Notes from Home

I've decided I need to have a page that explains why I've decided to take up arms in the copyright war, on the side of the Public Domain.  By looking at who are my companions on this battlefield, I find I'm an exception.  Most of the people standing with me either have a stake in keeping the Public Domain alive and well, people like Eric Eldred, or they are educators, generally copyright law professors.

That doesn't describe me at all.  I'm a Computer Programmer who also writes Science Fiction/Fantasy, creates beautiful pictures in oil, and rides her horse with English tack.  Not quite the common profile of a copyright warrior.  In fact, most writers and artists are on the other side.

Until last year, I might have been one of them. I lived under the common misconceptions shared by most people - copyright protects authors and artists, but doesn't really affect normal people.  I believed that recording off the radio and television was perfectly legal, even if I intended to keep the songs/programs forever.  If they wanted their copies protected, they wouldn't put them out over the airwaves, cables, and through the satellite system.  Time Shifting never even occurred to me - I was there watching so I could cut out the ads.  And it's only illegal if you are copying tape to tape from a rental - make sure the FBI warning doesn't show so I can say I got it from HBO.

A latecomer to the Internet, it was last year when I became a regular visitor to some of the news sites.  Slashdot, ZDNet News, Linux Today, OSOpinion, and others.  I was there when the news broke, some kid in Finland was arrested, his computer confiscated, for writing a program that allowed people to watch DVDs on their Linux computers.

My first response - "Hey, that can't be right!  Doing that kind of thing is perfectly legal...."  I watched the story for awhile, reading everything I could find connected with what seemed a terrible miscarriage of Justice.

Then Metallica started making the fuss over Napster.  "But Napster isn't so much different than the radio," I said as I was reading the articles.  The only difference is that you don't have to wait for them to play the song, you can do a search and find it now.

Between the two cases, RIAA vs. Napster, MPAA vs. DeCSS, I decided to check into copyright law, starting with a historical timeline.  What was copyright like at the beginning?  What happened to change it?  And what does it really look like now?

The answers came from the Internet, knowledge, free for the typing in of a URL, a researcher's dream.  Everything I could have ever wanted to know, and more than I ever wanted to know.  I found Dennis Karjala's 'Opposing Copyright Extension' page and rapidly read through just about everything on his site.  I wrote two articles for OSOpinion, then decided only the creator should own copyrights and I didn't want Publishers to take any more of mine.  Though some sites allow the author to retain the copyright, that wasn't one of them.

The website grew from that simple idea - I'd have to self-publish.  I knew someone with a server and the Public Domain is worth far more than the Domain Registration if only I could reach enough people and show them the evil copyright has become.

I'd planned to write a lot more articles, but work, assorted domestic problems, and the search for links made my time for writing terribly limited.  But my fiction writing has suffered even more.  Since I started this, I don't think I've spent a single hour working on my current novel - I haven't been painting much either.

One of the things I really wanted from this site hasn't materialized.  I wanted e-mail from people I've influenced through my site, especially any whose opinion of copyright was changed by the articles and links I've made available.  Send e-mail - show your support!  Let's start something!

Thanks for your time,

Susan Aker