The trip to the library yesterday really tied together the readings for me. It was really cool to see the Egyptian papyrus, the Sumerian stones and the very early typography. I was able to visually see what I was reading about and it made me appreciate books more. It made me appreciate tablets even more than that though.
I am really excited to take a look at intellectual property in other aspects of art, such as music. A lot of current music is not written by the people who are singing it; it is usually written by separate producers. Does this mean that these songs are the intellectual property of the producers/songwriters but the legal property of the recording studio/singer? I have no idea.
Looking at old books does not seem like a fun activity that anyone would want to do. At least not something that I would think I’d like to do in my free time. However, as many people already mentioned, seeing the Egyptian scroll on Tuesday was really neat. It was so hard to wrap my mind around that fact that the very scroll had been around at the time of Egyptian gods like Osiris and Isis. Learning about these figures in middle school and high school history classes, they seemed like such abstract creatures, so far away from us now. But being only inches away from a scroll that these god like figures had also been around was really powerful. Also, the fact that this piece was in such good condition after all those years was mind blowing. I have newspaper clippings from high school that are already yellowing and becoming fragile; and those are only a few years old. Although many years ago there may not have been much technology, but the quality of the pieces made seems to be on a higher scale than they are now. Of course technology is not a bad thing, but has the quality of things gone down with the existence of so many new tools and shortcuts? Will our thin paper be able to last as long as their papyrus, parchment, stone, and clay? Will we be forgotten because of our superior technology? (that would be quite ironic)
After reading the two chapters in Howard, I realized just how lucky I was to be reading from a one pound or less book with a binding and cover. Previously, I never thought of a book as evolving from something else, as a means of technology. Thinking about the future it is sad to imagine the disappearance of books. Growing up, I assumed that books would be around forever; How could you improve a book? But I guess that is how people way back when felt about writings on papyrus, parchment, stone, and clay. Recently, the new craze of e-books has popped up and dented the sales of actual books. Call me old fashioned, but I can not wrap my head around that yet. Even reading short pieces online bothers me. In fact most of the time I choose to print out what I am reading no matter how short, or long for that matter. There is something about the book that is lost when switched over electronically. To me, at least, just having the physical book in front of me with pages that I can highlight, annotate, or even just feel it is there, is important to me. It is scary to think that one day everything may work electronically. Will people even leave their dwellings? What will happen to human interaction- will it all be over a computer? Will we be able to document our writings to display like those we saw on Tuesday? Or will none of it mean very much considering everyone will have access to the internet to view it? Will important things be lost in the presence of too much information?
This prompt gives alot of room for creativity: How might it have turned out differently? There are are numerous ways copyright could have formed but I feel as if it was inevitable. People like to feel unique. When someone discovers something new, interesting, and unorthodox we prefer to keep the discovery to ourselves. Without this type of protection, authors wouldn’t be able to establish an individual identity because anyone could copy their unique style. For my paper I was thinking about going towards copyright in the music industry and how it would be effected by stricter or more lenient laws. More lenient laws would probably aid rising musicians to become mainstream, yet it would cause famous musicians to lose credibility by having numerous artists creating similar material. Either way a change in the current copyright laws would have had drastic effects
It is interesting to think about writing pre-copyright. What is the incentive to write if your ideas can just be stolen and used as someone else’s? Would people be willing or even able to write without falling to the act of plagiarism? But on the other hand, maybe a world without copyright would cause people to produce more art, as there would be less obstacles to get around to publish your works. Perhaps with less competition, more and more people would share their art forms. But then again, without competition what will writing or art succumb to? It seems logical to assume that without any need for standards, the quality of art may go down. It is hard to say which way things may have gone without copyright. Economically speaking, copyright makes sense that in order to get the best products (books, movies, etc.) there must be competition and incentive. However, it does have it’s fair share of restrictions.
I though the papyrus scroll was one of the most interesting pieces in the collection we looked at on Tuesday. The fact that the scroll is one of the best-preserved pieces in the United States was fascinating, and the scroll itself was a work of art. All of the intricate details and colors, hieroglyphics and other letters were amazing. To think that such a piece of history is still in such pristine condition, even though it existed over 2,000 years ago, is truly mind-boggling. The quality of the papyrus is pristine, and the fact that the writing is still perfectly legible, is amazing. The brightness of the colors and the very vivid feel of the entire work makes me wonder about how future generation would look at our works. Our colors aren’t nearly as rich as the colors on the papyrus, and the quality of our mass-produced items are so poor, they break easily and are faded after a few years. The beauty of art has disappeared with mass production.
Copyright was originally created in a world where modern technology was nonexistent and could likely not even be imagined. Despite the fact that the world we see today has changed so drastically in comparison to the century of copyright’s birth, it is still very much a part of everyday life. In fact, copyright applies to nearly every aspect of creative practice and effects everyone whereas it had previously really only affected a select group of people–those who were well-off enough to actually possess resources allowing them to copy books and other materials. I wonder how copyright would have developed differently if it were originally created during a time when modern technology existed. Would there be as many restrictions on creative practice as there are today? If the birth of copyright had been delayed a few centuries, would the entire term “copyright” possess an alternate meaning?
Now, I am someone who is a big fan of things like anime and manga, and naturally the issue regarding them is finding a translation that I can understand. Nowadays, many companies exist solely to translate and distribute the media. However, for a large consumer such as myself, I would say they do not license and bring over enough. This essentially forces me to rely on fan translations, which at essence, is pirating: taking a book, translating it, and distributing it for free around the internet. At heart, pirating robs the possible income for a company and creator. However, also DUE to it, a wider audience is reached, thereby creating a GREATER possible income.
Despite being a clear violation of IP rights, online distributors are more or less left alone to their own devices while consumers blissfully increase their digital collection. This leaves me to wonder if pirating, while still giving credit (but not profit) to the authors, can actually serve as a functional, international advertisement method.
I don’t really know where I want to go with this essay. One thought right now is socio-economically, what if Europe were socialist instead of capitalist at the time? Would Gutenberg have had any incentive to be a leader of innovation. Howard notes, “Would retention of traditional manuscript forms make this volume more marketable? Possibly–and marketability had certainly been on Gutenberg’s mind” (31).
Or what if the Copyright Act of 1710, described on page 103 in Howard’s book, had not been passed? This piece of legislation shifted ownership from the printing press to the author. It shifted the market and incentives to write. Perhaps I will write this essay on copyright through the lens of incentive–what boundaries were in place to drive people to write and publish books and how would these motivations differed in varying cultural, economic, political, etc. contexts.