On Friday, Joel Tenenbaum was fined $675,000 for sharing 30 songs on Kazaa. Before that, Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $1.92 million for similar copyright infringements. While what Tenenbaum and Thomas did was technically against the law, I don’t think it was morally wrong or violated anyone’s rights. In any case, sharing mp3 files is not wrong enough to justify such severe fines.
I believe that musicians should be rewarded for their artistic achievements, and I think it is wrong to take credit for other people’s work, but copyright laws should change to allow more freedom to reuse and build on the works of others.
First of all, file-sharing via networks such as Kazaa should not be punished as severely as it currently is. File-sharing is not equivalent to stealing a CD from a store, as many people claim, for a simple reason: when you steal a CD from a store, you are directly depriving the store of the CD. When you share an mp3 file, however, you are indirectly, possibly, causing the record company to lose revenue. You are not directly taking a physical object from someone, and you are not necessarily causing any lost sales, since someone who downloads a song for free may or may not have been willing to pay for that song had they not been able to get it free. The punishment for P2P file-sharing should be equal to or less than that of stealing physical CDs.
Additionally, current copyright laws are too restrictive for webmasters, artists, and other people who want to exercise their creativity. While some uses of copyrighted works are covered by fair use, the laws on this are very wishy-washy and need to be clarified. There are no clear boundaries on which uses are fair and which are illegal copyright infringement, and as a result a lot of people restrict themselves more than they probably need to out of fear of being sued. Either courts or Congress should expand and make more concrete the provisions of fair use so that people have more creative freedom. For example, I think the following things should be protected by copyright laws:
- People should be able to make fan sites for celebrities and movies and create image galleries on their chosen topic. It’s unreasonable to expect people to travel to wherever their favorite celebrity happens to be and take pictures themselves. Photos taken by the press should be free for non-commercial websites to use.
- People should be able to post song lyrics on websites. If you have a fan site for a singer, or a site about patriotic songs, this is obviously important to having an informative, high-quality website.
- People should be able to post clips from movies and TV shows (not necessarily the entire thing) online.
- People should be able to make digital collages, icons, website layouts, and other artwork out of photos taken by the press.
- People should be able to create music videos out of existing songs, photos, and movie clips.
Current copyright laws are too restrictive in protecting copyright holders at the expense of those who might want to build on their works. Making the changes above would give people more freedom, enable people to make better websites, and make the Internet more useful for everyone.
