Digital Media and Copyright
Angeline Henriquez
Digital Media and Society
How Digital Media Complicates our Relationship to Copyright
Originally, copyright was meant to serve as an incentive to prompt the making of literary works. Through the preventing of unlicensed printing, these works were made less accessible and thus commodified; owned by a few with the power over their distribution. But can anyone claim ownership of knowledge and ideas when creative work derives and is inspired by our collective experiences? Taylor states that “knowledge cannot be owned and we have a responsibility to share it” (p.142). With the arrival of the Internet came a platform for sharing creative work limitlessly, thus posing a contradiction to what copyright originally meant, “ the Internet…is nothing if not a copy making machine, a place where replicating things and passing them along are effortless and essential” (p.144). As an example, Taylor highlights that every time “we surf and skim, passing along songs instead of albums, quotes instead of essays, clips instead of films” is in direct contradiction to the notion of copyrights. How can anyone claim the right to owning a piece of creative work when said work circulates around the globe in ways the artists cannot control?
As it is, copyright laws have not caught up with digital media. “The copyright regime cannot be considered fit for the digital age when millions of citizens are in daily breach of copyright, simply for shifting a piece of music or a video from one device to another” (p.149). With this change in the concept of ownership, the capitalist interest then shifts towards selling the access to content such as streaming services. In this way the aim is to purchase archives of what already exists, the danger in this however, is that only a handful of individuals or companies dominate the cultural field. “Driven by profit, not the public, interest, they have become the custodians of our collective heritage” (p. 145).
