WC#4 - Copyfight (pg. 337) Ryan Thurmer

As an artist, or creator of anything, the opposition to copyright comes, initially, as a shock; especially in our culture, which puts such an emphasis on valuing the ownership of material things. Why wouldn’t we also try and put a price on an idea? It seems almost natural at this point. But groups such as Creative Commons and the starters of the Copyleft movement have, for the last few decades, begun to lift this Copycurse that was originally meant to increase creativity and the building off of history. Though I do not think is a good idea to leave the problem of intellectual property law closed at either end, (either completely open to all, or completely confined to the maker.) I do believe Creative Commons, however, has the most flexible and useful system. Creative people can pick and choose what exactly their Creative Commons license entails such as “open for all use but sale, and the author must be given credit…” Having open-endedness like this is the only way to find true freedom in creativity while allowing the creative people to allow or deny access to their work, instead of having a law predetermine this everyone.