Copyright Law: The Way To Protect The Original Works And Creations

Copyrighting products, ideas, innovations, and other forms of creative works is the major strategy that most artists or innovators use to protect their work. Copyright laws exist to protect the original works and creations of creative artists and individuals, especially because of the money factor. Most of these creative works help artists earn a living to sustain their living standards. As such, it becomes extremely necessary for an artist to copyright their creative work in order to guarantee them a source of income for as long as they are alive, and 70 years after their demise. Copyright laws allow creative individuals to continue earning an income posthumously. It is therefore important to acknowledge the fact that without copyrights and copyright laws, creators would not create new works because of their endangered source of income, their work would lose the value it has, and the infringed works would limit the existence of creative works which make the world a better place through business innovations and entertainment, among other uses of the creative works.

Copyright laws ensure that the individual who created a specific product can access the earnings of their work even after their death as the copyright laws allow the rights to remain up to 70 years after the artist dies. For instance, even after an artist such as Michael Jackson died, he still posthumously earns the royalties from the use of his songs in movies or advertisements and still earns an income from the sales of the records. These earnings are directed to his accounts, probably managed by the family. If Jackson had not copyrighted his music, then anyone could use it without necessarily having to pay for the time and effort Jackson put in creating his songs.

Examples of creative works include music, poems, books, journals, newspaper articles, movies, and other forms of publications and productions. The creation of these products and concepts takes time and effort from the artist. Therefore, this time and effort must be compensated. The only way to ensure this is by enacting copyright laws, which would allow others to use the created works but pay for it. Otherwise, the failure to pay for these creations would limit the artists’ ability and zeal to be creative again. Wasted efforts are costly and daunting to the human spirit. For instance, book authors sometimes spend years creating their content, and when the book is finally published, people may photocopy the book and use it instead of purchasing the book. Digital concepts such as ebooks have enabled the mass infringement of copyrights where people can access ebooks for free, while the author produced a hard copy which they charge, but the ebook circulates online for free. In some cases, the ebooks may be sold online through pirates at affordable prices, thereby undermining the author’s income from these sales. Realising that one’s creations are used without the users paying can be daunting and disheartening and completely discourage the copyright creators from producing new works. As such, it is necessary to have copyright laws that are enacted to ensure the continuity of these efforts. Without copyright laws, creative people will not continue with their work.

Cultures are unique to every society, and some creative work is done to ensure the preservation of the culture because it prohibits individuals from reprinting or reusing the work as their own. For instance, the European Commission funded a project titled Europeana Photography, which was supposed to digitise the photographic collections from the various libraries, museums, and archives from 1839 to 1939 (Truyen & Waelde, 2016). The photographs included personal photographs from people and families that lived through the span of these years. The members of the consortium were particularly concerned about the digital photography project for it would introduce risks such as commercial exploitation of the digitised photographs, and the reduction in the authenticity of the integrity of the people’s cultural heritage. To minimise these risks, the European Commission agreed to copyright the digitised photographs in order to protect the cultural heritage of European cultures captured in the photographs (Truyen & Waelde, 2016). If the European Commission failed to include the cultural photographs in the collection as copyrights, the Europeana Photography project would be redundant because the collected works could be commercially exploited by other people, and the European culture not protected because of the reprinting and the reusing the printed photographs. Therefore the European culture would not be preserved.

Another way to preserve cultures through copyright is by imposing copyright laws on the production of cultural material specific to a certain culture (Tsolis, Sioutas, Xenos & Styliaras, 2011: Corbett, 2011). For instance, the government may prohibit people from a different culture from producing cultural material related to a specific community because they would lack the full knowledge of the culture and probably commercially exploit it. Establishing cultural institutions that help protect the copyrights of cultural work is essential. The reproduction of creative cultural work reduces its cultural authenticity and makes it prone to commercial exploitation, thereby failing to accord the cultural groups and practices the correct amount of heritage they deserve (Corbett, 2011). Such instances may limit the creative people who specialise in cultural works from producing them more. The danger is that less cultural work endangers the cultural heritage of a culture. Therefore, copyrights, copyrights law, and cultural heritage institutions are essential for creative individuals for to continue with their work and still preserve the cultural heritage of their communities.

As mentioned before, copyright infringement discourages the copyright creators from creating new products and content because of diminished earnings and undermining of their time and effort used in creating the works. The fact that an artist can create music for it to be used by another party without paying can be daunting. Therefore, when an artists’ work has copyright infringement issues, and their work becomes corrupted or redistributed as original work by other artists, it lacks authenticity and originality, the original creator misses the opportunity to make money from their creative works. What follows is a feeling of feeling wasted and their efforts culminating into nothing to show. Eventually, it is normal for the creative person to stop producing more works because of the wasted efforts they experience when their copyrights are infringed. Therefore, what happens, in the long run, is the reduction of a certain type of creative work, such as painting or music, because of the discouragement from copyright infringement. Copyrights and copyright laws are therefore needed for artists and creative individuals to continue with their work.

A major impediment to copyright infringement is the lack of knowledge on copyrights and copyright laws whenever they produce their work. This mainly applies to new creative thinkers and producers who lack the knowledge of how their work may be commercially exploited in the market. In most cases, such scenarios occur when the creative person lacks guidance and management of their work such that they fail to copyright it. For instance, a young and aspiring artist may fail to copyright their first song because they do not find it worthy or take it seriously enough for them to copyright it. In that case, it is only necessary to first sensitive the general public on the importance of copyrights in order for them to keep their work protected and continue producing it.

It is also important to note that some artists, especially in the music industry tend to gain more from their copyrighted work than other artists. This situation occurs because the music production system has hidden aims to gain power and profit through the copyrighted works by artists. Some artists receive better deals than others for their work, which also introduces a cracked copyright protection system that would essentially reduce the work produced by the rest of the artists because of less income and favouritism in the music industry. In addition to this predicament, the music industry is full of managers and producers who exploit the copyrighted work of hardworking musicians and performers by offering them oppressive production and distribution deals. Reaching stardom in the music industry takes years’ worth of effort, which essentially means that getting the first break in the industry is highly crucial. Music production companies with the proper connections in the industry understand this dynamic and therefore gain more from the music produced by the artists, than what the artists earn. This becomes a situation where the work is copyrighted, but the artists receive way less than what they deserve because of the contracts in which they get with their producers. Perhaps there need to be laws that prohibit such exploitation because the exploiting contracts tend to undermine the importance and impact of copyrights for creative works.

Lastly, the digitisation of creative work has led to the greatest undermining of copyrights and reduction of the production of, work. Digitisation of work is enabled by technological change, which has seen the, of scanners that scan contents such as music sheets, books, journals, magazines, novels, and other printed and copyrighted work and convert them into digital copies. These digital copies are extremely easy to reprint, reuse, and distribute online, thereby denying the original producer the right to collect the economic benefits associated with the sale and production of the work. Digitised creative content is now more available to an amateur with an internet connection, without them having to pay for the hard copies of the work. There exist thousands of music sites that convert videos to mp3 formats that easily fit into mobile phones. There are numerous movie piracy sites that enable internet users to download movies and stream content online without having to pay for the movies in cinemas. All people need is an internet connection and a virtual private network connection that helps hide their internet protocol address (IP) to avoid tracking. The digital world has greatly undermined creative work, which is highly discouraging to the authors, artists, sculptors, and music producers, among other creative people.

Some authors and artists have, however, found ways to still benefit from their work online by creating strict online payment platforms upon the release of their work before it is pirated by others who access it (Hirtle, Hudson & Kenyon, 2009). For instance, if an artist such as Mariah Carey releases an album and puts it on sales on iTunes, she will earn more money from his copyrighted album before those who have bought the album pirate it and upload it online for the public to access and download for free without paying the royalties and album fees owed to the artist.

Enforcing copyright laws is among the most important recommendations that need to be reinforced to protect creative people and their works and to ensure that they continue producing it. Governments in each country must set stringent online measures that reduce chances of people pirating digitised work without paying for it (Centre for Intellectual Property in the Digital Environment, 2006). All websites that provide platforms to download copyrighted content must be automatically detected and denied licenses and permits to operate unless they sell the products.

Educating people on the importance of copyrights and copyright laws is essential in reducing the chances of commercial exploitation from their work, which would reduce their earnings and, ultimately, the production of the work. Once the artists and other creative individuals are educated well on copyright, they will be keener to pursue their rights in order to continue producing their work.

Copyrights ensure that society remains rich with creative works because they ensure that creative artists receive their income from their work, which continues to encourage them to produce more work. Copyrights are continuously undermined by the technological change and advancements that have allowed the digitisation of creative products such as books, music, and movies, among other works. Artists need to be educated on the importance of copyrights for them to pursue them, and governments need to take more stringent measures to ensure that websites that pirate digitised content are shut down to reduce the avenues of commercial exploitation of created work.