Open Source Movement, Copyright, and Copyleft

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Copyright
Copyleft
Debates around Copyright and Copyleft
Open Source Movement Principles
Applications of Open Source Movement
Speaking of the perspectives of Open Source, it is possible to note that
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

Intellectual property refers to the legal right to the result of intellectual activity or some means of individualization. The legislation that defines this right establishes a monopoly on certain forms of use of the results of either intellectual or creative activity which, in its turn, can be used by other persons only with the permission of the owner. Intellectual property is composed of two components: industrial property and copyright. The latter can include rights to literary and artistic works, sound recordings, the radio and television broadcasts, while the first contains inventions in all fields of human activity, including scientific discoveries, patents, and trademarks. This right is known as copyright and controlled by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) that is based on the Berne Convention (History of Copyright n.d.). This paper explores the notion of copyright and copyleft, debates around the above issues, and Open Source Movement applications and principles.

Copyright

Copyright can be regarded as a form of intellectual property security. According to the law on copyright, it occurs immediately after an author’s work is finished regardless of where and when this work was published and the registration of his or her authority to creation. The first copyright act was regarded as Anna Statute and introduced for “preventing such practices as publishing and reprinting the works without the authors’ permission for the future and for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books” (The Statute of Anne, 1710 n.d., para. 1). Along with the Berne Convention that was mentioned above, one can note a range of other legislations that are implemented to protect copyright. For instance, the Copyright, Design, and Patent Act that was initiated in 1988 declares universal basic rights for copyright owners (History of Copyright n.d.).

Copyleft

The expansion of copyright encountered the opposite tendency that can be referred to as copyleft. This term assumes the practice of owners of the copyright to ensure the impossibility of limiting any person from the right to use, modify, and distribute a product as the original one as well as works based on it (GNU Operating System 2016). In other words, copyleft allows distributing the derived works under the same license as the original work. In contrast to the traditional approach of the copyright that assumes limited freedom of copying works, copyleft strives to employ copyright laws to expand the rights and freedoms of people.

The project of GNU (an acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix!”), the General Public License, becomes one of the most prominent systems that ensures the fact that anyone who distributes the program with modifications or without them has no right to restrict the freedom of its further distribution or modification (GNU Operating System 2016). Initially, it was supposed to be used only for software but then was extended to other types of digital and non-digital products.

Debates around Copyright and Copyleft

The global network provides people with access to the objects of copyright, including music, movies, photos, and others. The works are made public, published, distributed, and sold in an enormous quantity and great variety. These actions are called digital piracy. It takes plenty of forms the most significant of which are commercial piracy or the unauthorized use of someone else’s content for commercial purposes (Bently, Davis & Ginsburg 2010). Nowadays the problem of piracy is relevant all over the world. The annual turnover of counterfeit products is estimated in millions of dollars, despite all attempts to identify the cases of piracy.

The public is very ambivalent about this issue (Bently, Davis & Ginsburg 2010). Most manufacturers of software products have a negative attitude to piracy, and some of them are actively fighting with it. However, a large group of regular users is willing to buy counterfeit products and communicate them, being aware of the illegality of their actions. However, along with piracy, there is another kind of content usage – copyleft that is more directly related to the Internet.

The lack of clear boundaries and jurisdiction cause difficulties in regulation and copyright protection that, in their turn, lead to controversy and loss of rights of owners. In 2001, the non-profit organization of Creative Commons (CC) that was founded by Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School and an expert on legal issues in the digital realm, developed a series of free licenses (The Power of Open 2011). CC contains six uniform copyright agreements to facilitating the implementation of copyright. According to The Power of Open (2011), the organization’s mission is to “develop, support, and steward legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing and innovation” (p. 5). It seems essential to note that these licenses identify the respective responsibilities of the parties and minimizes legal differences. The licenses developed by this organization belong to copyleft.

Seeing the debates around the topic of copyright and copyleft, it seems appropriate to pinpoint the digital corporate patent wars between companies that can occur in these conditions. In particular, one can reflect on such kind of war between Huawei sued Samsung were the first sued the latter in patent violations (Uy 2016). It is noted that all smartphones produced by a Korean company and operating in LTE-networks utilize technology described in 11 controversial patents. Another example relates to Samsung and Apple each of which sues the opponent in copying the exterior of smartphones as well as those of iPhone and iPad (Fighters in a Patent War 2012).

For twelve months, the corporations exchanged a dozen lawsuits filed in the courts of nine countries. At the same time, it seems that Apple’s indicators illustrate that it won the battle as the company achieved sales of its competitor in different countries (Fighters in a Patent War 2012). Also, the South Korean manufacturer was forced to alter its tablets and smartphones so that they do not violate Apple’s patents. The series of “bloody” battles in the courtroom continued, even though Samsung is one of the most significant technology partners of Apple, delivering several necessary components for both iPhone and iPad.

Elaborating on the theme, Wadhwa (2013) answers the question of “do we even need patents in an era in which technology is advancing so rapidly that it makes entire computing platforms obsolete in less time than it takes to be awarded a patent?” (para. 3). The author claims that patents are necessary only in case they can deliver innovation to a customer. This assumption can be confirmed by the very purpose of a patent that can be considered as the promotion of science and useful arts. However, it should be stressed that nowadays technology obsolescence becomes quite a widespread phenomenon. Therefore, patent verification tends to be more complicated and comprehensive.

Open Source Movement Principles

Open Source Movement is a project that was created by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a global organization educating and advocating for open source community. It is the methodology which allows individuals and groups to become more efficient in their work and develop rapidly, improving their research skills and solving complicated issues (Open Source Initiative 2016). This method creates the conditions to uncover the maximum of the possible potential of individuals and organizations. The principles of the Open Source Movement that are also can be considered as advantages of their implementation are enumerated below.

The first principle is security. Due to the openness to the vast number of specialists, various errors and problems are quickly eliminated, while free programs are very reliable and protected, in particular, against unauthorized access. Independence from the provider is the second advantage that assumes full support of public programs, including the required changes to be made by any group of suitably-qualified professionals (Klein, Moss & Edwards 2015). In this regard, a user is not dependent on a single company as support functions can be given to employees of the company or ordered from a company that is not so difficult to access as, for example, Microsoft.

The third principle refers to reliability. In the area of servers used in business that contain database servers, file servers, etc., positions of available programs are rather strong. It should be noted that to ensure stable operation of servers under heavy load demands, the software is to be largely reliable and safe. The popularity of free software in this area proves that it can provide reliable operation to fit the corporate objectives.

Furthermore, flexibility and modularity of the Open Source Movement can be compared to balls and sticks in which the molecules are collected in chemistry classes. At this point, balls are programs, and sticks are programming languages or just the parameters of the configuration file (DiBona, Cooper & Stone 2006). This flexibility of Open Source can create any module from programs that will allow developing a project or an organization in general. This is achieved through clear output data formats, modular programs, and open sources. The last but not least is a high productivity of Open Source, embracing a wide range of operations.

At the same time, Open Source has a range of adverse impacts such as loss of revenue, investment, and quality. Moreover, the development of copyleft is likely to reduce the meaning of traditional media industries such as publishing or music industry. It is also significant to point out the fact that Open Source leads to the loss of control over objects of culture. Thus, the issue of Open Source remains controversial as it contains both positive and negative factors, affecting the society in general. Despite the mentioned adverse aspects, some scholars such as Gallagher (2013) argue that the distribution of cultural phenomena is of great importance. Precisely speaking, the author states that “cultural works or expressions communicate knowledge and ideas in one form or another and, therefore, they should be copied and distributed as widely as possible” (p. 86). This viewpoint supports copyleft tendencies by presenting one of the most rational arguments.

Applications of Open Source Movement

Open Source Software is a collection of free programs distributed without restriction along with the source code without copy protection, the mandatory payment for the license to use, and other traditionally necessary points. Open Source Software is an expression that can be interpreted ad software with open source that has become widely known in the past few years (Public Wiki about Free Open Source Software (FOSS) 2016). It involves full-featured software from operating systems and server solutions to office applications, graphic editors, etc. At this point, any professional can create a modified and improved version of such programs. The role of this free software is quite significant for the market and continues to grow. More recently, solely the Internet servers were widely used for free operating systems such as Linux and various versions of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Now, Open Source Software embraces the whole market of servers and even desktop computers and workstations.

Speaking of the perspectives of Open Source, it is possible to note that

it seems that Open Source can be and to some extent already is a serious alternative to digital piracy (Feller, Fitzgerald, Hissam & Lakhani 2007). However, many users and managers are informed small enough about the existence of the open-source software world. In our time, open software has become a symbol of innovation and progress. Free use, modification, and distribution of software along with its derivatives guarantee support for the free exchange of ideas between users and developers. This means consistent international development with an orientation to the users’ requirements on time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it seems appropriate to emphasize that along with copyright that is to ensure the protection of a person’s right to certain work, there is copyleft that aims at sharing the originals of programs or other works to the public. These phenomena cause various ambiguous situations with patents and violation of rights. However, from the observations that were represented in this paper, it is possible to suggest that Open Source can eliminate digital piracy and ultimately resolve the problem.

Reference List

Bently, L, Davis, J & Ginsburg, JC 2010, Copyright and Piracy: An Interdisciplinary Critique, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

DiBona, C, Cooper, D & Stone, M 2006, Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution, O’Reilly, Cambridge.

Feller, J, Fitzgerald, B, Hissam, SA & Lakhani, KR 2007, Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, MIT Press, Cambridge.

Fighters in a Patent War. 2012. Web.

Gallagher 2013, The Assault on Creative Culture. Politics of Cultural Ownership, in Delwiche, AA & Henderson, JJ., eds., The Participatory Cultures Handbook, Routledge, New York.

GNU Operating System. 2016. Web.

History of Copyright n.d., Web.

Klein, B, Moss, G & Edwards, L 2015, Understanding Copyright: Intellectual Property in the Digital Age, Sage Publications, Los Angeles.

Open Source Initiative 2016. Web.

Public Wiki about Free Open Source Software (FOSS) 2016. Web.

The Power of Open 2011. Web.

The Statute of Anne, 1710 n.d., Web.

Uy, D 2016, Patent Wars: Huawei vs Samsung. Web.

Wadhwa, V 2016, Ending Patent Wars will be a Huge Boon to the Tech Industry. Web.

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