WASHINGTON — Happy World IP Day! The ten-year old holiday, launched by the World Intellectual Property Organization, has been celebrated for the last five years by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) with a conference on Capitol Hill. Today’s was possibly the best yet, despite the fact that I moderated a panel there with a novelist and a member of Congress. I’m going to do three posts on the conference — this one on the incentive to create, one on respecting artists and creators, and one on the challenges for artists and creators in the developing world.

A recurring theme of today’s conference was something any copyright owner takes for granted — copyright provides an incentive to create. As U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters pointed, that was the theory behind the 1710 Statute of Anne three hundred years ago this month and the inclusion of copyright in the U.S. Constitution by the Founding Fathers. The emphasis in the law is on the creators, or “Authors,” she noted — “people get that there are authors.” What they don’t always get is the role copyright plays in encouraging authors to create.

Arguing copyright is under assault, Ms. Peters said some argue that “the information age is truly revolutionary and requires a massive rethinking” of the very notion of authors’ rights. Putting that argument in perspective, she quoted from a predecessor in her job from 55 years ago, who said rapid changes in communications were changing the way copyrighted works were enjoyed and distributed. That was the dawn of the television age. But Ms. Peters noted copyright itself dates back to the printing press, and the philosophy of copyright has incorporated every possible form of creative works over time, responding to numerous innovations in reproduction and distribution and the tools creativity itself. Yes, laws are tweaked and limitations of rights adjusted as technology changes, but always from the founding principle that one starts with giving an author rights. “I don’t believe that the Internet really changes that,” she said.

“Copyright, I would argue, is a victim of its own success,” she said, noting that never before in U.S. history has so much incredible and compelling creative works been available to us, including works that weren’t technologically feasible a few decades ago, such as video games. This plethora of creativity makes it easy for some to assume these works just appear, that there isn’t a motivating force in the law behind their creation. That leads to consumer expectations of what they should be able to do with creative works and how they should be able to access them and at what price that she said are “unbelievably high.”

Echoing that point was James Pooley, previously Deputy Director General (DDG) of Patents for WIPO, and now as of today (good timing, IPI!) its DDG for Innovation and Technology. He noted the importance of educating policymakers and diplomats around the world that IP is in fact a driver of innovation and economic development, another truism that gets distorted.

Cult of the Amateur author Andrew Keen, a former technologist, argued that “the new generation sees innovation and creativity in technology terms.” In other words, the iPad is considered innovative and creative, but no one thinks about the fact that the device’s purpose is to deliver innovative and creative copyrighted content.

On my panel, U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) was emphatic on the need for copyright as an incentive to creation. The co-chairman of the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus and the Congressional Internet Caucus and a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Goodlatte has long had an understanding of the intersection of IP and copyright that is nearly unrivaled on Capitol Hill. Mr. Goodlatte applauded “individual artist-entrepreneurs,” creators who are embracing the digital age to produce, reproduce and distribute their works. But he noted this entrepreneurial spirit, which can occur anywhere — including in his own rural Virginia district — can only flourish if the creator’s rights are respected. No rights, no creation.

Ms. Peters, Mr. Pooley, Mr. Keen and Mr. Goodlatte all addressed the so-called Free Culture tide that fails to understand that the creative works they love to consume and re-work came to be in a legal framework in which the creators of those works actually was given a degree of control over the reproduction, distribution, performance and repurposing of those works.

Mr. Pooley perhaps said it best, referring to the notion that once a product of IP is out there, we should be able to set our own terms on how to access it and consume it, describing that approach as very short-term: “It’s like eating your own seed corn.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 2:26 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under capitol hill, copyright law, copyright opponents, creativity, creators, founding fathers, piracy, US Copyright Office, World IP Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.