Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and How the Tech
Speaker 1: are You. This episode, originally published May seventeenth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: is called Copyright and Fair Use. I feel it's always
Speaker 1: important to revisit this topic because it's a it's one
Speaker 1: that's a little complicated, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have misconceptions about what fair use is and how
Speaker 1: it works. So enjoy and I'll chat with you a
Speaker 1: little bit at the very end. It has been a
Speaker 1: while since I've done an episode about the concepts of
Speaker 1: copyright and fair use, and after I keep seeing the
Speaker 1: phrase no copyright infringement intended over and over on places
Speaker 1: like you Tube 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: copyright infringement, and because various governments and around the world
Speaker 1: have passed legislation to, you know, specifically tackle copyright infringement,
Speaker 1: and companies have lobbied endlessly for more restrictive copyright rules.
Speaker 1: I think it fits the scope of tech stuff, particularly
Speaker 1: since a lot of these laws were formed in reaction
Speaker 1: to changes in technology. So first, let's kind of define
Speaker 1: what copyright is now. Essentially, copyright guarantees the creator of
Speaker 1: a work or an entity that has been designated by
Speaker 1: the creator of the work, the right to profit off
Speaker 1: of that work, the right to make copies of that
Speaker 1: 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 to sculpture 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 evaulved 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 trade in order to extend
Speaker 1: copyright protection. But trademark's 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 file the copyright for the song, which gives
Speaker 1: you the exclusive rights to make copies of it in
Speaker 1: whatever format you like, whether it's digital files or physical
Speaker 1: media or even like sheet music. You can charge whatever
Speaker 1: you like for your work, though obviously if you go
Speaker 1: bonkers and you ask for ridiculously high price, you aren't
Speaker 1: likely to get a lot of takers. You also have
Speaker 1: the protection should someone else start making copies of your
Speaker 1: song without your permission. Maybe they are performing it themselves,
Speaker 1: in which case they should secure a license first, or
Speaker 1: 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 a restaurant or a
Speaker 1: theater and you've heard music being played over the sound system,
Speaker 1: chances are that that place of business has paid out
Speaker 1: a license fee in order to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: Intellectual property rights get pretty complicated. 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,
Speaker 1: because as I said, it does get complicated, and in
Speaker 1: some cases, if it's a very small venue, they can
Speaker 1: sometimes be exempt from having to pay the same sort
Speaker 1: of license fees that larger venues have to pay. And
Speaker 1: part of the argument there is that the number of
Speaker 1: people who would actually experience the music is much smaller
Speaker 1: because the venue is smaller. Anyway, in the old days,
Speaker 1: as in before the printing press, copyright wasn't really that
Speaker 1: big of a thing, Like, there wasn't a big concern
Speaker 1: for it. There were predecessors for formal copyright, but truthfully,
Speaker 1: there wasn't much occasion to use them because the act
Speaker 1: of copying a work involved actually making a copy out
Speaker 1: by hand, handwriting the copy of a written work. This
Speaker 1: was a painstaking process and not something that could be
Speaker 1: done on any sort of scale. And so copyright wasn't
Speaker 1: as huge a concern just because infringement it's was not
Speaker 1: something that was easy to do. Add to that the
Speaker 1: fact that much of the world's population was illiterate and
Speaker 1: there just wasn't a foundation for copyright infringement to really
Speaker 1: take hold. Then a smarty pants named Johann Gutenberg had
Speaker 1: to go and invent the movable type printing press, at
Speaker 1: least the European version. I should stress that Europe because
Speaker 1: other parts of the world were actually further advanced with
Speaker 1: printing technologies than Europe was. But this is the one
Speaker 1: that Western cultures tend to talk about because we get
Speaker 1: a little myopic. But I'll set aside the commentary. So
Speaker 1: with the printing press, it became possible to set the
Speaker 1: type on the press and then print out sheets one
Speaker 1: after the other in relatively quick succession. Now, it still
Speaker 1: took time to set the press between pages because you
Speaker 1: had to change all the type out right, You had
Speaker 1: to remove all the type, set the type again, and
Speaker 1: then print the next sheet. So you would typically use
Speaker 1: the press to print a bunch of the same sheet
Speaker 1: in a row before you would reset the type and
Speaker 1: move on to the next sheet. However, you could also
Speaker 1: use a single large sheet of paper to set out
Speaker 1: multiple pages of text, and so you could divide up
Speaker 1: the quadrants of a printing press and change the type
Speaker 1: up so that you are actually creating multiple pages per press.
Speaker 1: And then you fold the paper in such a way
Speaker 1: that that makes all sense, like if you fold it
Speaker 1: once along a vertical line, so you fold it in
Speaker 1: half vertically then or along the vertical axis, I should say,
Speaker 1: Then you end up with a folio that was a
Speaker 1: single large sheet of paper that would have one page
Speaker 1: printed on the left side, one page printed on the
Speaker 1: right side. You have a vertical fold in the middle,
Speaker 1: and then you can just keep printing those over and
Speaker 1: over again, and then you bind a bunch of those
Speaker 1: together and you've got a book. Or you could do
Speaker 1: a double fold, and you could have a quarto, which
Speaker 1: would also involve you having to make a cut along
Speaker 1: the horizontal line. But then you've got four pages per sheet,
Speaker 1: so you could do that, and that means that with
Speaker 1: one press you're effectively printing four pages. 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 behind, but there wasn't yet a formalized protection
Speaker 1: in place for the creator of the works, and at
Speaker 1: this point, the typical approach was for an author to
Speaker 1: receive a flat fee for their work, which would then
Speaker 1: go to a book printer to produce, so the printer
Speaker 1: 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 all, 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 plays 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: paid 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 the Rose Theater, he was part of
Speaker 1: the company that owned the theater, so that meant he
Speaker 1: 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: a great artist also a business guy, and had publishing
Speaker 1: been a bigger business for the author, he certainly would
Speaker 1: have gone that route. I'm sure of it. Now. The
Speaker 1: printing press was a truly transformational piece of technology. It
Speaker 1: became easier to produce many copies of a work book.
Speaker 1: Printing businesses, which would evolve into true publishing houses, began
Speaker 1: to pop up all over Europe, and the powers that be,
Speaker 1: that is, the Church and the various governments of Europe,
Speaker 1: viewed book printers as both an asset and a potential threat.
Speaker 1: Through the printers, these organizations could spread information quickly. The
Speaker 1: Bible was a very early candidate for printing, as the
Speaker 1: Gutenberg Bible proves and governments could use printing presses to
Speaker 1: spread 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 the government of that region. These licenses typically
Speaker 1: meant that a specific printer would be responsible for the
Speaker 1: printing of particular works to the exclusion of all other printers.
Speaker 1: So you might say that this one printer can print
Speaker 1: this one book, and no other printer in the region
Speaker 1: is allowed to do that, so they have a monopoly
Speaker 1: on that specific title. In fact, they called the monopolies.
Speaker 1: These agreements would last a set number of years, which
Speaker 1: wasn't too different from the concept of modern copyrights. If
Speaker 1: any other printer was found to produce a work that
Speaker 1: some other printer had exclusive rights to, that matter could
Speaker 1: go 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 ten. This law changed things quite a bit. A
Speaker 1: publisher would have a fourteen year period of exclusive rights
Speaker 1: to publish any new book. Existing books that the printing
Speaker 1: house 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 anyone
Speaker 1: would be legally allowed to make a copy of that
Speaker 1: work or use it in any way they liked. There
Speaker 1: 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 going to cut the young nation some slack here.
Speaker 1: The copyright law of the US followed closely in the
Speaker 1: footsteps of the Copyright Act of Britain, which was also
Speaker 1: known as the Statute of Anne as in Queen Anne.
Speaker 1: So the way that the US law worked was that
Speaker 1: an author would read just through their work with the
Speaker 1: US District Court of their particular region, and they would
Speaker 1: in return receive an exclusive copyright for fourteen years, with
Speaker 1: 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 ninety 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 fee.
Speaker 1: In every instance now I say authors, but often we're
Speaker 1: really still talking about publishers. Here. The publisher retains the
Speaker 1: 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. If the author
Speaker 1: has exclusive copyright to their work, they have to grant
Speaker 1: permission to whichever entity is reading 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
Speaker 1: artist but by a music label. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like how Thomas Edison made sure that his name was
Speaker 1: on every patent produced out of his business. He might
Speaker 1: not have had a direct hand in the creation of reinvention.
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 their 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 back 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 album,
Speaker 1: you first had to get permission from the music label
Speaker 1: to do that. That just doesn't make sense. But that's
Speaker 1: the sort of stuff that actually had to be codified
Speaker 1: into law. It's you know, it's not enough to just
Speaker 1: everyone agree like, oh well, that's absurd. It actually had
Speaker 1: to be written down somewhere and ratified. One of the
Speaker 1: biggest changes to copyright has been how long that copyright
Speaker 1: protection lasts. This also ties into how many capitalist societies
Speaker 1: treat corporations, which is ridiculously in my mind. So here
Speaker 1: in the United States, in particular, corporations are treated legally
Speaker 1: like a person. But if you think about it, that's
Speaker 1: kind of bonkers. More than kind of bonkers. I should say,
Speaker 1: people get old. People pass away corporations. Assuming that they
Speaker 1: are run well and they provide some sort of goods
Speaker 1: or services that people want or need, they can exist indefinitely.
Speaker 1: And a corporation that relies heavily on intellectual property is
Speaker 1: quite loath to give up that meal ticket. And so
Speaker 1: corporations over the years have lobbied hard to extend copyright
Speaker 1: in order to prevent the IP that they own from
Speaker 1: falling into the public domain. And then they can no
Speaker 1: longer exclusively exploit that IP. 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 teased that corporations played a huge part in lobbying
Speaker 1: Congress to extend the protections of copyright. And one of
Speaker 1: those corporations is the Walt Disney Company and the cultural
Speaker 1: phenomenon that is Mickey Mouse. The cartoon Steamboat Willie, which
Speaker 1: was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, was released in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight. Now, at that time, US copyright law had
Speaker 1: a twenty eight year protection limit, which could then be
Speaker 1: renewed for a second twenty eight year term, which would
Speaker 1: provide a total of fis fifty six years of copyright
Speaker 1: exclusivity to the owner of an IP, But then the
Speaker 1: IP would enter the public domain. That means that if
Speaker 1: copyright law had remained unchanged since Steamboat Willie, Steamboat Willy
Speaker 1: would have entered the public domain back in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, as of the recording of this podcast, Steamboat
Speaker 1: Willie is not in the public domain yet, so things
Speaker 1: did not remain the same. By the nineteen seventies, the
Speaker 1: Disney Company was lobbying hard to change copyright laws, and
Speaker 1: 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 gearuaranteeing 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 household's 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 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 a 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. Not super helpful
Speaker 1: for the general society. Not very healthy in my mind anyway.
Speaker 1: For corporations that owned IP it was a different story, right,
Speaker 1: because corporations don't die, so you can't say the life
Speaker 1: of a corporation plus fifty years. So in this case,
Speaker 1: the Copyright Protection extended the term for works that had
Speaker 1: been published before nineteen seven seventy eight to a total
Speaker 1: term of seventy five years of protection. The Copyright Extension
Speaker 1: pushed that protection of Steamboat Willy to two thousand and
Speaker 1: three because of that, because it was published in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight, seventy five years later would be up to
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. However, in nineteen ninety eight, Congress
Speaker 1: passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, also known as the
Speaker 1: Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, after the late congressman
Speaker 1: and musician Sonny Bono Bono had passed away in an
Speaker 1: accident while Congress was hashing out this extension bill, so
Speaker 1: he was posthumously honored with the title of 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 Willy from Disney,
Speaker 1: they went from having seventy five years of protection to
Speaker 1: either ninety five years after publication or one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty years from the date of creation, whichever ended earlier.
Speaker 1: So you know, corporations might create something but not yet
Speaker 1: publish it, so in some cases you would actually have
Speaker 1: a shorter period between time of creation and one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty years than time of publication. In ninety five
Speaker 1: years anyway, any published work before nineteen seventy eight would
Speaker 1: get an additional twenty years of copyright protection, so it
Speaker 1: went from seventy five years to ninety five years, And
Speaker 1: those extra twenty years meant that Steamboat Willy will now
Speaker 1: enter public domain essentially at the beginning of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: unless between now and then there's yet another change to
Speaker 1: copyright law, which seems highly unlikely because there is a
Speaker 1: large opposition to that. Since the Copyright Act I've mentioned
Speaker 1: so far retroactively protected any word published after nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: it meant that we finally saw some published works go
Speaker 1: into the public domain beginning in twenty nineteen. So on
Speaker 1: January first, twenty nineteen, any copyrighted works that were published
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty three, with a few exceptions that have
Speaker 1: to do with music because music is complicated, otherwise, they
Speaker 1: entered the public domain at that point. This was the
Speaker 1: first time in twenty one years that a large collection
Speaker 1: of works fell out of copyright protection 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 ninety eight,
Speaker 1: but then you had the change to copyright law, and
Speaker 1: so any works from nineteen twenty three enjoyed twenty more
Speaker 1: years of protection because of that recent extension, and thus
Speaker 1: they only entered the public domain in twenty nineteen. That's
Speaker 1: the difference that a single year can make. This year,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, we saw works like F. Scott
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby go into the public domain. You
Speaker 1: can now make as many copies of The Great Gatsby
Speaker 1: as you like. You can hand them out for free.
Speaker 1: You could charge for them if you want to. It's
Speaker 1: public domain. Doctor Doolittle's Zoo also went into public domain
Speaker 1: this year. Agatha Christie's The Secret of Chimney's made its
Speaker 1: exit from copyright protection. The nineteen twenty five silent film
Speaker 1: version of Ben her not the Charlton Heston version, but
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenty five silent film version is in public domain,
Speaker 1: as is Lawn Cheney's The Phantom of the Opera. Also,
Speaker 1: the silent film version of Wizard of 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 into public domain this year.
Speaker 1: Now that means that if you want to make copies
Speaker 1: of lawn Cheney's Fantom 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 press DVDs with
Speaker 1: Lawn Cheney's Venom of the Opera, and you could sell them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone would buy them, but you
Speaker 1: could do it. You can do it here, you can
Speaker 1: do it there, You can do it everywhere in the US. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it is no longer in copyright now, backtracking just a
Speaker 1: little bit, the printing press had made copyright protection more
Speaker 1: or less a necessity to prevent publishers from pouncing on
Speaker 1: each other and flooding the market with copies of various books.
Speaker 1: But for a really long time, copyright was just something
Speaker 1: that big companies were mostly concerned with. It was a
Speaker 1: non 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 people yourself, you know, like
Speaker 1: 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 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 company 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 hands of the common, unwashed masses like myself,
Speaker 1: that the era of stuff like film or television or
Speaker 1: popular music would all come to an end and the
Speaker 1: entire industry would crash down on itself and we would
Speaker 1: then be back to banging rocks together for entertainment. News Alert.
Speaker 1: None of that happened, but in the process we saw
Speaker 1: lots of other laws passed that expanded copyright protection by
Speaker 1: creating a pretty extensive framework for prosecution should an IP
Speaker 1: holder discover that someone is copied or distributed stuff that
Speaker 1: they hold the rights to without proper authorization. I will
Speaker 1: cover more of those in the next episode. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons the public domain is important is that
Speaker 1: works can have a great deal of relevance and usefulness
Speaker 1: many years after they were published. Think of all the
Speaker 1: classics that are out there that have stood the test
Speaker 1: of time. But if copyright lasted forever, these works would
Speaker 1: be under a tight restriction in perpetuity. Public domain means
Speaker 1: that eventually these works will become widely accessible. It's balancing
Speaker 1: out the benefits that go to the IP holder against
Speaker 1: the benefits of society as a whole. All right, But
Speaker 1: what about fair use? Okay? So, fair use is a
Speaker 1: concept that allows someone to use part of a copyrighted
Speaker 1: work that without permission in one of several ways, and
Speaker 1: it's fairly narrow in its scope. But also kind of
Speaker 1: fuzzy at the edges, so it's narrow in scope, but
Speaker 1: there are no hard yes or no answers to this stuff.
Speaker 1: In general, fair use allows someone to make limited use
Speaker 1: of a portion of a copyrighted work for the purposes
Speaker 1: of news reporting, research, teaching, or criticism and commentary. Parody
Speaker 1: falls into that last category as well, but we're going
Speaker 1: to 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 criticis, 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 lucy 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 gonna
Speaker 1: come after you. That is just not true. Or rather,
Speaker 1: it's not a guarantee. Specifically, it's not a guarantee if
Speaker 1: you're not using that as some form of commentary or
Speaker 1: criticism on the work itself, if you're using it as
Speaker 1: like the button to a moment, you know, like a
Speaker 1: SoundBite or whatever, there's very little support for a fair
Speaker 1: use argument there. So if I just filled up this
Speaker 1: podcast with soundbites from various films and music, TV shows
Speaker 1: and radio spots and stuff like that, without paying a
Speaker 1: license for all of those things, I would be flying
Speaker 1: pretty darn close to the sun. Because unless I'm using
Speaker 1: those snippets in very specific ways, such as to criticize
Speaker 1: those original works that the snippet it's belonged to, or
Speaker 1: to report on the news of those snippets, well, I
Speaker 1: would be infringing on copyright. That doesn't necessarily mean anyone
Speaker 1: is going to come after me. I mean chances are
Speaker 1: for really small stuff, I'd probably be okay unless my
Speaker 1: podcast got wildly successful, in which case I could represent
Speaker 1: a pretty lucrative target. If the copyright holders looked at
Speaker 1: my podcast and said, well, that show is making x
Speaker 1: 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 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 I'm 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 the film company A twenty four, which released
Speaker 1: and distributed the film here in the United States. Let's
Speaker 1: say that company came after me for copyright infringement, and
Speaker 1: I would have to defend my use of those clips
Speaker 1: in court, and I would have to cite fair use
Speaker 1: in that process. Throughout the court proceedings, I would likely
Speaker 1: have to prove that the way I use those clips
Speaker 1: was in fact to critique the film, and that the
Speaker 1: excerpts I used were appropriate and constituted a relatively small
Speaker 1: percentage of the overall critique and a very small percentage
Speaker 1: of the original film. Courts decide on a case by
Speaker 1: case basis if a particular instance is fair use or not.
Speaker 1: There isn't a blanket fair use defense. You gotta go
Speaker 1: in front of the courts to do it. And this
Speaker 1: is what I meant by that nuclear arsenal. When it
Speaker 1: comes to companies versus companies, typically you have lawyers on
Speaker 1: both sides who are just perpetually employed by these companies
Speaker 1: that 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 use
Speaker 1: is inarguably fair use, you don't get to that decision magically.
Speaker 1: You have to go to court for it, and court
Speaker 1: is expensive. We're going to pause the conversation right here,
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and we'll be right back now.
Speaker 1: The courts tend to look at four factors when deciding
Speaker 1: if any given instance constitutes fair use one is the
Speaker 1: purpose and character of the use of the original material,
Speaker 1: including whether the use is for a commercial nature or
Speaker 1: is nonprofit and educational. So, in other words, if I'm
Speaker 1: making videos where I critique films and I include clips
Speaker 1: of those films in the videos, and I'm monetizing those
Speaker 1: critique videos, that can be a little bit of a
Speaker 1: strike against me because I'm using someone else's work in
Speaker 1: something on my own in order to make money. That's
Speaker 1: not a failure rail of 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 nonfiction sources and I quote from them
Speaker 1: to establish facts. That's easier to defend as fair use
Speaker 1: than if I were to include, say a minute long
Speaker 1: audio clip from a science fiction television show that's a
Speaker 1: work of fiction. It's a work of creative endeavors. That
Speaker 1: is harder to 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 as 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 same 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 copyright 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 going to make a couple more points
Speaker 1: before we wrap this up. 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: Ode to Joy is part of Beethoven's Symphony number nine.
Speaker 1: Beethoven composed that in the eighteen twenties, and it has
Speaker 1: long since passed into the public domain. You can use
Speaker 1: Ode to Joy in anything you like for free. There's
Speaker 1: no one to pay royalties to as far as that's
Speaker 1: concerned or licensing fees to However, that just covers the
Speaker 1: music itself. A performance of ode 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: ode to Joy that dates from before the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: So you could perform ode 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 ode 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 music's 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 with 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 parody. 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 pop fon 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 scan shin of Royals.
Speaker 1: But the song Foil isn't a commentary on Royals. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's a comedic song about aluminum foil. And I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure you couldn't make an argument that it's somehow commenting
Speaker 1: on the original work, which means that would be harder
Speaker 1: to defend as fair use. It's not a bad song,
Speaker 1: by the way. This isn't a commentary on the quality
Speaker 1: of the parody, but rather whether it would fall under
Speaker 1: the 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 willing to defend any
Speaker 1: lawsuits that came their way as a result, but as
Speaker 1: both a courtesy and kind of the necessity, he reaches
Speaker 1: out before recording parodies. Usually there's at least one version
Speaker 1: of this where things didn't work out though. Actually there's
Speaker 1: a couple I can think of, but I'm gonna mention
Speaker 1: one in particular. So, back in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: We're All. Yankovic was working on an album and he
Speaker 1: wanted to include a parody of the James Blunt song
Speaker 1: You're Beautiful. Yankovic's version was a parody called Your Pitiful,
Speaker 1: about a middle aged dude who's seriously down on his luck.
Speaker 1: Blunt was receptive and he gave the go ahead to Yankovic,
Speaker 1: But as Yankovic's album neared publication, Blunt's record label, Atlantic Records,
Speaker 1: reached out to Yankovic's label and demanded that the song
Speaker 1: not appear on the album. And you know, music labels
Speaker 1: typically hold the IP for the actual songs of an artist.
Speaker 1: In this case is a little more complicated than that,
Speaker 1: So getting permission from Blunt, while a good thing, wasn't
Speaker 1: totally legally binding. Blunt probably could have pushed back on
Speaker 1: Atlantic Records about this, but that's not exactly an easy
Speaker 1: thing to do when you're an artist. I mean, you
Speaker 1: want to work with your label. You don't want that
Speaker 1: to be a confrontational relationship. And as I mentioned, earlier.
Speaker 1: Defending fair use is expensive because it all goes to
Speaker 1: that consideration of a court, and that means lawyers and
Speaker 1: lawyers have fees, and so defending an instance as fair
Speaker 1: use in court can mean that you're paying thousands or
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars in fees just to defend yourself.
Speaker 1: There's a financial disincentive to the average person because again,
Speaker 1: these laws were made with corporations in mind, big entities
Speaker 1: that can afford these kind of things. The average person can't.
Speaker 1: So corporations like music labels or publishers have entire teams
Speaker 1: of lawyers who do this stuff all the time. They
Speaker 1: can put pressure on folks with threats of lawsuits, and
Speaker 1: even if those folks are in the right now, even
Speaker 1: if their works clearly would fall under fair use, to
Speaker 1: defend it in court could be way too expensive for
Speaker 1: these individuals to afford it. There have been cases in
Speaker 1: which people have settled out of court for thousands of dollars,
Speaker 1: not because they felt they were legit and the wrong,
Speaker 1: but because trying to prove that they were innocent of
Speaker 1: infringement was more expensive than settling. It's pretty darn brutal. Now,
Speaker 1: what about all those posts and YouTube videos that say
Speaker 1: no copyright infringement intended, those are pretty much worthless. It's
Speaker 1: a kin to posting on Facebook that you aren't giving
Speaker 1: Facebook the rights to your data. That's also useless because
Speaker 1: just by signing on to Facebook and making an account,
Speaker 1: you have to agree to Facebook's terms of service. That
Speaker 1: kind of supersedes your little post that says you're not
Speaker 1: in favor of Facebook using your data. Facebook's responses too bad,
Speaker 1: because you agreed to it by being on the platform.
Speaker 1: Now that's part of our terms of service. If you
Speaker 1: don't want us to take your data, don't be on Facebook.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the way that works. So if you
Speaker 1: come across a video that says no copyright infringement intended,
Speaker 1: or a picture on Instagram that clearly doesn't belong to
Speaker 1: the account that posted it, just note that that phrase
Speaker 1: means nothing. Intent is not part of determining whether someone
Speaker 1: is infringing copyright in the first place. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what you intend. There's definitely a gradient when it comes
Speaker 1: to copyright infringement. Like if I include half of a
Speaker 1: music video online, that's copyright infringement, But if I include
Speaker 1: the whole thing that is worse. And if I monetize
Speaker 1: the video where I do it, that's even worse. But
Speaker 1: even that smallest first example I gave is still infringing.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter whether I think it is or not. You know,
Speaker 1: if I can think something's not a crime, but if
Speaker 1: legally it's a crime, doesn't really matter what I think.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other things I need to
Speaker 1: say about this, but one thing I want to sum
Speaker 1: up with right here before I close out, and we
Speaker 1: will pick back up in the next episode, is that
Speaker 1: Tom's Scott did a great job exploring the issues of
Speaker 1: copyright and YouTube in particular, and I'll look more at
Speaker 1: YouTube in the next episode. He did it in a
Speaker 1: video titled YouTube's copyright system Isn't broken? The World's is,
Speaker 1: And shout out to listener Kat, who first turned me
Speaker 1: on to Tom Scott's videos. Scott does what I do,
Speaker 1: only he does it with a British accent, so he's
Speaker 1: better at it than I am by default. Also, he's
Speaker 1: genuinely good at explaining stuff like this, so make sure
Speaker 1: you check that out and we'll come back to talk
Speaker 1: more about YouTube and copyright infringement and content ID and
Speaker 1: some of the laws that have been passed after big
Speaker 1: media companies have lobbied Congress in the United States that
Speaker 1: have changed the way information gets shared on the Internet.
Speaker 1: We'll also talk about some of the crazy movements that
Speaker 1: companies have made against individuals and an effort to crack
Speaker 1: down on things like piracy. Because all this is tied
Speaker 1: up together and it's all a mess. And really what
Speaker 1: it boils down to is that copyright law itself is
Speaker 1: in dire need of a full rewrite. But that's dangerous
Speaker 1: because the parties that are particularly interested in a rewrite
Speaker 1: of copyright law are not looking to make it better,
Speaker 1: They're looking to make it last longer. Hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: that episode from twenty twenty one, Copyright and fair use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fair use is one of those things that we can't
Speaker 1: easily leverage ourselves, even in a podcast in a big
Speaker 1: company like you might wonder why don't I do an
Speaker 1: episode about a certain musical instrument like the Mogue synthesizer
Speaker 1: and then include a whole bunch of Mogue music. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because even though you could argue, yeah, it's fair use,
Speaker 1: you're commenting on something and you're using it as an
Speaker 1: example and it's the vast majority of the material is original,
Speaker 1: it's not taken from a copyrighted work. That's still something
Speaker 1: that comes up in court cases, right, Like, that's you
Speaker 1: argue once you've already been sued, and ain't. Nobody wants
Speaker 1: to get sued. So yeah, it is a complex thing,
Speaker 1: and it's one that unless you're paying licenses to use
Speaker 1: material for so that you can make absolutely certain that
Speaker 1: you're not treading on any toes, you got to be
Speaker 1: super careful. So I hope you enjoyed that episode about
Speaker 1: copyright and fair use. I hope that was interesting and
Speaker 1: informative to you. I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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