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Restrict or disseminate? The dilemmas of copyright law

Restrict or disseminate? The dilemmas of copyright law

23 April marked the World Book and Copyright Day. We’d like to use this occasion to present a bit of technological and historical information on the issue of copyright law.

Before the concept of copyright law has arisen, authors had to rely on their own inventiveness to protect the fruits of their labours. Those who decided to publish their texts had to expect they’d be reproduced, modified, or appropriated by others. Even authors as ancient as Horace and Ovid complained about this, which seems somewhat ironic considering their own loose approach to adaptation of Greek writings. However, not all creators wanted to share their work. Leonardo da Vinci  found a particularly clever way of concealing his notes from prying eyes. The Italian polymath used mirror writing, forming words and sentences from right to left, making his texts readable using a mirror – hence the name.

Martial (40–104 BCE) was a Roman poet and the first to refer to appropriating another author’s work as ‘plagiarism’, which he likened to kidnapping (plagium in Latin)

The beginnings of legislation on copyright law can be traced back to the times of the first printing press. In the following two centuries after Gutenberg’s invention, it was not the authors, but rather the guild members and publishing house owners that had the right to reproduce pieces of writing. It wasn’t until the early 18th century that this state of affairs changed, allowing authors to decide the fate of their work.

Technology unchained

Today, copyright law is widely regarded as rather beneficial. It makes the lives of creators easier, secures their livelihood, and allows them to make independent decisions about what can be done with their work. Even so, protection of research results (i.e. intellectual property) leads to an artificial slowdown of technological development. Laws and regulations restrict the access to knowledge and prevent potential innovators from making a profit out of the work they invested in improving a design or technology. The risk of legal action and lack of financial motivation may prove radically limiting the potential for development.

Luckily, there are some cases in which copyright owners renounce their rights for the greater good of mankind. In 1839, French inventor Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre filed a patent application for a photographic process he designed with Joseph Nicéphor Niépce: a precursor of camera, called a daguerreotype after its creator. Seeing the immense potential of the invention, the French government acquired the copyright from Daguerre in exchange for a lifetime pension, and subsequently released it to the public at large as ‘a gift from France to the world’. This has undoubtedly played a significant role in the development of photography, enticing countless engineers with the promise of substantial financial gains.

In the time of innovation-based economy, the crucial role of scientific research is reflected in the increasing amount of patent applications. Nevertheless, there are still those who choose to freely share their technology with others in hope that it may be improved and used serve all of humanity. A fairly recent example of this was Tesla’s release of patent concerning electric cars in 2014. The company announced their counterpart of the French gift to the world with a slogan ‘All Our Patents Are Belong To You’. Elon Musk’s gesture of goodwill stirs up hope for an accelerated development of work on environment-friendly electric engines.

Original text: Timo Markowicz, www.nauka.uj.edu.pl

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