'Copyright', the idea that changed the world (to remain in the hands of large multinationals)

BarcelonaDavid Bellos acknowledges that if he were to die today, the ideas in his book would still be protected for another seventy years, during which the publisher and his heirs will continue to exploit an essay that criticizes, precisely, the speculative drift of copyright. Copyright, the industry that moves the world (Peninsula, 2025), this professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University analyzes with the intellectual property lawyer Alexandre Montagu how this concept has ended up becoming a tool that benefits a few large multinationals and curbs the creativity it promised to defend.

The book reviews the evolution of the copyright since it emerged in 18th-century London, when it was the subject of discussions among the great thinkers of the time. Before this, in 15th-century Venice, the authorship of artisans had already begun to be rewarded by attracting them to create in the Italian city. "It is a simple idea that became increasingly complicated due to unforeseen consequences, extremely dubious analogies, lust for power and pure random growth," Bellos said in a video call with the ARA from his home in New Jersey. The academic recalls that the law considered to be the origin of the copyright It only concerned books and was passed precisely to end a crisis in the nascent publishing sector. "But then came along an extremely talented and slightly dangerous artist," he adds. Bellos is referring to William Hogarth, a British pioneer of prints who rose up against piracy and demanded that his works also be protected. "You could say that he didn't have very good arguments, but he won. It's a story of opportunism, not logic."

From there, the idea of copyright The use of code has spread to virtually every area of modern life and culture, including music, film, and even computer programs. “There is absolutely no fundamental reason why code should be considered a literary work,” Bellos says. Even so, the technology industry has been the subject of some of the most high-profile litigation in this field, such as Oracle’s lawsuit against Google to force it to pay for using certain aspects of the Java programming language. In fact, the university professor warns that today six of the largest corporations in the world – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Meta, and Disney – base their dominance primarily on owning and controlling the copyright of movies, songs, designs, patents and software.

There are few spheres of human knowledge that have escaped the web of copyright laws. "There are loopholes, such as mathematics. They have never been the subject of a property law, and I think that is absolutely fundamental because there is no more creative and important use of the brain than mathematics," Bellos reasons. All government publications and laws are also excluded, since no one can claim authorship. Another exception would be the use of titles or short phrases. But while an author could use War and peace For his new novel, it would be virtually impossible for TS Eliot to rewrite his poem The land of York. In these verses the poet incorporated extracts from Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine or Friedrich Nietzsche and in 2025 he would have had to pay his descendants for using them. "How many cases like this do we have today that have never been able to be written for this reason?" Bellos insists, for whom these legal limits clip the wings of creativity.

Who benefits from copyright?

The academic argues that most authors – with the exception of a small and very popular elite – do not earn much money through copyright. Artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have sold their music catalogues for millions of dollars to major record labels, who intend to exploit them until they recover their investment. In this sense, he claims that there are other ways for creators to "not die of hunger", such as government subsidies or writers' unions. "If we abolished the copyright, "Human creativity would not disappear," Bellos points out.

On the possibilities of alternatives such as Creative Commons, the organization that fights to reduce legal barriers to sharing creations, he praises the fact that it has achieved incontestable successes such as Wikipedia to promote collective knowledge. They have a headline. "There have been fears of the collapse of the copyright "Since the invention of the radio, there is panic with every new technology, but in the end there are always more laws limiting it," he laments.

Now, however, the notion that ideas also have owners is facing a final threat: artificial intelligence (AI). "I am not optimistic," one of the works says, as one that only those created by humans can be protected by the copyright. "What it doesn't say is how it can be implemented when you can't tell the difference between AI-generated works and those created by humans," he asks. The guide also states that no new changes to the law will be needed to adapt to them. For Bellos, all of this leaves the door open for AI companies to register these works under the company's name and be the owners of the copyright. copyright"Everything will end up, once again, in the hands of a handful of corporations that control the means of production and distribution."