The philosophy behind
public domain is simple and very powerful. To elaborate we must first look at traditional way in which Art and Intellectual property is governed. It is controlled by one thing, and that is money. People believe that to protect ones rights and to deter theft of their work, it (the work) must be protected by making it illegal to reproduce a work without authorization by author. Any use other than use author, “authorizes” will result in legal action against person or corporation who infringes, by person or corporation who originally created work.The law that makes it illegal to copy or reproduce a work is called fittingly “Copyright”.
The ideology behind copyright is sound, however, like other ideologies and theories it is inherently flawed. People will find ways to misuse law for a profit. When someone creates something they are “entitled” to and have “rights” to benefits of that creation whether it be an invention, or and “original work” of art.
Art can be a song, poem, story, or one of many forms of visual art. The rights that come with creation of a work are, and should be, automatic and natural. No one besides creator of work should be allowed to profit from or use work in any way without “authorization” from works author.
However this idea flies in face of creation process, and poses a question. Why create work in first place? If no one, besides original author has any rights to work, and no one can publish work without permission, why create it?
Culture.
Copyright law protects author of work and gives creator authority to sell work for a profit without concern of theft of work. The author can use work as long as they own “all rights”. What I mean by this is that author has option of transferring “all rights” to whomever he or she chooses. The wonderful part about this area of law is that not only can creator profit from work itself, rights to work is fully transferable.
The author can transfer all rights or partial rights or set just about any limitations of usage they deem fit. This also poses another question.
How do you transfer rights and why?
Transferring rights to a work can get complicated and there are many ways to do it. The 3 most common are temporary transfer, or what copyright law calls “licensing”. Here are 3 I am referring to in order of commonality.
