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Analysis of Copyright Vs Copyleft in Media

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Analysis of Copyright Vs Copyleft in Media INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 Analysis of Copyright Vs Copyleft in Media Sudeshna Das Asst. Prof (Media Studies), School of Arts and Humanities, REVA University, Bangalore, Karnataka, India Email id- [email protected] Abstract Recent debates have argued that copyright has been overused to protect commercialized cultural commodities, profiting the private right holders to the disadvantage of the general public. Moreover, it has proved to be inhibiting for inputs for continued artistic and societal development. On the other hand, democratic ideologies that roots for information that is truly available to its citizens for generating derivation progressive ideas that can aid in the development of societies at large has proven to be the need of the hour and could be labeled under the concept of copyleft. In this paper, the researcher has tried to analyze few platforms and contents of media that has been consistently veering away from the context of copyright and made its foray in the realm of copyleft. The paper has tried to look into case studies in media, by media and of media that sheds light on how the advent of the New Media, i.e., the World Wide Web has given opportunity to potential media content producers and managers to no longer be confined to certain section of the society but in fact with the help of the copy left content and platforms, every netizen can transform themselves as a manager and producer of media. Keywords- Copyright, Copyleft, Internet, Media, Netizen I. INTRODUCTION Copy right law is undergoing revolutionary changes in the present context of the information society. Changes wrought by the popularity of the World Wide Web, advent of open-source softwares, variety of online platforms to display the developments in cultural, political and artistic ventures has brought about volatile and confusing debates in the arena of the domestic copyright laws.(Franstsvog & J, 2012)The importance of these debates lies in narratives of power and control of production and ownership of online content. The present foundation of Intellectual Property Laws revolves around protecting an author’s work from being tempered by Volume 8 Issue 10 2019 223 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 others. The copyrighted person decides the parameters of usage, sharing and changing authority of copyrighted materials. But under the onslaught of the increasing internet users and the concepts of net neutrality, online users are becoming increasingly vocal about intellectual creations being open to one and all to use, share and modify according to the interests, needs and requirements of the users. (Goss, 2007) II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE In historical context of conceptualizing Intellectual property, the term IP, can be broken down into the three categories of copyrights, patents, and trademarks and servicemarks. Copyrighting a work here denotesto protect one’s authorship of original works in a tangible medium. Among other mediums, the creator or author of a literary, musical, dramatic, pictorial, graphic, motion picture, sound recording, or architectural work has the right to copyright their work. The holder of a copyright has the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the work, or authorize others to do so, prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work, and display or perform it publically. Under copyright law, brief portions of a copyrighted work may be reproduced and distributed for several purposes, mainly providing criticism and commentary, news reporting, education, or research. This is known as fair use. On the other hand, in the history of copyleft licensing, the term copyleft first appeared in Dr. Dobb‘s Journal, a monthly computer-programming journal, in 1976. At first, copyleft licensing only applied to computer software and code. This branch of the movement is now known today as the ―free software movement. Online media content is one area that can widely be viewed under the jurisdiction of copyleft as control of cultural and creative commodities of media can make huge impact in the society when accessed and used by all. Copyleft provides the right to change one’s work by other under the modern concept of Intellectual Property Law. The terms copyleft offers the bandwidth to freely distribute and modify a work by anyone unlike copyright. (Krowne & Puzio, 2006) In the growing popularity of New Media and the increasing access and usage of its platforms has provided immense exposure to media content in the context of culture, politics and economics. Platforms like Wikipedia, Youtube, Facebook, etc. is Volume 8 Issue 10 2019 224 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 increasingly being used by netizens to give voice to their own opinions and ideas on the basis of what they have read and analyzed online. This paper would like to highlight a few instances in the Indian context in the area media content and platformsthat are heavily relying on the context of copy left in terms of creative formats and opinion formation. III. METHODOLOGY The paper deals with the copyright concept and how it is slowly receding with the advent of Internet in terms of contents and platforms in media, especially new media. The paper has undertaken qualitative analysis by looking into case studies as to the media contents and media platforms, which are slowly adopting the democratic ideologies as per the definition of copyleft. The researcher has tried to study how free content and channels on Internet are encouraging creative and innovativefree culture under copy left though they might be influenced, inspired and founded upon indigenous and original content. IV. ANALYSIS Media Platforms Youtube Channels used for Music Coversby Indian Musicians Several creative musical compositions in terms of songs, instrumentals and tunes are uploaded on the Youtube by netizens, which are generally original works of popular music bands, singers and music composers. In the present day culture of having vast access to audiences across the worldhas given a platform to many potential musicians to reach out to their audiences with the “covers” of original songs by lending their unique voice, using rare or different musical instruments, composing music with different combination of musical instruments to alter the musical genre and so on. Facebook Facebook also promotes the ideology of copyleft by providing the option of “Sharing” its content among the users. When shared multiple times on multiple Volume 8 Issue 10 2019 225 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 Facebook profiles and pages, at times the source of the content becomes irrelevant in comparison to the content itself, which is deemed to be viral or unique by the audience users. Moreover, such social media platforms encourage concepts like citizen journalism, which empowers the users to come up with significantviews or matter for the use of the mankind at large and therefore endorses the philosophy of free information movement. Media Content Do it yourself Videos Youtube has popularized the concept of Do it Yourself Videos which deals with content that already exists as a knowledge base on the internet, as folk or oral indigenous culture, in literature and so on. It has been observed by Chilean Rural and Indigenous Network that copyrighting or patenting of living things ‘a crime against humanity’.Especially in the area of development communication wherein successful social and physical technology is shared by the developed nations with the developing nations for them to progress with the shared know-how, such phenomenon will become impossible under the context of copyright. Copy left is prerequisite in diffusion of indigenous knowledge through which development can be affected and achieved. Political Speeches Political Speeches has seen popular political speakers drawing inspiration and contents of their speech from various political thinkers and analyst. In the recent context of Indian politics, there is the case study of Mahua Moitra, the Trinamool Congress lawmaker who has put forth certain comments in parliament as "seven signs of fascism" as her debut speech. Soon after allegations of plagiarism has been labeled on her by the Indian media wherein it was alleged that Ms.Moitra had lifted chunks of her speech in the Lok Sabha from an article on "12 early warning signs of fascism" in reference to Donald Trump's America.In this regards, Ms. Moitra presented before the media that "Plagiarism is when one does not disclose one's source”. Herein, she goes to mention that the source as mentioned in her speech was the poster from the Holocaust Museum created by the political scientist Dr. Laurence W. Brit pointing out the 14 signs of early fascism. She found sevensigns very much relevant to India and spoke at length about each of them. In this case, her inspiration from the mentioned text and her derivation of materials for her own speech required no copy Volume 8 Issue 10 2019 226 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 right and as such as inspiration can be considered under the purview of copy left. (Ghosh, 2019) TV Content- Reality TV Show, Soaps Software creation or programming content in Indian Television for certain Reality TV shows like Big Boss, Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who will be next millionaire?) offer licenses and operate under the copyright laws as Regional Franchises with regional actors and production crews. But at times, it has been seen that copying a script in a unique way is inspiration, but "in an original way" it is an absolute infringement of that right. Copyright cannot protect "ideas" but only the mere expression of the same. Therefore several Indian Reality TV have created several genres like adventure, musical, surveillance, dating based, social experiments and so on which lean heavily on copy left wherein the basic formats remains the same with changes in the competition patterns, celebrity judges, participants, pairing of the participants, etc.
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