaker 1: years meant that Steamboat Willie will now enter public domain
Speaker 1: essentially at the beginning of twenty twenty four, unless between
Speaker 1: now and then there's yet another change to copyright law,
Speaker 1: which seems highly unlikely because there is a large opposition
Speaker 1: to that. Since the Copyright Act I've mentioned so far
Speaker 1: retroactively protected any work published after nineteen twenty three, it
Speaker 1: meant that we finally saw some published works go into
Speaker 1: the public domain beginning in twenty nineteen. So on January one,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, any copyrighted works that were published in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, with a few exceptions that have to do
Speaker 1: with music because music is complicated, otherwise, they heard the
Speaker 1: public domain at that point. This was the first time
Speaker 1: in twenty one years that a large collection of works
Speaker 1: fell out of copyright protection. And into the public domain
Speaker 1: only because of the timing of changes to copyright law
Speaker 1: in the United States. So works from nineteen twenty two
Speaker 1: had entered the public domain back in nineteen, but then
Speaker 1: you had the change to copyright law, and so any
Speaker 1: works from nineteen twenty three enjoyed twenty more years of
Speaker 1: protection because of that recent extension, and thus they only
Speaker 1: entered the public domain in twenty nineteen. That's the difference
Speaker 1: that a single year can make. This year in one
Speaker 1: we saw works like f Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Speaker 1: go into the public domain. You can now make as
Speaker 1: many copies of The Great Gatsby as you like. You
Speaker 1: can hand them out for free. You could charge for
Speaker 1: them if you want to. It's public domain. Dr Doolittle's
Speaker 1: Zoo also went into public domain this year. Agatha Christie's
Speaker 1: The Secret of Chimneys made its exit from copyright protection.
Speaker 1: The nineteen twenty five silent film version of been Her
Speaker 1: not the Charlton Heston version, but the silent film version
Speaker 1: is in public domain, as is Lawn Cheneye The Phantom
Speaker 1: of the Opera. Also the silent film version of Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz, again not the Big musical version, you know,
Speaker 1: not the follow the Yellow Brick Road version, but the
Speaker 1: silent film version of Wizard of Oz is also in
Speaker 1: the public domain this year. Now, that means that if
Speaker 1: you want to make copies of Lawn Cheney's Phantom of
Speaker 1: the Opera and you want to distribute those widely, if
Speaker 1: you want to post the entire movie on YouTube, you can.
Speaker 1: You can do it for free. You could also, you know,
Speaker 1: sell DVDs of it if you wanted to, you could.
Speaker 1: You could press DVDs with Lawn Cheney's Phantom of the
Speaker 1: Opera and you could sell them. I don't know if
Speaker 1: anyone would buy them, but you could do it. You
Speaker 1: can do it here, you can do it there. You
Speaker 1: can do it everywhere in the US. Anyway, it is
Speaker 1: no longer in copyright. Now, backtracking just a little bit,
Speaker 1: the printing press had made copyright protection more or less
Speaker 1: a necessity to prevent publishers from pouncing on each other
Speaker 1: and flooding the market with copies of various books. But
Speaker 1: for a really long time, copyright was just something that
Speaker 1: big companies were mostly concerned with. It was a non
Speaker 1: factor for the average person. I mean, it affected us,
Speaker 1: but we didn't come into any sort of conflict with
Speaker 1: copyright protection because most of us just didn't have access
Speaker 1: to equipment that we would need to replicate an original work.
Speaker 1: If back in the mid nineteen twenties you managed to
Speaker 1: get your grubby hands on a copy of The Great Gatsby,
Speaker 1: you probably didn't have the ability to copy that work
Speaker 1: and then sell it to two people yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: like undercutting big bookstores or whatever. Publishing houses were protecting themselves,
Speaker 1: but they were doing so mostly from other publishing houses.
Speaker 1: The average person was not a threat. So the nature
Speaker 1: of copyright law was all about corporate entities protecting themselves
Speaker 1: from each other. This, by the way, is what kind
Speaker 1: of becomes an issue in the modern day, where you've
Speaker 1: got the the effect of like a nuclear arsenal, you know,
Speaker 1: corporations against each other that could then be aimed against
Speaker 1: the individual because the nature of copying has changed, so
Speaker 1: there's a disproportionate hardship on the individual because of that.
Speaker 1: So over time, various inventions meant more people would have
Speaker 1: the ability to create copies of stuff, and these technological
Speaker 1: advancements always came hand in hand with media companies freaking
Speaker 1: the heck out about it, which is not an exaggeration.
Speaker 1: The invention of technologies like cassette tapes or VHS tapes,
Speaker 1: burnable compact discs, and of course digital media all sent
Speaker 1: media companies into a tizzy. Each invention prompted the companies
Speaker 1: to object nuous lee and to proclaim that should these
Speaker 1: technologies fall into the hands of the common, unwashed masses
Speaker 1: like myself, that the era of stuff like film or
Speaker 1: television or popular music would all come to an end,
Speaker 1: and the entire industry would crash down on itself, and
Speaker 1: we would then be back to banging rocks together for entertainment.
Speaker 1: News Alert. None of that happened, but in the process
Speaker 1: we saw lots of other laws passed that expanded copyright
Speaker 1: protection by creating a pretty extensive framework for prosecution should
Speaker 1: an IP holder discover that someone has copied or distributed
Speaker 1: stuff that they hold the rights to without proper authorization.
Speaker 1: I will cover more of those in the next episode. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons the public domain is important is
Speaker 1: that works can have a great deal of relevance and
Speaker 1: usefulness many years after they were published. They of all
Speaker 1: the classics that are out there that have stood the
Speaker 1: test of time, But if copyright lasted forever, these works
Speaker 1: would be under a tight restriction in perpetuity. Public domain
Speaker 1: means that eventually these works will become widely accessible. It's
Speaker 1: balancing out the benefits that go to the i P
Speaker 1: holder against the benefits of society as a whole. All right,
Speaker 1: But what about fair use? Okay? So, fair use is
Speaker 1: a concept that allows someone to use part of a
Speaker 1: copyrighted work that uh without permission in one of several ways.
Speaker 1: And it's fairly narrow in its scope, but also kind
Speaker 1: of fuzzy at the edges. So it's narrow and scope,
Speaker 1: but there are no hard yes or no answers to
Speaker 1: this stuff. In general, fair use allows someone to make
Speaker 1: limited use of a portion of a copyrighted work for
Speaker 1: the purposes of news reporting, research, teaching, or criticism and commentary.
Speaker 1: Parody falls into that last category as well, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back to that because it's a more specific
Speaker 1: approach than just adding funny words to existing music. Fair
Speaker 1: use means that you don't have to secure permission from
Speaker 1: the copyright holder if you're using a small portion of
Speaker 1: that original work in one of these ways. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if I were criticizing a film, I could use small
Speaker 1: clips of that film during my critique. Let's say I'm
Speaker 1: uploading a video to YouTube where I am critiquing a movie.
Speaker 1: I can include tiny clips of that film in order
Speaker 1: to illustrate specific points of my criticism, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to get permission first. The clips I used would
Speaker 1: need to relate directly to that criticism. However, I might
Speaker 1: want to talk about lighting composition, and I'll use clips
Speaker 1: from Robert Egger's film The Lighthouse, because that film had
Speaker 1: phenomenal lighting in it. So I'd use the examples to
Speaker 1: talk about specific lighting techniques and how they shape storytelling
Speaker 1: and what significance they play in the unfolding of the
Speaker 1: story of the Lighthouse. But if I were to get
Speaker 1: more loosey goosey, my protection of fair use would not
Speaker 1: be as solid. Similarly, if I were to use very
Speaker 1: short clips of the film in my critique, my argument
Speaker 1: of fair use is better supported than if I were to, say,
Speaker 1: include thirty minutes of the movie surrounded by like five
Speaker 1: minutes of criticism. Now, does that mean there's a specific
Speaker 1: safe amount of copyrighted material that you can use without
Speaker 1: fear of retribution? No, there is a common misconception that
Speaker 1: if you use less than say, fifteen seconds of audio
Speaker 1: from a source or six seconds or whatever, that that's
Speaker 1: small enough to be fair use and no one's going
Speaker 1: to come after you. That is just not true. Or rather,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a guarantee. Specifically, it's not a guarantee
Speaker 1: if you're not using that as some form of commentary
Speaker 1: or criticism on the work itself. If you're using it
Speaker 1: as like the button to a moment, you know, like
Speaker 1: a sound bite or whatever, there's very little support for
Speaker 1: a fair use argument there. So if I just filled
Speaker 1: up this podcast with sound bites from various films and music,
Speaker 1: TV shows and radio spots and stuff like that without
Speaker 1: paying a license for all of those things, I would
Speaker 1: be flying pretty darn close to the sun. Because unless
Speaker 1: I'm using those snippets in very specific ways, such as
Speaker 1: to criticize those original works that the snippets belong to,
Speaker 1: or to report on the news of those snippets, well
Speaker 1: I would be infringing on copyright. That doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: anyone is going to come after me. I mean, chances
Speaker 1: are for really small stuff, I'd probably be okay unless
Speaker 1: my podcast got wildly successful, in which case I could
Speaker 1: represent a pretty lucrative target. If the copyright holders looked
Speaker 1: at my podcast and said, well, that show is making
Speaker 1: x million dollars a year, and a lot of that popularity,
Speaker 1: we could argue comes from its use of our intellectual property.
Speaker 1: We can get a piece of that that pie like that.
Speaker 1: That would be the thought process, and it could actually
Speaker 1: work in court. So it doesn't mean on bulletproof if
Speaker 1: I'm just using tiny little clips. It's not until it
Speaker 1: goes to court that I really know if I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to pay or not. So fair use isn't
Speaker 1: a concept that has hard borders to it. It's all
Speaker 1: interpretive stuff. And here's the key to all of it.
Speaker 1: Fair use is something that gets determined in court. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you can't really use fair use proactively
Speaker 1: as a defense. It's a defense that you make if
Speaker 1: a copyright holder pursues a claim against you for copyright infringement.
Speaker 1: So let's say that I did that critique of the
Speaker 1: Lighthouse and Film Company A twenty four, which released and
Speaker 1: distributed the film here in the United States. Let's say
Speaker 1: that that that company came after me for copyright infringement,
Speaker 1: and I would have to defend my use of those
Speaker 1: clips in court, and I would have to cite fair
Speaker 1: use in that process roout the court proceedings, I would
Speaker 1: likely have to prove that the way I use those
Speaker 1: clips was in fact to critique the film, and that
Speaker 1: the excerpts I used were appropriate and constituted a relatively
Speaker 1: small percentage of the overall critique and a very small
Speaker 1: percentage of the original film. Courts decide on a case
Speaker 1: by case basis if a particular instance is fair use
Speaker 1: or not. There isn't a blanket fair use defense. You
Speaker 1: gotta go in front of the courts to do it.
Speaker 1: And this is what I meant by that nuclear arsenal.
Speaker 1: When it comes to companies versus companies, typically you have
Speaker 1: lawyers on both sides who are just perpetually employed by
Speaker 1: these companies call each other up and they work things out,
Speaker 1: and you might have a licensing agreement, or you might
Speaker 1: agree to a settlement, but it rarely goes to court.
Speaker 1: When it comes to individuals, most of us don't have
Speaker 1: access to that kind of legal defense. So for us,
Speaker 1: it's like a massive, well funded company with high paid
Speaker 1: lawyers versus the little guy, and it means that the
Speaker 1: little guy has to shell out the big bucks in
Speaker 1: order to defend themselves against the corporations, even if the
Speaker 1: little guy is totally in the right. If the the
Speaker 1: use is inarguably fair use, you don't get to that
Speaker 1: decision magically. You have to go to court for it,
Speaker 1: and court is expensive. We're going to pause the conversation
Speaker 1: right here, take a quick break, and we'll be right
Speaker 1: back now. The courts tend to look at four factors
Speaker 1: when deciding if any given instance constitutes fair use. One
Speaker 1: is the purpose and character of the use of the
Speaker 1: original material, including whether the use is for a commercial
Speaker 1: nature or is nonprofit and educational. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: if I'm making videos where I critique films, and I
Speaker 1: include clips of those films and the videos, and I'm
Speaker 1: monetizing those critique videos, that can be a little bit
Speaker 1: of a strike against me because I'm using someone else's
Speaker 1: work in something on my own in order to make money.
Speaker 1: That's not a failure rail the gate, but it does
Speaker 1: make my argument harder. So it doesn't mean that a
Speaker 1: court is going to decide I'm not engaging in fair use.
Speaker 1: But in general, if the use is nonprofit and it's educational,
Speaker 1: it fits more easily into the fair use category, and
Speaker 1: courts tend to be a bit more forgiving. Then there's
Speaker 1: the nature of the copyrighted work itself. In general, it
Speaker 1: is easier to make a fair use argument if the
Speaker 1: thing you're sampling from is a non fictional work. Works
Speaker 1: that are about creative expression, like novels or movies, have
Speaker 1: a higher burden of proof than works that are nonfiction. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in this podcast, I will sometimes quote specific
Speaker 1: sources those are non fiction sources, and I quote from
Speaker 1: them to establish facts. That's easier to defend as fair
Speaker 1: use than if I were to include, say a minute
Speaker 1: long audio clip from a science fiction television show that's
Speaker 1: a work of fiction. It's a work of creative endeavors.
Speaker 1: That is harder to justify as fair use unless I'm
Speaker 1: specifically critiquing the show itself. Then comes the amount and
Speaker 1: substantiality of the portion of the copyrighted work that I
Speaker 1: used in my critique of the Lighthouse. If I'm using
Speaker 1: very short clips that just show up in my video
Speaker 1: for like five or ten seconds each as I talk
Speaker 1: about lighting techniques, that's easier to defend a fair use.
Speaker 1: I'm not showing a significant part of the movie. People
Speaker 1: aren't going to feel like they saw the entire film
Speaker 1: by watching my critique. They're just getting a flavor of
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about and getting an understanding of what
Speaker 1: I mean when I'm critiquing the use of lighting. If I'm, however,
Speaker 1: using very long stretches of the original film, particularly stretches
Speaker 1: that don't include changes in lighting, well that's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot harder to defend in court. And then
Speaker 1: there's the effect of the use upon the potential market
Speaker 1: for the copyrighted work. If my derivative work could possibly
Speaker 1: hurt the sales of the original by displacing the sales
Speaker 1: of that original, that's a problem. And this one is
Speaker 1: a tricky one, right because what if I'm not critiquing
Speaker 1: the technique of a film, but the quality of a film.
Speaker 1: And what if I present a video where I do
Speaker 1: an extensive tear down of a movie and I explain
Speaker 1: how I think it is not a good film, or
Speaker 1: I'm arguing that people shouldn't go see that movie, that
Speaker 1: it would be a waste of their time and money. Well,
Speaker 1: if folks value my judgment, I could well be said
Speaker 1: to have a negative impact on the sales of the
Speaker 1: original work. However, generally that would still be protected. However,
Speaker 1: if I were to use the original in some way
Speaker 1: that would make people want to buy my derivative work
Speaker 1: or consume it for free or whatever instead of the original,
Speaker 1: well that's harder to defend. So let's say, like in
Speaker 1: my critique of The Lighthouse, I included the entire film
Speaker 1: of The Lighthouse in my critique. That would be very
Speaker 1: hard to defend, not just because I'm using a substantial
Speaker 1: amount of the original work, but also the company could argue, hey,
Speaker 1: why would people pay to see our movie if they
Speaker 1: can see it for free. Just wrapped up in the
Speaker 1: context of this supposed criticism video, the copyright holder it
Speaker 1: can make a valid claim that my derivative work would
Speaker 1: not exist without the copyrighted original piece, and yet it
Speaker 1: was essentially siphoning sales away from that original piece that
Speaker 1: is not protected under fair use. Okay, we've got that
Speaker 1: all established. We're gonna make a couple more points before
Speaker 1: we wrap this up. Um, So, when it comes to
Speaker 1: stuff like music, I mentioned that you can copyright the
Speaker 1: musical composition and you can copyright the lyrics separately. One
Speaker 1: other thing you can do, however, is copyright individual performances
Speaker 1: of a piece of music. So, for example, let's say
Speaker 1: that you're making a video and you want to make
Speaker 1: use of a recording of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Now
Speaker 1: to Joy is part of Beethoven's Symphony number nine. Beethoven
Speaker 1: composed that in the eighteen twenties, and it has long
Speaker 1: since passed into the public domain. You can use Ode
Speaker 1: to Joy in anything you like for free. There's no
Speaker 1: one to pay royalties to as far as that's can
Speaker 1: cern or licensing fees. Two. However, that just covers the
Speaker 1: music itself. A performance of Oh to Joy will have
Speaker 1: its own copyright, which dates to the recording of that piece.
Speaker 1: So even though the music is in public domain, a
Speaker 1: performance likely is not. Unless you're using a performance of
Speaker 1: Oh to Joy. The dates from before the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: So you could perform to Joy yourself in your project,
Speaker 1: you'd be good to go. The music is in the
Speaker 1: public domain, the performance is yours, you're fine. But if
Speaker 1: you wanted to, say, use a recording of the London
Speaker 1: Philharmonic's performance that they did sometime in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: of oh joy, Well, then you would have to deal
Speaker 1: with some licensing arrangements to get the proper permissions to
Speaker 1: make use of that music, because while the musics in
Speaker 1: the public domain, the performance is not. Then there are
Speaker 1: other things to consider as well. So remember when I
Speaker 1: said parody is kind of a special case with fair use,
Speaker 1: This one gets even more complicated than other forms. So
Speaker 1: technically parody falls under fair use if it falls under
Speaker 1: the criticism and comment consideration for fair use. A typical
Speaker 1: definition of parody is quote and imitation of the style
Speaker 1: of a particular writer, artist, or genre would deliberate exaggeration
Speaker 1: for comic effect end quote, but that doesn't automatically mean
Speaker 1: that it's fair use. For it to be fair use,
Speaker 1: that specific parody really needs to comment upon or criticize
Speaker 1: the original work that it is parodying. For that reason,
Speaker 1: some but not all, of weird Al Yankovic's parody songs
Speaker 1: would easily fall under fair use, and others would be questionable. Now.
Speaker 1: I mentioned weird Al because he's the most famous parody
Speaker 1: artist I can think of, that probably the one that
Speaker 1: most people have heard of, and some of his parodies
Speaker 1: do tend to target the original work, so Smells Like
Speaker 1: Nirvana is a parody of the Nirvana song Smells Like
Speaker 1: Teen Spirit, and it's all about critiquing the original song.
Speaker 1: There are lyrics of what is this song all about?
Speaker 1: Can't figure any lyrics out that comments on the lyrics
Speaker 1: of the original work. Other verses poke fun at Kurt
Speaker 1: Cobain's slurring and mumbling of words, making it hard to
Speaker 1: understand what is actually being sung, So that song parody
Speaker 1: would probably hold up under fair use. But then take
Speaker 1: a song like Foil. Foil is a parody of Lord's
Speaker 1: song Royals, so it's using the music and lyrical structure
Speaker 1: of Royals. You know, they change the actual lyrics, but
Speaker 1: it's the same rhyme, scheme and scanshion of Royals. But
Speaker 1: the song Foil isn't a commentary on Royals. Instead, it's
Speaker 1: a comedic song about aluminum foil. And I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: you couldn't make an argument that it's somehow commenting on
Speaker 1: the original work, which means that would be harder to
Speaker 1: defend as fair use. It's not a bad song, by
Speaker 1: the way. This isn't a commentary on the quality of
Speaker 1: the parody, but rather whether it would fall under the
Speaker 1: consideration of fair use or not. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: weird Al makes it a practice to get permission to
Speaker 1: do his parodies before he does them. He licenses the songs.
Speaker 1: In cases like smells like Nirvana, he might have been
Speaker 1: able to skip that step, or more likely his music
Speaker 1: label would have if they were, you know, willing to
Speaker 1: defend any lawsuits that came their way as a result,
Speaker 1: But as both a courtesy and kind of the necessity,
Speaker 1: he reaches out before recording parodies. Usually, um, there's at
Speaker 1: least one version of this where things didn't work out,
Speaker 1: though actually there's a couple I can think of, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mention one in particular. So back in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, weird Al Yankovic was working on an album
Speaker 1: and he wanted to include a parody of the James
Speaker 1: Blunt song You're Beautiful. Yankovic's version is a parody called
Speaker 1: You're Pitiful about a middle aged dude who's seriously down
Speaker 1: on his luck. Blunt was receptive and he gave the
Speaker 1: go ahead to Yankovic, But as Yankovic's album neared publication,
Speaker 1: Blunt's record label, Atlantic Records, reached out to Yankovic's label
Speaker 1: and demanded that the song not appear on the album,
Speaker 1: and you know, music labels typically hold the i P
Speaker 1: for the actual songs of an artist. In this case
Speaker 1: is a little more complicated than that. So getting permission
Speaker 1: from Blunt, while a good thing, wasn't totally legally binding.
Speaker 1: Blunt probably could have pushed back on Atlantic Records about this,
Speaker 1: but that's not exactly an easy thing to do when
Speaker 1: you're an artist. I mean, you you want to work
Speaker 1: with your label. You don't want that to be a
Speaker 1: confrontational relationship. And as I mentioned earlier, defending fair use
Speaker 1: is expensive because it all goes to that consideration of
Speaker 1: a court, and that means lawyers and lawyers have fees,
Speaker 1: and so defending an instance as fair use in court
Speaker 1: can mean that you're paying thousands or tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars in fees just to defend yourself. There's a
Speaker 1: financial disincentive to the average person because again, these laws
Speaker 1: were made with corporations in mind, big entities that can
Speaker 1: afford these kind of things. The average person can't. So
Speaker 1: corporations like music labels or publishers have you know, entire
Speaker 1: teams of lawyers who do this stuff all the time,
Speaker 1: they can put pressure on folks with threats of lawsuits,
Speaker 1: and even if those folks are in the right, you know,
Speaker 1: even if their works clearly would fall under fair use,
Speaker 1: to defend it in court could be way too expensive
Speaker 1: for these individuals to afford it. There have been cases
Speaker 1: in which people have settled out of court for thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars, not because they felt they were legit and
Speaker 1: the wrong, but because trying to prove that they were
Speaker 1: in a of infringement was more expensive than settling. It's
Speaker 1: pretty darn brutal. Now, what about all those posts and
Speaker 1: YouTube videos that say no copyright infringement intended? Those are
Speaker 1: pretty much worthless. It's akin to posting on Facebook that
Speaker 1: you aren't giving Facebook the rights to your data. That's
Speaker 1: also useless because just by signing on to Facebook and
Speaker 1: making an account, you have to agree to Facebook's terms
Speaker 1: of service. That kind of supersedes your little post that
Speaker 1: says you're not in favor of Facebook using your data.
Speaker 1: Facebook's responses, too bad, because you agreed to it by
Speaker 1: being on the platform. Now that's part of our terms
Speaker 1: of service. If you don't want us to take your data,
Speaker 1: don't be on Facebook. That's kind of the way that works.
Speaker 1: So if you come across a video that says no
Speaker 1: copyright infringement intended, or a picture on Instagram that clearly
Speaker 1: doesn't belong to the account that posted it, just note
Speaker 1: that that phrase means nothing. Intent is not part of
Speaker 1: determining whether someone is infringing copyright in the first place.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what you intend. There's definitely a gradient
Speaker 1: when it comes to copyright infringement. Like if I include
Speaker 1: half of a music video online, that's copyright infringement. But
Speaker 1: if I include the whole thing, that is worse. And
Speaker 1: if I monetize the video where I do it, that's
Speaker 1: even worse. But even that smallest first example I gave
Speaker 1: is still infringing. Doesn't matter whether I think it is
Speaker 1: or not. You know, if I can think something's not
Speaker 1: a crime, but if legally it's a crime, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter what I think. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: other things I need to say about this, but one
Speaker 1: thing I want to sum up with right here before
Speaker 1: I close out, and we will pick back up in
Speaker 1: the next episode, is that Tom Scott did a great
Speaker 1: job exploring the issues of copyright and YouTube in particular,
Speaker 1: and I'll look more at YouTube. In the next episode,
Speaker 1: he did in a video titled YouTube's copyright system Isn't broken,
Speaker 1: the World's is, and shout out to listener Kat, who
Speaker 1: first turned me onto Tom Scott's videos. Scott does what
Speaker 1: I do, only he does it with British accent, so
Speaker 1: he's better at it than I am by default. Also,
Speaker 1: he's genuinely good at explaining stuff like this, so make
Speaker 1: sure you check that out. And we'll come back to
Speaker 1: talk more about YouTube and copyright infringement and content i
Speaker 1: D and some of the laws that have been passed
Speaker 1: after big media companies have lobbied Congress in the United
Speaker 1: States that have changed the way information gets shared on
Speaker 1: the Internet. We'll also talk about some of the crazy
Speaker 1: movements that companies have made against individuals and an effort
Speaker 1: to crack down on things like piracy. Because all this
Speaker 1: is tied up together and it's all a mess, and
Speaker 1: really what it boils down to is that copyright law
Speaker 1: itself is in dire need of a full rewrite. But
Speaker 1: that's dangerous because the parties that are particularly interested in
Speaker 1: a rewrite of copyright law are not looking to make
Speaker 1: it better. They're looking to make it last longer. That's
Speaker 1: it for this episode. Later this week, we'll pick back
Speaker 1: up with more about copyright, fair use, and piracy and
Speaker 1: things of that nature, and talk about the problems that
Speaker 1: technology have created for companies as well as the problems
Speaker 1: companies have placed upon people and more so. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this. You have any requests for things I
Speaker 1: should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out
Speaker 1: to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is
Speaker 1: text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.