Citizens Now Are Copyright Stakeholders

摘要

Throughout its history, copyright law and policy have been created by and have served commercial interests. But this should be neither surprising nor particularly controversial.rnCopyright began as a privilege for publishers to protect their works from being copied without proper authorization. While copyright laws in the U.S. evolved into a bundle of exclusive rights that creators received (theoretically, as an incentive to create content in the first place), many creators ceded these rights to business entities, sometimes unwittingly (as was the case with untold numbers of African-American musicians who signed away their rights in the 19th and 20th centuries, sometimes for little in exchange) but sometimes knowingly (in those instances where a company was thought to have a better chance at successfully making money from a copyrighted work).