Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property, the Law, and Morality

Intellectual property can refer to one of two things: The first being the legal field which concerns “creations of the mind”, including music, art, literature, etcetera. The second being those works themselves. The law of intellectual property deals with such things as copyrights and trademarks, patents, licensing rights (as in lending an idea out to another party), and so on.

Under basic intellectual property law, the holder of one of these abstract properties has a number of exclusive rights to the concepts. This could mean anything from a bare idea, to a fictional character, to the content of a finished work of art or entertainment.

In general, intellectual property rights are restricted to so called non-rival goods. Technically, this refers to goods that can be used by one person without preventing another person from using it just as well. This means products that can be easily shared, or reproduced at little to no cost, from an original source that can’t really be exhausted. For example, a comic book could be photocopied forever and handed out for free without taking any physical property away from the original owner.

The legality of certain intellectual property issues has always been, to be frank, kind of convoluted. Oftentimes, it’s hard to determine who exactly owns a given property, and to what extent they own that property. One famous example involved John Fogerty, former frontman of Creedence Clearwater Revival, being sued by his former record label for stealing a Creedence Clearwater Revival song he had released through that label, and rewriting it into a new song. So yes, the laws regarding intellectual property can be so convoluted that you can even be sued for stealing your own material from yourself.

Since the rise of high speed internet, we’ve seen a lot of debate regarding the morality issues that come with owning, buying, and borrowing intellectual property. It is, to be honest, a somewhat difficult issue to split into a black and white, good and evil worldview. Even the artists who own certain intellectual property are split on the issue. On the one hand, there’s Metallica, the band who made a lot of news some years ago when they sued several of their fans for downloading their music for free on the internet. On the other hand, there’s Trent Reznor, who’s latest album was released one hundred percent free of charge via the internet.

One of the main questions regarding intellectual property morality, for the listener, is this: When does it become theft? Where is the line drawn?

Many musicians will let you listen to their entire album for free online, but won’t let you download that album. Supposing most listeners will just keep visiting the listen-for-free website every time they want to hear those songs again, it may seem like a pretty small difference.

Furthermore, it’s kind of hard to track what kind of an impact file-sharing has on record sales and movie tickets in the long run. Many who download bootlegs of a movie are just too busy to see the movie, and will happily buy the movie when it’s released in theatres, while others are just looking to get something for nothing. Many who illegally download music on the internet may go out and then buy CDs from the artist they just listened to (though to be fair, most probably won’t).

The upside is that every artist has an open door to free publishing. Thirty years ago, a musician absolutely needed to be signed by a major label before anyone would ever hear their music. Today, you can stick your music up on a file sharing site and, if you hit the right niche market, you might get thousands of fans overnight. In the 1980’s in the UK, there were strict limits placed on movie distribution, and fans of horror films had to resort to trading illegal copies between friends (the so-called “video nasties”). If you ask most of these horror movie directors, they’d probably prefer it this way.

It’s a complex issue, and no matter how much you study on IP law, you still might get blindsided by a loophole or a surprise lawsuit. However, if you don’t read up on IP law a bit, you’re just plain not going to be prepared for anything. If you’re looking to sell anything of your own design, be it a comic book, a t-shirt design or even a greeting card, arm yourself with as much knowledge on intellectual property law as you can fit in your head.