Critical Essay: Stage 2

Does the success of the Copyleft/Free Culture movement involve a return to a pre-modern, or at least pre-copyright, creative environment?
The success of the Copyleft/Free Culture movement involves a return to a pre-modern, that is, pre-copyright, creative environment in that it ____________, ____________, and _________. The problem with saying it is a success, is during that period, such technologies that exist today were unimaginable. To say, humanity needs to return to a point before copyright was introduced would be unjust to all authors of media today such as websites, software, music, art, etc.
First and foremost, let us make sure we have the proper ideas of all terminology. Copyrights are set of laws granted to an author of an original work that include, rights for that work to be copied, distributed, and adapted. After a period of time, this work enters what is known as the public domain. This period of time, is internationally standardized between fifty to one hundred years after the author’s death or in corporation’s case, less than fifty years. As soon as anyone creates anything, whether it be a sketch on a napkin, or blue prints for a new invention, the creator has copyright over it. Copyright was first introduced in US laws in the Copyright Clause in the Constitution to, “promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” It has been in the past couple of decades; however, that copyright laws do not fully promote said goal, as technologies changed. Thus, copyleft was introduced as “tag along” license of copyrights. Most simply, copyleft is a form of tweaking copyright licensing, so that others are granted permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute work as long as the derivative works are remain under copyleft. This became most useful for computer programs which could be tweaked for different purposes or reasons to ensure the “promoting of science and useful arts.” It has been even more recent, however, that a movement for even more freedom of creative works be introduced for this goal. This is the Free Culture Movement. Said to start in 1998, this movement promotes the freedom to display, distribute, and allow derivative work in the form of free content through the use of the internet and other such medias. This idea, unlike the “tagging along” of copyleft, the Free Culture Movement pushes to eliminate copyright laws. Members of the movement claim such laws as copyright, ultimately hinder the growth of culture.