Do I really have to follow copyright rules?

To answer that question, I would like to talk about why we have such laws in the first place. Let us look at history. I will start with the British patent system, follow it with France’s, and then end with the United States’. I will draw upon work from The Democratization of Invention: Patents and Copyrights in American Economic Development, 1790-1920, by B. Zorina Khan, and “New, Useful, and Nonobvious”, an article by Steven Lubar.

In Britain’s earlier years, patents came with a high price. This essentially limited patents to those who were wealthy or those who had connections, particularly those who were on more familiar terms with the monarch. Furthermore, obtaining a patent could mean that the inventor has a monopolistic control over the invention, but at the same time, the monarch could take away the patent out of more personal reasons. They were granted “by the grace of the Crown,” and according to the statutes, patents were to be granted if “…they be not contrary to the law nor mischievous to the State…or generally inconvenient” (Khan, p. 36). Other than the patent officers, the ones who seemed to benefit the most were patent agents and lawyers (footnoted in Khan, p 33).

France’s system had different groups of people that would judge the inventions and act as advisors on the type of award that the inventors should receive. Usually, these awards would be in the form of money, and the awards were “administered by the state on a case-by-case basis” (Khan, p. 40). The result, however, proved to be arbitrary and based on the groups’ demographics and how useful the invention might be to society. For example, “Chevalier de Gruyere requested a privilege for the manufacture of a vegetable-based cosmetic rouge…His application was supported by influential women at court” (footnoted in Khan, p. 40).

For the United States, the patent system started as a simple registration system and was based on the decisions of the secretary of state and the secretary of war, Jefferson and Knox. It became evident that this was not a sufficient means of doing this, but the patent fee was still more inexpensive compared to the systems of the Europeans. The minimal fees spurred the creation of inventions from those of the working-class people, a trait of the American patent system that resulted because of U.S. separation from the British. They did not want their industry in the hands of any higher-class group of people. Applications could even be submitted “by mail free of postage” (Khan, p. 59). As the evolution of the American patent system occurred, three, more objective means of giving out patents came into existence. The invention had to be new, useful, and nonobvious, but the degrees of how new, how useful, or how nonobvious the invention had to be have been in the hands of the courts throughout the course of U.S. history. In fact, “…between 1921 and 1973, the judges of U.S. circuit courts declared almost two-thirds of the patents they ruled on invalid” (Lubar, p. 2). The patent system in the United States, then, depends greatly on the court system.

The United States’ required that the invention be new in the world and not just within its boundaries, and the “newness” of the invention had to have come about through the vague phrase: a “flash of genius”. In terms of usefulness, when courts judged the patents, they tend to reflect the bigger issues technology plays in American society. Thus, there is a more democratic role in the way patents are issued; it was insisted that “social utility be considered along with technical utility” (Lubar, p. 5). The British had a similar “new and useful” condition for their patent laws, but “if part of an invention is found to be meritorious and part useless, the patent is likewise void” (Khan, p. 34). In the United States, to solve the problem of the vague language in the “newness” factor, the “nonobviousness” factor came about. The invention must have been something that was not obvious to someone “having ordinary skill in the art” (Lubar, p. 8).

Today, for inventions to be considered for patents, the combination of the three factors, “newness, usefulness, and nonobviousness,” makes up the United States’ patent system. For the Vlog, intellectual property rights, the ones that are the most controversial, are the ones that govern music, photos, writing, and other original works. As patent attorney David Pressman defines in his book Patent it Yourself, intellectual property “refers to any product of the human mind or intellect, such as an idea, invention, expression, unique name, business method, industrial process, or chemical formula, which has some value in the marketplace, and that ultimately can be reduced to a tangible form” (p. 17). One subcategory of intellectual property rights is the copyright. For works published after 1977, the copyright may last between 95 and 120 years or even longer. Unless vloggers want to use material published before 1923, it is safe to say that most vloggers need permission if they want to use any modern pieces and not infringe upon anybody’s rights. As a side note, material published before 1923 is in the public domain, a term used to describe work that can be used without permission from the copyright owner.

To gain permission, a person must obtain a license by identifying the owner or owners, clearly specifying the way the material is to be used, and determining whether or not payment is necessary. It is a timely process, and anybody should expect to spend months during this permissions process. Costs can amount to over a hundred dollars just for the U. S. Copyright Office to determine who the owners are. All in all, however, the complex intellectual property laws seem to prevent the use of other people’s works, but it does inspire people to create their own works, part of the reason why the government allowed for such laws to exist in the first place.

All the “Circulars” that the Copyright Office directed me to for more information do not work by the way....

(If that never gets fixed and you do want more information about all of this, refer to the copyright overview on the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center’s website.)

Oh, and obviously, the answer to my title is “YES”.