What makes a website interesting? What makes you browse it again? It could be well-written text, nice images, cool videos; practically any quality content. In three short articles we will take a look at content on the web, what you can do with it, and who owns it.

I think all of us has an idea of what content is. Webster defines content as:

"The principal substance (as written matter, illustrations, or music) offered by a World Wide Web site."

This means that as good as everything a website contains is content. The content of a website is the information the site wants to share with its users, it is the reason why users will return to the site, and why they will tell their friends about it. The creators of the content might have used a long time to create it, and so it is valuable to them. Not only because it brings visitors to their site, but because the content is in fact theirs. If another site hosted the same content, it could challenge the the site of the owner. Naturally, the owner wants to protect himself/herself against theft, and so he makes it clear that this content is protected.

Copyright

When the creator of content wants to make it absolutely clear that said content is only his, and no one else can use it, he marks it with a Copyright symbol. You usually do not have to apply for the right to copyright material, it is everyones right to do so, as long as the material in question is an original work by yourself. Copyright is similar to patents, and like patents they do expire between 50 to 100 years after the creators death.

According to the World Intellectual Property OrganisationWIPO - World Intellectual Property Organisation the purpose of copyright is twofold:

"To encourage a dynamic creative culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public."

Personally, I don't see how copyright can encourage a dynamic creative culture, but I do understand the need to protect ones work if one wants to make money of it. It is difficult to fully justify copyright, and it often comes down to a claim of a natural right. One can argue that for talented artists and writers to continue their work, a copyright is necessary, and so the justification of copyright is a consequence of our need for original material.

Web content

I can not remember considering copyright when I was younger. Mainly, this was because no one had a way to register that people copied something from a book, or copied a game during a LAN. It was not until content started moving over the Internet that I really started to notice the copyright. I recently posted a short article about Web 2.0What is Web 2.0?, and how it has changed the way we behave on the Internet with regard to content and copyright. I concluded:

"Web 2.0 is a coined term to describe a new way of using existing technology. It involves two-way communication between the client and the host. This has led to an explosion of user-content. Content is king, so that is good, but the lack of control leads to copyright infringement, and that is bad."

Here the problems start. I recently saw Kaizers Orchestra live, and I also filmed them play a little. If I was to put that video on this site it would break the copyright that Kaizers has on their own material. Imagine the amount of copyrighted material that is uploaded to YouTube, Facebook and Flickr every day. We have to ask a difficult question: Are current copyright laws still relevant for the World Wide Web? I would actually say that they are not. As our society changes, so must the laws that governs it. The way we create and distribute information today is a completely different from before, and in this information society, we should not limit our work to only contain original ideas.

I understand that many who publish content to the Internet wants to protect their work, I would do it myself if I relied economically on it. However, I strongly feel that the current Copyright laws allow for too long monopolization of the content. Why does it have to last into the next century. Should not the content be released to the public domain after it has played its part. After all, most content on the Internet is usually quite short-lived, and will not benefit the owner for more than some years (depending on the type of content of course).

The last years have really left their mark on the Internet. The discussion of private versus public has escalated. Many are being defensive about sharing information, and while I agree that keeping back information about themselves is sensible, we should not be afraid to share whatever relevant knowledge we have with the public. The next part of this article will be about sharing, which stands as an opposite to copyright.

Part II of this series: Freedom of Information

Sources:
My own head
Wikipedia