Copyright Laws: Public Interest > Commercialism?

Copyright laws are ubiquitous in most developed countries around the world. However, in the rare handful of countries, any form of intellectual property law is almost non-existent or in it’s very primal infancy. The issue lies in how the infringement of a particular piece of work could be acceptable in one country where the legal framework is weak (i.e. China) and completely unacceptable in another country where the legal framework is strong (i.e. Australia) when shared through the process of globalisation and its various mediums.

There are hard-pressed issues that arise through the process of globalisation that balances both the public’s interest and the commercial interests of privateers. It is the very nature of globalisation to cross international lines and to accelerate the knowledge growth in the pool of information freely available to the world to progress as a society – which undoubtedly makes copyright enforcement difficult. However, the concept of commercialism gives birth to overprotective copyright laws that exist in developed societies to govern who has ownership and control over how a piece of work may be dealt with.

As it stands in Australia, the legal framework regarding copyright law greatly impedes on furthering social and public development, as opposed to promoting, progressing and making accessible, the wealth of disposable knowledge available within the public domain – an ideology that is fundamental for our collective growth as a functioning society. The detriments are most prominently exemplified in the field of science where humanity’s understanding of the world around us cannot progress if researchers are not able to develop upon a past researcher’s work or reproduce their findings. This primary idea can also extend to academia, films, music, newspaper articles, photographs and artworks. The hindrance of accessible knowledge through uptight copyright law development essentially stems from the central fear by commercial creators of works not having adequate protection from infringements of their works and reduced control over their creations.

However, having said that, there is a smaller group of creators who are not so concerned with making profits who also do not feel the need to exclude free use and subsequent development of their content. It is through this minority group of self-less creators that the global Creative Commons was born as a solution in which overprotection of copyrights and its fears could be overcome through the provision of an alternative licensing system so that creators (whether they be writers, musicians, or artists, etc.) can grant rights to the public to use their work without monetary payment but still retain credit and control over their copyright work.