The invention of Copyright©

The invention of Copyright©

Copyrights were invented in order to address imbalance and keep people inventing new things and coming up with new ideas and products, by providing a short period of exclusivity, in which no one else could copy your work – giving inventors the ability to cover the costs and make money.

Let’s say a guy invents a better light bulb. His price needs to cover not just the manufacturing cost, but also the cost of inventing the product in the first place.                                                                                                                                              


Now let’s say a competitor starts manufacturing a copy of the invention. The competitor doesn’t need to cover those development costs so his version can be cheaper.                                                                                                                              


The bottom line: original creations can’t compete with the price of copies.

The goal of copyright was to create a robust public domain – where a body of affordable ideas and products were available to all.

People hate losing what they have – when we make losses on our ideas being copied we get annoyed and become defensive of our copied product.

Many great brands copy and make extensive use of the public domain – Steve Jobs was always boastful about Apple’s history of copying other products, yet hated those who copied his ideas – namely Android, saying that ‘I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.’

Disney copied many stories – tales like Snow White and Pinnochio all came from the public domain. 

People who copy products or media get can get sued – either by the inventors or ‘trolls’. These are corporations that don’t actually produce anything. They acquire a library of intellectual property rights, then litigate to earn profits.

We live in a world were we believe that ideas are property – and that property belongs to us: our laws enforce this belief in ever-expanding protections. We live in a world and time full of problems, we need ideas that can spread fast and we need them now. This need is overwhelmed by the feeling of territory over original ideas – leading to the question: what do we now?