Copyright

Copyright has become a much bigger issue than it was before, because within the advent of the internet, many more people are producing Copyrightable works. Copyright has a long history going back to the United Kingdom after the Printing Press was invented. For the purposes of this page, we will keep the discussion to the 21st century.

Typically when an author makes a work (CD, book, movie, software, etc.) they give this notice: Copyright (C) 2011 The Author. All Rights Reserved. This means that the author is keeping all the rights to themselves and you do not have permission to re-mix, re-publish or share the work without their permission.

That said, there is still "Fair Use" an aspect of US Copyright law that specifies certain uses of works that are "All Rights Reserved" are OK. These include teachers using photocopies of books in their classrooms, parodies and artists like Girl Talk re-mixing other's music. Girl Talk is the most interesting case as he has gotten famous by re-mixing short clips of works by other artists into new songs.

He is walking a very fine line that might disappear. If he were to sell his albums he would most definitely be sued by record labels, but instead he gives them away for free on his website. He makes his money by doing shows.

So, even within the "All Rights Reserved" world of Copyright there is are opportunties for Paragogy. Girl Talk is a peer of the artists he re-mixes (Jay-Z, The Verve and more) and together they are learning how to make popular music for 21st century listeners.

Another option for authors of Copyirghtable works is to license some of their rights. This is where paragogy gets really exciting! The best example of this is with Free Software, specifically the GNU Linux Operating System. GNU Linux has a license that allows others to share, modify or adapt the work to their own purposes, provided they license the derivative work the same way.

This has allowed for the GNU Linux system to be hacked by thousands, if not millions, of people around the globe. Users who have the software can change it for their own purposes and then distribute, or even sell, their new works so long as they license the terms the same way.

Creative Commons is an organization focused on Copyright licenses and they have developed a few of their own which allow for similar, and/or different rights to be reserved or not.

For 21st century authors having an understanding of Copyright and the associated licenses is of paramount importance. By carefully studying them you can collaborate with other authors from around the globe without having to contact them directly. Say you and your band make a new album. You are looking for a picture to put on the cover, but do not have the funds to pay a professional photographer. A quick perusal of the Wikimedia Commons and you find the exact picture you want. Luckily it is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution license, so you can put it on the album so long as you attribute the original author.

Paragogy baby!