Folk Copyright

In his Guardian column (who knew he had a column?!), Cory Doctorow introduces a pretty interesting idea: that copyright for corporations is one thing, and copyright for individuals is quite another. He calls the "real people" version folk copyright. This feels right; corporations have a legitimate need to protect themselves from things like factory-made pirate versions of their products. And they don't have a legitimate need to protect themselves from, as Doctorow suggests, someone who might "organise a singalong at the pub".

One of the things going on is that lawyers and the people who hire them are mistaking the actual role of lawyers in society; to work on issues that are of surpassing importance, broad and lasting impact, and social and economic needs. Not, I would argue, to attempt to change the kind of ordinary behavior that's embedded in our nature and our culture.

Rules are difficult to write, and hardly ever apply in all cases. "Don't steal" is a good rule, and there are penalties for stealing. But everyone knows that rules, and laws, are tempered by judgement. It's obvious -- although not literally stated in the rule -- that absent-mindedly pocketing the pen you used to sign a check is not stealing.

Attempting to extend corporate-level copyright law to individual behavior is the same sort of thing. The NFL's statement of ownership, broadcast with every NFL football game, could literally be taken to mean "you can't talk about this game". And a lawyer could easily (and mistakenly) wander into some sort of defense of that idea, but it's obviously not the point.

I think this sort of confusion about the proper and very limited role of rules and the people whose job it is to work with them is what Shakespeare was talking about in The Tempest ("The first thing we do is, we kill all the lawyers"). And Doctorow's idea rings just as true.