Copyright & Creativity: Which road to take?

After a long break, it's time to get back on the horse! Hence, this week in relation to Intellectual Property, I've decided to cover the reading by Lawrence Lessig, entitled Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Strangle Creativity. At first glimpse, you'd probably think, "Whoa, this dude sounds super serious."

But in fact, it is of something that we should actually sit down and roll the notion around our thoughts. What notion, you say? It's the notion of Copyright acts restricting the stretch of imagination and creation. It's an alarming issue because not many know of this, but having laws on work is actually limiting the masterpieces of artists. I find this interesting hence my reading for this week would be on Lessig's work. 

I would like to share with you a personal favorite of mine. How many of you are familiar with this quote?

"If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started by a mouse."

Ring any bells? The person who uttered such uplifting statement is none other than, Walt Disney himself. Yes, Walt Disney as in Disney. And yes, you've guessed it right. The mouse he was referring to is of course, the familiar, happy and warm face of Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse started off his career with "the first widely distributed cartoon synchronized with sound, Steamboat Willie". Walt Disney took the idea and technique from a film made a year ahead, The Jazz Singer, which was the introduction to synchronized sound. Now, remember, watching movie with synchronized music wasn't the "in" thing back in those days. Those days were the era of silent film. Disney was merely experimenting with the concept of integration of two elements. It started off as a bittersweet perception by the audience but then the mixed feelings became the next big thing.

This creativity labeled as 'Disney Creativity' was a new platform and era of animation. Everyone was in awe of this fantastic creation, this spark, this historical moment. But, what we must take note here is that Disney actually built this genius work of synchronized cartoon with the inspiration of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr which was a synchronized comic.

Recognize that comic and cartoon is two relatively different concepts. Comic, in the case of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr refers to:

Whist cartoon, as we all know, are the regular cartoons like Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Little Lulu and more which we all watch on Sundays over our bowls of cereals. Cartoon is animation. Cartoon is Steamboat Willie:

Now notice the similarities? It's with these clear depictions that you can see how did Disney took inspirations from Steamboat Bill, Jr to build up a parody of his own, Steamboat Willie. It was nothing of a coincidence, it was the main plan of a parody. Disney's case of borrowing inspirations did go a long way. Look where we are now, we've got Mulan, Pocahontas, Bug's Life and the likes. This borrowing created an impact of transitions on everyone's life.

Other examples of borrowing are:

 Dramas - Aren't all the storyline the same, but only of a little difference?

GD & TOP (Korean artists) with their Playboy inspired album cover. A controversial happened and the album cover had to be altered.

Ah, the on-going debate on Facebook becoming more and more like Google+. Classic battle!

Now how is this ripping, mixing and burning is related to intellectual property and Copyright?

As we all have gathered throughout the 5 weeks of Global Network, we know that information is the breathing system of networking and without it, Cyberspace can't run. Undeniably, information is intellectual property. Move aside, lands, cars, houses, information is coming to stay! With that in mind, with information contributed from different people with different perceptions, principles, credible data to share, it is only fair that these valuable information are protected. Agree?

When a work is protected, one cannot use the information without a care in the world. Right amount of acknowledgement and recognition must be given to the respective author. Why? Because he owns it. It's his right. But everyday without fail, every single one of us actually uses these information from a variety of sources for our purposes. And most often, credentials weren't given to the rightful owners. You may think, "Nah, Copyright? So what? It doesn't appeal to me, so why should I care?"

The answer is you really should care. Imagine this, you worked on a research for say 20 years. You went through all the hard work like

Interviewing the President of America,

Traveling 10 times to Japan

Drawing tons of crazy looking mindmaps etc.

Now would you honestly admit that you do not give a toss if people actually steal your work? I think everyone would be mad, isn't it? It's your tears and sweat, why would you even allow others to take credit for it? Of course, you turn to Copyright to save your work. When its time is up, then you release it to the public domain.

But when Copyright comes, creativity of work is also restricted. The amazing stretch of creativity is somewhat limited when we can't borrow people's work to change it for the better, to provide a better insight, to create history. To avoid lawsuits, we have no choice but to let go of our brilliant ideas. Isn't that just sad? Sad to see how much potential we can achieve but due to Copyright laws, we can't change someone's work for the better. 

To continuously modify a work to give back to the society is something I'm in it for. Who wouldn't want innovations? Who wouldn't want an even higher technological advancement? It's all like 'Disney's Creativity' where we take an original work to build and build and keep on building for something bigger, better and bolder. What do you think? It is true that we would want to protect our glorified piece of art but at the same time with others' input and modification of our work, the world would be a better place. To borrow or to not borrow? 

There's a split in the road, which road would you take?

Afterthought:

Honestly, it's really hard to put a foot down on which road should we really take. To take the one that protects our work seems right, but on another hand, people can do better for the future of our generation if they borrow our work. Although, it is tough on getting the permission to feature words or bits and pieces from the original authors, but I suppose in this case, if you're really confident and sure of your work to be a success, why not just give it a try? An attempt wouldn't really kill right?

It's risky to have published a book but to not be able to sell or shared to others because rules were violated. That would be a shame. Tedious or not, but when we put our shoes as the pioneer author, we would want to have the rights over our work. But what I think is, by abiding the rules of non-plagiarism, it is possible to borrow part of the work. Give credit, acknowledgement and reference to the credible sources. But to the extend on what it the limit of borrowing, that's another story.

Thanks for reading!