Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And it has been
Speaker 1: a while since I've done an episode about the concepts
Speaker 1: of copyright and fair use. And after I keep seeing
Speaker 1: the phrase no copyright infringement intended over and over on
Speaker 1: places like YouTube and Instagram, I figure it's a good
Speaker 1: time to tackle this again. Because people continue to pretend
Speaker 1: like copyright infringement only applies under very specific circumstances and
Speaker 1: that with just a little bit of verbiage you can
Speaker 1: get around it, when really the opposite is true. And
Speaker 1: since the Internet and technology allows for more opportunities for
Speaker 1: a copyright in fringe mint, and because various governments and
Speaker 1: around the world have past legislation to, you know, specifically
Speaker 1: tackle copyright infringement, and companies have lobbied endlessly for more
Speaker 1: restrictive copyright rules, I think it fits the scope of
Speaker 1: tech stuff, particularly since a lot of these laws were
Speaker 1: formed in reaction to changes in technology. So first, let's
Speaker 1: kind of define what copyright is now. Essentially, copyright guarantees
Speaker 1: the creator of a work or an entity that has
Speaker 1: been designated by the creator of the work, the right
Speaker 1: to profit off of that work, the right to make
Speaker 1: copies of that work and then distribute or sell them,
Speaker 1: or you know, you just you own that intellectual property.
Speaker 1: No one else can come and make copies of it
Speaker 1: without your permission. The works in this case range from
Speaker 1: the written word to music too, paintings, sculpture, uh to
Speaker 1: digital files. I mean, copyright now applies to lots of stuff.
Speaker 1: Clearly it didn't apply to all of that in the beginning,
Speaker 1: but something that has a vaulved over time. It does
Speaker 1: not include inventions. Those are covered under patent law. And
Speaker 1: then you also have things like trademarks, which make things
Speaker 1: more complicated. I might talk about trademarks and copyright in
Speaker 1: a future episode to kind of talk about how those
Speaker 1: complicate things, because companies have tried to use trademarks in
Speaker 1: order to extend copyright protection. But trademarks last in perpetuity.
Speaker 1: Copyright only lasts a certain amount of time, at least
Speaker 1: in theory. We'll get to all that. So along with
Speaker 1: the right to profit from intellectual property comes with it
Speaker 1: protections against others who are taking a work and profiting
Speaker 1: off of it without permission. You can see the value
Speaker 1: of this concept right away, I imagine. So let's say
Speaker 1: you are a musician and you write a song. It
Speaker 1: was your work, You create the whole piece, You wrote
Speaker 1: the music, and you wrote the lyrics, and you plan
Speaker 1: to earn money through this song. Maybe you're going to
Speaker 1: record it to some form of media and then sell
Speaker 1: copies of the song. So you filed a copyright for
Speaker 1: the song, which gives you the exclusive rights to make
Speaker 1: copies of it uh in whatever format you like, whether
Speaker 1: it's digital files or physical media, or even like sheet music.
Speaker 1: You can charge whatever you like for your work, though
Speaker 1: obviously if you go bonkers and you ask for a
Speaker 1: ridiculously high price, you aren't likely to get a lot
Speaker 1: of takers. You also have the protection should someone else
Speaker 1: start making copies of your song without your permission. Maybe
Speaker 1: they are performing it themselves, in which case they should
Speaker 1: secure a license first, or maybe they're taking your original
Speaker 1: recording and just duplicating it. So let's say that you
Speaker 1: created an MP three file and they just copy the
Speaker 1: MP three file endlessly and start either giving it away
Speaker 1: or selling it to people. You could sue that person,
Speaker 1: and in court you could prove that you hold the
Speaker 1: copyright to that piece of music, and assuming the court
Speaker 1: agrees with that the copyright is legitimate, you could then
Speaker 1: seek damages against the person or entity that made the
Speaker 1: unauthorized copies of your work. Music is actually really a
Speaker 1: special case because you can have multiple copyrights on the work.
Speaker 1: You could have one for the lyrics, then you could
Speaker 1: have another for the musical composition itself, and that would
Speaker 1: mean that someone who wanted to play your music but
Speaker 1: change the lyrics would still potentially be liable for copyright violations.
Speaker 1: But we're going to get back to that a little
Speaker 1: bit later in this episode, but it is something to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. However, Then there are such things as
Speaker 1: mechanical licenses. This sets out the rules for stuff like
Speaker 1: playing recorded music in particular places. So if you've ever
Speaker 1: been to like a restaurant or a theater and you've
Speaker 1: heard music being played over the sound system, chances are
Speaker 1: that that place of business has paid out a license
Speaker 1: fee in order to be able to do that. Intellectual
Speaker 1: property rights get pretty complicated. Uh. It also depends upon
Speaker 1: the size of the venue I might have to do
Speaker 1: a future episode to kind of talk about all the exceptions, because,
Speaker 1: as I said, it does get complicated, and in some cases,
Speaker 1: if it's a very small venue, uh, they can sometimes
Speaker 1: be exempt from having to pay the same sort of
Speaker 1: license fees that larger venues have to pay. And part
Speaker 1: of the argument there is that the number of people
Speaker 1: who would actually experience the music is much smaller because
Speaker 1: the venue is smaller. Anyway, in the old days, as
Speaker 1: in before the printing press, copyright wasn't really that big
Speaker 1: of a thing, Like, there wasn't a big concern for it.
Speaker 1: There were predecessors for formal copyright, but truthfully, there wasn't
Speaker 1: much occasion to use them because the act of copying
Speaker 1: a work involved actually making a copy out by hand,
Speaker 1: handwriting the copy of a written work. This was a
Speaker 1: painstaking process and not something that could be done on
Speaker 1: any sort of scale, and so copyright wasn't as huge
Speaker 1: a concern just because infringement itself was not something that
Speaker 1: was easy to do. And to that the fact that
Speaker 1: much of the world's population was alliterate and there just
Speaker 1: wasn't a foundation for copyright infringement to really take hold.
Speaker 1: Then a smarty pants named Johann Gutenberg had to go
Speaker 1: and invent the movable type printing press, at least the
Speaker 1: European version. I should stress that Europe because other parts
Speaker 1: of the world are actually further advanced with printing technologies
Speaker 1: than Europe was. But this is the one that Western
Speaker 1: cultures tend to talk about because we get a little myopic.
Speaker 1: But i'll i'll set aside the commentary. So with the
Speaker 1: printing press, it became possible to set the type on
Speaker 1: the press and then print out sheets one after the
Speaker 1: other in relatively quick succession. Now, it still took time
Speaker 1: to set the press between pages because you had to
Speaker 1: change all the type out right. You had to remove
Speaker 1: all the type, set the type again, and then print
Speaker 1: the next sheet. So you would typically use the press
Speaker 1: to print a bunch of the same sheet in a
Speaker 1: row before you would reset the type and move on
Speaker 1: to the next sheet. However, you could also use a
Speaker 1: single large sheet of paper to set up multiple pages
Speaker 1: of text, and so you could divide up the quadrants
Speaker 1: of a printing press and change the type up so
Speaker 1: that you are actually creating multiple pages per press, and
Speaker 1: then you fold the paper in such a way that
Speaker 1: that makes all sense. Like if you fold it once
Speaker 1: along a vertical line, so you you fold it in
Speaker 1: half vertically, um then are along the vertical access, I
Speaker 1: should say, then you end up with a folio that
Speaker 1: was a single large sheet of paper that would have
Speaker 1: one page printed on the left side, one page printed
Speaker 1: on the right side. You have a vertical fold in
Speaker 1: the middle, and then you can just keep printing those
Speaker 1: over and over again, and then you bind a bunch
Speaker 1: of those together and you've got a book. Or you
Speaker 1: could do a double fold and you could have a quarto,
Speaker 1: which would also involve you having to make a cut
Speaker 1: along the horizontal line. But then you've got four pages
Speaker 1: per sheet, so you could do that and that it
Speaker 1: means that with one press you're effectively printing four pages,
Speaker 1: and then you let it dry, you flip it over
Speaker 1: and you can print another four pages. Very useful. So
Speaker 1: this was these were different ways that you could end
Speaker 1: up creating book fairly quickly. The process of publishing became
Speaker 1: much faster than with people doing it by hand, but
Speaker 1: there wasn't yet a formalized protection in place for the
Speaker 1: creator of the works, and at this point, the typical
Speaker 1: approach was for an author to receive a flat fee
Speaker 1: for their work, which would then go to a book
Speaker 1: printer to produce, so the printer would take ownership of
Speaker 1: that work from that point forward. Then it was just
Speaker 1: a matter of time before other printers would get hold
Speaker 1: of the book and start making their own copies. At
Speaker 1: least for books that proved to be popular for authors.
Speaker 1: There really wasn't a whole lot of profit in this approach.
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare, who you know you could argue, was one
Speaker 1: of the greatest English writers, mostly known for his plays
Speaker 1: but also his poetry. He never sought out the printing
Speaker 1: of his plays. Others would give it a shot. Either
Speaker 1: they would try to copy down plays as they were
Speaker 1: being performed and then go and print what they had
Speaker 1: trans rived, or they would try to get hold of
Speaker 1: the sides that actors were using in their roles, or
Speaker 1: a combination of the two. It was really only after
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's death that his friends got together and did their
Speaker 1: best to gather his plays and publish them. Now, based
Speaker 1: on what I know about Shakespeare, I suspect the reason
Speaker 1: that he did not seek out publication of his works
Speaker 1: was that it really wasn't where the money would be
Speaker 1: for him. He would get a pay the flat fee
Speaker 1: for every play he wrote. But more importantly, he was
Speaker 1: a part owner of the theater itself, like the Globe
Speaker 1: Theater or the Rose Theater. He was part of the
Speaker 1: company that owned the theater, so that meant he would
Speaker 1: actually take a share of the box office. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, his main goal was to attract crowds to
Speaker 1: the theater. That's where the money was. But you can
Speaker 1: bet that if there had been serious money in publication
Speaker 1: back in those days, Shakespeare would have been all over
Speaker 1: it because a quick glance at some of the lawsuits
Speaker 1: he was involved with during his lifetime indicates he had
Speaker 1: 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 that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But printing presses also meant it was easier to print
Speaker 1: stuff that undermined authority. People who had a bone to
Speaker 1: pick with the folks who were in charge could potentially
Speaker 1: spread their ideas and maybe find sympathetic souls who shared
Speaker 1: those same beliefs. So the printing press could enable existential
Speaker 1: threats to the power structure. And this is where we
Speaker 1: get a predecessor to copyright. Now, this predecessor wasn't so
Speaker 1: much about making sure the author of a book was
Speaker 1: fairly compensated. Instead, it was more about keeping printing houses
Speaker 1: under control. The basic idea was that any business that
Speaker 1: wished to print materials had to first secure an official
Speaker 1: license from, you know, the government of that region. These
Speaker 1: licenses typically meant that a specific printer would be responsible
Speaker 1: for the printing of particular works to the exclusion of
Speaker 1: all other printers. So you might say that this one
Speaker 1: printer can print this one book, and no other printer
Speaker 1: in the region is a allowed to do that, so
Speaker 1: they have a monopoly on that specific title. In fact,
Speaker 1: they called the monopolies. These agreements would last a set
Speaker 1: number of years, which wasn't too different from the concept
Speaker 1: of modern copyrights. If any other printer was found to
Speaker 1: produce a work that some other printer had exclusive rights to,
Speaker 1: that matter could go to court. But this was all
Speaker 1: about the printing houses, not authors. England passed its first
Speaker 1: actual copyright law in seventeen. This law changed things quite
Speaker 1: a bit. A publisher would have a fourteen year period
Speaker 1: of exclusive rights to publish any new book. Existing books
Speaker 1: that the printing house was already printing would enjoy protection
Speaker 1: for twenty one years. After that, the author of the
Speaker 1: work could choose to renew the copyright if the author
Speaker 1: was still alive. Otherwise the work would enter into the
Speaker 1: public domain, meaning anyone would be legally allowed to make
Speaker 1: a copy of that work or use it in any
Speaker 1: way they liked. There were no longer any protections on
Speaker 1: that piece of work, and it was available for any
Speaker 1: public use. The United States wouldn't get its first true
Speaker 1: copyright law until nearly a century later. But let's be fair,
Speaker 1: there was no such thing as the United States in
Speaker 1: seventeen ten, so I'm gonna cut the young nations some
Speaker 1: slack here. The copyright law of the US followed closely
Speaker 1: in the footsteps of the Copyright Act of Britain, which
Speaker 1: was also known as the Statute of Ann as in
Speaker 1: Queen Anne. So the way that the US law worked
Speaker 1: was that an author would register their work with the
Speaker 1: U S District Court of their particular region, and they
Speaker 1: would in return receive an exclusive copyright for fourteen years,
Speaker 1: with the option to renew for a second fourteen year period,
Speaker 1: and after those twenty eight years, assuming that you actually
Speaker 1: renewed your copyright, the work would then enter into the
Speaker 1: public domain with the Statute of Ann and the Copyright
Speaker 1: Act of seventeen nine in the US or at the
Speaker 1: point where authors would get a little more protection and
Speaker 1: a chance to benefit more from their own work. It
Speaker 1: was no longer the case of a one time flat
Speaker 1: fee in every instance. Now, I say authors, but often
Speaker 1: we're really still talking about publishers. Here. The publisher retains
Speaker 1: the copyright because the copyright allows the publisher to you know,
Speaker 1: publish the works. Otherwise the author would have to grant
Speaker 1: permission for each printing, you'd have to have a license
Speaker 1: for it. It all gets clunky. Right that the author
Speaker 1: has exclusive copyright to their work, they have to grant
Speaker 1: permission to whichever entity is creating copies of that work.
Speaker 1: You often see this reflected today in ways that are
Speaker 1: kind of confusing. When you agree to certain platforms, there's
Speaker 1: language there that seems to suggest that anything you post
Speaker 1: on that platform is that platform's property. But usually the
Speaker 1: reasoning for the language is to make sure that the
Speaker 1: platform has the necessary permission to display whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're posting, because otherwise, every single time you posted, you
Speaker 1: would have to have some sort of licensing agreement or
Speaker 1: something that would give permission to the platform to actually
Speaker 1: display the thing you wrote. It gets pretty complicated now.
Speaker 1: The same would be true for most music produced in
Speaker 1: the modern era. The copyright isn't necessarily held by the artist,
Speaker 1: but by a music label. And it's kind of like
Speaker 1: how Thomas Edison made sure that his name was on
Speaker 1: every patent produced out of his business. He might not
Speaker 1: have had a direct hand in the creation of every invention.
Speaker 1: In fact, we know that he didn't have a direct
Speaker 1: hand in a lot of them, but he sure as
Speaker 1: heck made sure that his signature was on the patent
Speaker 1: to every single one, so that he had a right
Speaker 1: to each of them anyway. One of the consequences of
Speaker 1: all of this is that, to this day, getting the
Speaker 1: permission of an author or artist in order to use
Speaker 1: their work typically isn't enough. That's because in many cases
Speaker 1: that individual creator doesn't actually hold the copyright to the work.
Speaker 1: It's more likely that some corporate entity will hold the
Speaker 1: copyright on behalf of that creator. So you really have
Speaker 1: to get the permission of whatever entity holds the copyright
Speaker 1: for any specific intellectual property. In some cases it might
Speaker 1: be an individual creator, in other cases it might be
Speaker 1: a big company. So let's say if you met an
Speaker 1: artist for Disney in a cafe and this artist told you, oh,
Speaker 1: it's totally cool if you use they're drawing of a
Speaker 1: popular Disney character for something you're doing, that's probably not
Speaker 1: good enough because that artist wouldn't even hold the copyright
Speaker 1: for that work. Disney would, and copyright laws would evolve
Speaker 1: quite a lot over the following centuries. They expanded to
Speaker 1: include more types of works, as well as to allow
Speaker 1: for things like licenses, and without these considerations, it might
Speaker 1: be illegal to you know, play playback an album without
Speaker 1: first getting permission of the music label, which is clearly absurd.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have it where you bought an album, you
Speaker 1: went home, and every time you were to play the
Speaker 1: album you first had to get permission from the music
Speaker 1: label to do that. That just doesn't make sense. But
Speaker 1: that's the sort of stuff that actually had to be
Speaker 1: codified into law. It's you know, it's not enough to
Speaker 1: just everyone agree like, oh well, that's absurd. It actually
Speaker 1: had to be written down somewhere and ratified. One of
Speaker 1: the biggest changes to copyright has been how long that
Speaker 1: copyright protection lasts. This also ties into how many capitalist
Speaker 1: societies treat corporations, which is uh ridiculously in my mind.
Speaker 1: So here in the United States in particular, corporations are
Speaker 1: treated legally like a person. But if you think about
Speaker 1: that's kind of bonkers. More than kind of bonkers, I
Speaker 1: should say, people get old, people pass away corporations. Assuming
Speaker 1: that they are run well and they provide some sort
Speaker 1: of goods or services that people want or need, they
Speaker 1: can exist indefinitely. And a corporation that relies heavily on
Speaker 1: intellectual property is quite loath to give up that meal ticket,
Speaker 1: and so corporations over the years have lobbied hard to
Speaker 1: extend copyright in order to prevent the i P that
Speaker 1: they own from falling into the public domain. And then
Speaker 1: they can no longer exclusively exploit that i P. They
Speaker 1: could still exploit it, they can still sell stuff with it,
Speaker 1: just it doesn't stop anyone else from doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the most high profile of all these companies was
Speaker 1: one that seemed fixated on a particular mouse that I've
Speaker 1: already mentioned. I'll explain more after this quick break. Before
Speaker 1: the break, I t s that corporations played a huge
Speaker 1: part in lobbying Congress to extend the protections of copyright,
Speaker 1: and one of those corporations is the Walt Disney Company
Speaker 1: and the cultural phenomenon that is Mickey Mouse. The cartoon
Speaker 1: Steamboat Willie, which was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, was
Speaker 1: released in nineteen twenty eight. Now, at that time, US
Speaker 1: copyright law had a twenty eight year protection limit, which
Speaker 1: could then be renewed for a second twenty eight year term,
Speaker 1: which would provide a total of fifty six years of
Speaker 1: copyright exclusivity to the owner of an i P, but
Speaker 1: then the i P would enter the public domain. That
Speaker 1: means 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,
Speaker 1: right you want to earn money and help contribute to
Speaker 1: your family or households well being. But it's another to
Speaker 1: create generational wealth that removes the need for future generations
Speaker 1: to you know, make any sort of meaningful contribution themselves.
Speaker 1: There are lots of cases where the children of authors
Speaker 1: who were incredibly successful, uh have themselves gone on to
Speaker 1: do amazing things, which is great. But there are also
Speaker 1: cases of people who just kind of, you know, never
Speaker 1: bothered to do anything because they didn't really have a
Speaker 1: need to. They were all of their needs were already
Speaker 1: met because they were earning income on something that their
Speaker 1: parents or grandparents or great grandparents had done, and there
Speaker 1: never was any need for them to do anything. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not super helpful for the general society. Not very healthy
Speaker 1: in my mind anyway, for corporations that owned I P.
Speaker 1: It was a different story, right, because corporations don't die,
Speaker 1: so you can't say the life of a corporation plus
Speaker 1: fifty years. So in this case, the copyright protection extended
Speaker 1: the term for works that had been published before nine
Speaker 1: to a total term of seventy five years of protection.
Speaker 1: Uh the Copyright Extension pushed that that protection of Steamboat
Speaker 1: willie to two thousand three because of that, because it
Speaker 1: was published in nineteen seventy five years later would be
Speaker 1: up to two thousand three. However, in nineteen Congress passed
Speaker 1: the Copyright Term Extension Act, also known as the Sunny
Speaker 1: Buno Copyright Term Extension Act after the late congressman and
Speaker 1: musician Sonny Bono. Bono had passed away in an accident
Speaker 1: while Congress was hashing out this extension bill, so he
Speaker 1: was posthumously honored with the title of the the Act.
Speaker 1: This act extended the copyright protection for any work published
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty three or later, and the extension meant
Speaker 1: that the copyright protection now went from the life of
Speaker 1: the author plus fifty years to the life of the
Speaker 1: author plus seventy years for those works that were created
Speaker 1: by an individual artist, and it meant for works of
Speaker 1: corporate authorship, you know, works that like Steamboat Willie from Disney,
Speaker 1: they went from having seventy five years of protection to
Speaker 1: either ninety five years after publication or one twenty years
Speaker 1: from 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 hundred twenty years then
Speaker 1: time of publication in ninety five years. Anyway, any published
Speaker 1: work before nineteen seventy eight would get an additional twenty
Speaker 1: years of copyright protection, so they went from seventy five
Speaker 1: years to ninety five years, and those extra twenty years
Speaker 1: meant that Steamboat Willie will now enter public domain essentially
Speaker 1: at the beginning of twenty twenty four, unless between now
Speaker 1: and then there's yet another change to copyright law, which
Speaker 1: seems highly unlikely because there is a large opposition to that.
Speaker 1: Since the Copyright Act I've mentioned so far retroactively protected
Speaker 1: any work published after nineteen twenty three, it meant that
Speaker 1: we finally saw some published works go into the public
Speaker 1: domain beginning in twenty nineteen. So on January one, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: any copyrighted works that were published in nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: with a few exceptions that have to do with music
Speaker 1: because music is complicated. Otherwise, they entered the public domain
Speaker 1: at that point. This was the first time in twenty
Speaker 1: one years in a large collection of works fell out
Speaker 1: of copyright protection and into the public domain, only because
Speaker 1: of the timing of changes to copyright law in the
Speaker 1: United States. So works from nineteen twenty two had entered
Speaker 1: the public domain back in nineteen, but then you had
Speaker 1: the change to copyright law, and so any works from
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three enjoyed twenty more years of protection because
Speaker 1: of that recent extension, and thus they only entered the
Speaker 1: public domain in twenty nineteen. That's the difference that a
Speaker 1: single year can make. This year in one we saw
Speaker 1: works like f Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby go into
Speaker 1: the public domain. You can now make as many copies
Speaker 1: of The Great Gatsby as you like. You can hand
Speaker 1: them out for free, you could charge for them if
Speaker 1: you want to. It's public domain. Dr Doolittle's Zoo also
Speaker 1: went into public domain this year. Agatha Christie's The Secret
Speaker 1: of Chimneys made its exit from copyright protection. The nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five silent film version of been Her, not the
Speaker 1: Charlton Heston version, but the silent film version is in
Speaker 1: public domain, as is lawn cheneye The Phantom of the Opera.
Speaker 1: Also the silent film version of Wizard Oz. Again not
Speaker 1: the big musical version, you know, not the follow the
Speaker 1: Yellow Brick Road version, but the silent film version of
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz is also in the public domain this year.
Speaker 1: Now that means that if you want to make copies
Speaker 1: of lawn Chenese Phantom of the Opera and you want
Speaker 1: to distribute those widely, if you want to post the
Speaker 1: entire movie on YouTube, you can. You can do it
Speaker 1: for free. You could also, you know, sell DVDs of
Speaker 1: it if you wanted to. You could. You could have
Speaker 1: press DVDs with Lawn Cheney's Phantom of the Opera and
Speaker 1: you could sell them. I don't know if anyone would
Speaker 1: buy them, but you could do it. You can do
Speaker 1: it here, you can do it there, you can do
Speaker 1: it everywhere in the US. Anyway, it is no longer
Speaker 1: in copyright. Now, backtracking just a little bit, the printing
Speaker 1: press had made copyright protection more or less a necessity
Speaker 1: to prevent publishers from pouncing on each other and flooding
Speaker 1: the market with copies of various books. But for a
Speaker 1: really long time, copyright was just something that big companies
Speaker 1: were mostly concerned with. It was a non factor for
Speaker 1: the average person. I mean, it affected us, but we
Speaker 1: didn't come into any sort of conflict with copyright protection
Speaker 1: because most of us just didn't have access to equipment
Speaker 1: that we would need to replicate an original work. If
Speaker 1: back in the mid nineteen twenties you managed to get
Speaker 1: 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 a 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 strenuously and to proclaim that should these technologies
Speaker 1: fall into the uh 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. Think 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 in 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 those 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 then if I were
Speaker 1: to say, include thirty minutes of the movie surrounded by
Speaker 1: like five minutes of criticism. Now, does that mean there's
Speaker 1: a specific safe amount of copyrighted material that you can
Speaker 1: use without fear of retribution. No. There is a common
Speaker 1: misconception that if you use less than say, fifteen seconds
Speaker 1: of audio from a source or six seconds or whatever,
Speaker 1: that that's small enough to be fair use and no
Speaker 1: one's going to come after you. That is just not true.
Speaker 1: Or rather, it's it's not a guarantee. Specifically, it's not
Speaker 1: a guarantee if you're not using that as some form
Speaker 1: of commentary or criticism on the work itself. If you're
Speaker 1: using it as like the button to a moment, you know,
Speaker 1: like a sound bite or whatever, there's very little support
Speaker 1: for a fair use argument there. So if I just
Speaker 1: filled up this podcast with sound bites from various films
Speaker 1: and music, TV shows and radio spots and stuff like
Speaker 1: that without paying a license for all of those things,
Speaker 1: I would be flying pretty darn close to the sun,
Speaker 1: because unless I'm using those snippets in very specific ways
Speaker 1: such as to criticize those original works that the snippets
Speaker 1: belong to, 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
Speaker 1: popularity we could argue comes from its use of our
Speaker 1: intellectual property. We can get a piece of that that
Speaker 1: pie like that. That would be the thought process, and
Speaker 1: it could actually work in court. So it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I'm bulletproof if I'm just using tiny little clips. It's
Speaker 1: not until it goes to court that I really know
Speaker 1: if I'm going to have to pay or not. So
Speaker 1: fair use isn't a concept that has hard borders to it.
Speaker 1: It's all interpretive stuff. And here's the key to all
Speaker 1: of it. 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 the film company A twenty four which released
Speaker 1: and distributed the film here in the unit it states.
Speaker 1: Let's say that that that company came after me for
Speaker 1: copyright infringement, and I would have to defend my use
Speaker 1: of those clips in court, and I would have to
Speaker 1: cite fair use in that process. Throughout the court proceedings,
Speaker 1: I would likely have to prove that the way I
Speaker 1: use those clips was in fact to critique the film,
Speaker 1: and that the excerpts I used were appropriate and constituted
Speaker 1: a relatively small percentage of the overall critique and a
Speaker 1: very small percentage of the original film. Courts decide on
Speaker 1: a case by case basis if a particular instance is
Speaker 1: fair use or not. There isn't a blanket fair use defense.
Speaker 1: You 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 that call each other up and they work
Speaker 1: things out, and you might have a licensing agreement or
Speaker 1: you I agree to a settlement, but it rarely goes
Speaker 1: to court. When it comes to individuals. Most of us
Speaker 1: don't have access to that kind of legal defense. So
Speaker 1: for us, it's like a massive, well funded company with
Speaker 1: high paid lawyers versus the little guy, and it means
Speaker 1: that the little guy has to shell out the big
Speaker 1: bucks in order to defend themselves against the corporations. Even
Speaker 1: if the little guy is totally in the right. If
Speaker 1: the the use is inarguably fair use, you don't get
Speaker 1: to that decision magically. You have to go to court
Speaker 1: for it, and court is expensive. We're going to pause
Speaker 1: the conversation right here, take a quick break, and we'll
Speaker 1: be right back now. The courts tend to look at
Speaker 1: four factors when deciding if any given instance come institute's
Speaker 1: fair use. One is the purpose and character of the
Speaker 1: use of the original material, including whether the use is
Speaker 1: for a commercial nature or is nonprofit and educational. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if I'm making videos where I critique films,
Speaker 1: and I include clips of those films in the videos,
Speaker 1: and I'm monetizing those critique videos, that can be a
Speaker 1: little bit of a strike against me because I'm using
Speaker 1: someone else's work in something on my own in order
Speaker 1: to make money. That's not a failure rail the gate,
Speaker 1: but it does make my argument harder. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that a court is going to decide I'm not
Speaker 1: engaging in fair use. But in general, if the use
Speaker 1: is nonprofit and it's educational, it fits more easily into
Speaker 1: the fair use category, and courts tend to be a
Speaker 1: bit more forgiving. Then there's the nature of the copyrighted
Speaker 1: work itself. In general, it is easier to make a
Speaker 1: fair use argument if the thing you're sampling rum is
Speaker 1: a non fictional work. Works that are about creative expression,
Speaker 1: like novels or movies, have a higher burden of proof
Speaker 1: than works that are nonfiction. So, for example, in this podcast,
Speaker 1: I will sometimes quote specific sources those are nonfiction sources,
Speaker 1: and I quote from them to establish facts. That's easier
Speaker 1: to defend as fair use than if I were to include,
Speaker 1: say a minute long audio clip from a science fiction
Speaker 1: television show that's a work of fiction. It's a work
Speaker 1: of creative endeavors that is harder to justify as fair
Speaker 1: use unless I'm specifically critiquing the show itself. Then comes
Speaker 1: the amount and substantiality of the portion of the copyrighted
Speaker 1: work that I used in my critique of The Lighthouse.
Speaker 1: If I'm using very short clips that just show up
Speaker 1: in my video for like five or ten seconds each
Speaker 1: as I talk about lighting techniques, that's easier to defend
Speaker 1: as fair use. I'm not showing a signific get part
Speaker 1: of the movie. People aren't going to feel like they
Speaker 1: saw the entire film by watching my critique. They're just
Speaker 1: getting a flavor of what I'm talking about and getting
Speaker 1: an understanding of what I mean when I'm critiquing the
Speaker 1: use of lighting. If I'm, however, using very long stretches
Speaker 1: of the original film, particularly stretches that don't include changes
Speaker 1: in lighting, well that's going to be a lot harder
Speaker 1: to defend in court. And then there's the effect of
Speaker 1: the use upon the potential market for the copyrighted work.
Speaker 1: If my derivative work could possibly hurt the sales of
Speaker 1: the original by displacing the sales of that original, that's
Speaker 1: a problem. And this one is a tricky one, right
Speaker 1: because what if I'm not critiquing the technique of a film,
Speaker 1: but the quality of a film. And what if I
Speaker 1: present a video where I do an extensive tear down
Speaker 1: of a movie and I explain how I think it
Speaker 1: is not a good film, or I'm arguing that people
Speaker 1: shouldn't go see that movie, that it would be a
Speaker 1: waste of their time and money. Well, if folks value
Speaker 1: my judgment, I could well be said to have a
Speaker 1: negative impact on the sales of the original work. However,
Speaker 1: generally that would still be protected. However, if I were
Speaker 1: to use the original in some way that would make
Speaker 1: people want to buy my derivative work or consume it
Speaker 1: for free or whatever instead of the original, well that's
Speaker 1: harder to defend. So let's say, like in my critique
Speaker 1: of The Lighthouse, I included the entire film of The
Speaker 1: Lighthouse in my critique. That would be very hard to defend,
Speaker 1: not just because I'm using a substantial amount of the
Speaker 1: original work, but also the company did argue, Hey, why
Speaker 1: would people pay to see our movie if they can
Speaker 1: see it for free? Just wrapped up in the context
Speaker 1: of this supposed criticism video, the copyright holder it can
Speaker 1: make a valid claim that my derivative work would not
Speaker 1: exist without the copyrighted original piece, and yet it was
Speaker 1: a 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 concerned,
Speaker 1: or licensing fees. Two. However, that just covers the music itself.
Speaker 1: A performance of Oh to Joy will have its own copyright,
Speaker 1: which dates to the recording of that piece. So even
Speaker 1: though the music is in public domain, a performance likely
Speaker 1: is not. Unless you're using a performance of Oh to
Speaker 1: Joy the dates from before the nineteen twenties, So you
Speaker 1: could perform to Joy yourself in your project, you'd be
Speaker 1: good to go. The music is in the public domain,
Speaker 1: the performance is yours. You're fine. But if you wanted to, say,
Speaker 1: use a recording of the London Philharmonic's performance that they
Speaker 1: did sometime in the nineteen nineties of Oh Joy, well,
Speaker 1: then you would have to deal with some licensing arrangements
Speaker 1: to get the proper permissions to make use of that music.
Speaker 1: Because while the musics in the public domain, the performance
Speaker 1: is not. Then there are other things to consider as well.
Speaker 1: So remember when I said parody is kind of a
Speaker 1: special case with fair use. This one gets even more
Speaker 1: accomplish catd than other forms. So technically parody falls under
Speaker 1: fair use if it falls under the criticism and comment
Speaker 1: consideration For fair use, A typical definition of parody is
Speaker 1: quote and imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist,
Speaker 1: or genre would deliberate exaggeration for comic effect end quote,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't automatically mean that it's fair use. For
Speaker 1: it to be fair use, that specific parody really needs
Speaker 1: to comment upon or criticize the original work that it
Speaker 1: is parodying. For that reason, some but not all, of
Speaker 1: weird Al Yankovic's parody songs would easily fall under fair use,
Speaker 1: and others would be questionable. Now, I mentioned weird Al
Speaker 1: because he's the most famous parody artist I can think of,
Speaker 1: that probably the one that most people have heard of,
Speaker 1: and some of his parodies do tend to target the
Speaker 1: original work. So Smells like Nirvana is a parody of
Speaker 1: the nerv on a song smells like teen Spirit, and
Speaker 1: it's all about critiquing the original song. There are lyrics
Speaker 1: of what is this song all about? Can't figure any
Speaker 1: lyrics out that comments on the lyrics of the original work.
Speaker 1: Other verses poke fun at Kurt Cobain's slurring and mumbling
Speaker 1: of words, making it hard to understand what is actually
Speaker 1: being sung, So that song parody would probably hold up
Speaker 1: under fair use. But then take a song like Foil.
Speaker 1: Foil is a parody of Lord's song Royals, So it's
Speaker 1: using the music and lyrical structure of Royals. You know,
Speaker 1: they change the actual lyrics, but's the same rhyme scheme
Speaker 1: and scanshion of Royals. But the song Foil isn't a
Speaker 1: commentary on Royals. Instead, it's a comedic song about aluminum foil,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure you couldn't make an argument that
Speaker 1: it's somehow commenting on the original work, which means that
Speaker 1: would be harder to defend as fair use. It's not
Speaker 1: a bad song, by the way. This isn't a commentary
Speaker 1: on the quality of the parody, but rather whether it
Speaker 1: would fall under the consideration of fair use or not. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, weird Al makes it a practice to
Speaker 1: get permission to do his parodies before he does them.
Speaker 1: He licenses the songs. In cases like smells like Nirvana,
Speaker 1: he might have been able to skip that step, or
Speaker 1: more likely his music label would have if they were,
Speaker 1: you know, willing to defend any lawsuits that came their
Speaker 1: way as a result, But as both a courtesy and
Speaker 1: kind of a necessity, he reaches out before recording parodies. Usually, um,
Speaker 1: there's at least one version of this where things didn't
Speaker 1: work out, though actually there's a couple I can think of,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna mention one in particular. So back in
Speaker 1: two thousand six, weird Al Yankovic was working on an
Speaker 1: album and he wanted to include a parody of the
Speaker 1: James Blunt song You're Beautiful. Yankovic's version was a parody
Speaker 1: called You're Pitiful about a middle aged dude who serious
Speaker 1: down on his luck. Blunt was receptive and he gave
Speaker 1: the 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: innocent of infringement was more expensive than settling. It's pretty
Speaker 1: darn brutal. Now, what about all those posts and YouTube
Speaker 1: videos that say no copyright infringement intended? Those are pretty
Speaker 1: much worthless. It's akin to posting on Facebook that you
Speaker 1: aren't giving Facebook the rights to your data. That's also
Speaker 1: useless because just by signing on to Facebook, and making
Speaker 1: an account, you have to agree to Facebook's terms of service.
Speaker 1: That kind of supersedes your little post that says you're
Speaker 1: not in favor of Facebook using your data. Facebook's responses
Speaker 1: too bad, because you agreed to it by being on
Speaker 1: the platform. Now that's part of our terms of service.
Speaker 1: If you don't want us to take your data, don't
Speaker 1: 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 know
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 a British accent,
Speaker 1: so 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 really,
Speaker 1: what it boils down to is that copyright law itself
Speaker 1: is in dire need of a full rewrite. But that's
Speaker 1: dangerous because the parties that are particularly interested in a
Speaker 1: rewrite of copyright law are not looking to make it better.
Speaker 1: They're looking to make it last longer. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode. Later this week, we'll pick back up with
Speaker 1: more about copyright, fair use and piracy and things of
Speaker 1: that nature and talk about the problems that technology have
Speaker 1: created for companies as well as the problems companies have
Speaker 1: placed upon people and more so. I hope you enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: You have any requests for things I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is text Stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tex
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.