Why Question Copyright?

Culture is an important part of our heritage and daily lives.

Paintings, sculptures, works of literature, music, photography, and dance are all aspects of culture.

These works are important not only to the preservation and advancement of

our culture, but are greatly needed by:

teachersstudents

cultural institution

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Copyright law limits public access and use of such works, by making it illegal to produce any copies of the works without the express permission of the copyright holder.

This means that it restricts nearly all performances of copyrighted musical compositions or plays,

making photocopies of pages from a book, taking photographs of copyrighted pictures, and even

converting an LP into MP3s.

Your computer is a copying machine. This means that you are probably already violating copyright law on a regular basis simply by using it for daily communication and sharing with friends and family.

And as many of us already know, sharing copyrighted works through the Internet can be a punishable offense.

In contrast, QuestionCopyright.org promotes freedom-based distribution as a way to make

culture available to the masses for enjoyment, education, experimentation, and

even profit.

What about artists? Doesn't

copyright provide

protection for their work?

Conventional wisdom says that copyright exists to:

1) protect artists' works from plagiarism

2) give artists complete creative control over their work, and

3) ensure that artists share in any profits from any uses of their works.

BUT....

1) plagiarism does not always require copying (someone could simply remove the creator's name from the original work and add their own)

2) no law gives a creator total creative control, and

3) despite holding copyright on a work, many artists have gone through expensive and lengthy copyright infringement cases only to walk away with little or no money.

When arguing against copyright extensions in the UK's House of Commons in 1841, historian, poet, and statesman Thomas Babington Macaulay said:

“Copyright is Monopoly....the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad."

Artist Fan

art

money

In contrast, Free Culture is about artists and audiences being on the same side. Artists

freely share their work and audiences freely share their time, money, enthusiasm, and

often even their own creativity.

(it works kinda like this)

Artist AudienceMerchandiser/ Distributor

(….and also like this.)

Please explore the site to learn more about Free Culture, how free distribution systems work to the benefit of artists and audiences,

and how you can be a part of Questioning Copyright!

2011 Copying is an act of love. Please copy, share, remix, and do whatever else you want with any and everything you see here. And do feel free to let us know how you've used it!