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Lessig Defends Free Culture in Keynote
lisah writes "Professor Larry Lessig, a keynote speaker at this week's Linux World Expo, took issue with current copyright laws and their effect on a free read-write culture. Lessig says that, by today's standards, the simple act of creating a video mashup renders its creator a 'pirate' and argued for sweeping changes that would embrace a fair use culture. Lessig asked the audience to consider sharing works under a Creative Commons license and redirect money they would spend on restricted content to organizations that support a fair use and free culture. He says that opponents of a free read-write culture have strong financial and political backing so unified community support is crucial. 'If the debate is controlled by lawyers and lobbyists...," says Lessig, 'this debate will be lost.'"
It's interesting to see how this affects different media. Creating and posting a mash-up of the Harry Potter films would be grounds for a lawsuit, and yet there's nothing to stop millions of thirteen-year-olds writing terrible fanfic and posting it all over the internet. Oh, the horror!
How much money would this culture cost the entertainment producers? If fair use is really fair then it should still allow
I do not think that media should be allowed to be replayed for free. Significant amounts of money went into making TV shows and movies and the like and any system must ensure that the producer gets his cut. Contrary to the demands of my sig, not all information should be completely free. Using the CC license is a happy medium. The I really think that this speaker has the right approach, so to speak. From TFA:
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Most people are going to look at Dr. Lessig and fail to grasp why this is important at all. Until we all realize that we're being ripped off, and that this kind of freedom IS important, we're going to be stuck with the media giants telling us where, when, and how we can use "their content."
That's bunk. If somebody's taking your ideas, your concepts and/or your creations and making money off them, then you have the right to be compensated for the other party's adaption of your idea.
Mash-ups, like rappers' "sampling," are nothing more than stealing somebody else's creativity and hard work.
Prevent Windows piracy. Use Linux instead.
Redirecting spending money from copyrighted content to independent artists releasing their work under the Creative Commons license is akin to becoming vegan/veggetarian: It requires willpower, it requires sometimes going for what is best when it's not what you want, and overall it's worth it. It's also doomed to failure in an instant gratification culture.
It has my support, though, for what that's worth. I wish the idea the best of luck, and I gladly participate.
I had the pleasure of seeing Lessig speak a year ago. If you ever have the chance to see this man, do so. Even if you hate his message, he is an absolute god when it comes to speaking and presenting. His style of presentation has earned its own title of the "Lessig" style of presentation.
While I am somewhat awed by Lessig's ability to present, my real admiration for him comes from how he has pursued his cause. Lessig argues for radical change in current laws. He is not the only person to argue for radical change. What makes Lessig different is that had has not only made attempts to work within law to bring about change, but he has gone even further and tried to implement what he advocates within a voluntary and completely legal manner without reliance on the force of government to enact the change that he seeks. Lots of people advocate some sort of radical change in society, but relatively few make a genuine attempt to bring about such change through methods other then complaining to the government to use the force of law.
The Creative Commons is an incredible accomplishment. While the CC is in no danger of displacing current media, it has certainly started to make a dent. Will the CC ever make a dent large enough for the average Joe to really sit up and take notice without legislative change? Perhaps not, but what it has done is create an ecosystem to explore the 'fair use' world that Lessig envisions. Even those who find the watering down of copyright power revolting can not honestly proclaim any sort of mal-intent from creating a way for artists who want to offer their works to the public domain a simple and easily identifiable way to do so.
I strongly encourage anyone who is even vaugly interested in this debate to check out Lessig's book, Free Culture. Keeping in tune with Lessig's philosophy on copyright, the book is freely available online. Some enterprising readers of the book also have a complete reading of the book in MP3 format. Check it out.
"direct money they would spend on restricted content to organizations that support a fair use and free culture" = stop sending money to the RIAA and send it to us instead.
"If the debate is controlled by lawyers" = Lessig is a lawyer. He just means the "right" lawyers.
In other words, we would just trade one organizations lawyers for another organizations lawyers. Its just another money grab by a different lawyer.
If I want to do a movie on Vampires, should I have to pay someone? You mess Lessig's point. Culture by definition builds upon its past. Vampires, elves, bad ass action heroes, our concept of aliens, formulaic romantic comedies, guitars, a generic punk sound, a whiny emo sound, and all other pieces of "entertainment" are all "mashups" in one way or another. All of the above exist ONLY because of culture that they were built upon. None of the above have any meaning to a stone aged tribal person living in the rainforest. These are not concepts that spring magically from the human mind. These are concepts that have evolved in our culture. Lessig's point is that we are stunting culture by following back every creative idea to its source and asking permission before we use it.
If you had to go back and ask the originators punk if you could use their sound and they had an absolute veto over it, we might very well not have punk and all the other types of music that sprung from that branch in the musical tree. The same goes for more other examples. Today, you can merrily write about vampires without worry of a lawsuit, but if you try and write about another fictional villain, say a Star Wars Sith Lord, and you will find your ass sued into the ground. This SHOULD be troubling. Our ability to create new culture is being stunted by demanding that anyone wants to bud off of some other creative needs to ask the original authors permission. Instead of having an explosion of stories and mythos from worlds from our popular culture, we have tightly controlled and stunted versions.
Further, even the most pro-copyright minded person MUST see the insanity of copyrights that last CENTURIES. Lessig doesn't argue for an end to copyright. He argues for some sort of sanity in it. Giving people copyrights that exists well past their death and then some is crazy. Dead artists don't need their works protected. If you want to use a Robert Frost poem, you damn well should be able to. The guy has been dead for almost half of a centaury yet you can still find your ass sued if you post one of his poems on the Internet.
No matter what you think of copyright, you MUST agree that the current system is insane and needs fixing. Perhaps you might not want to take it as far as Lessig does, but you certainly must agree that a mean who died in 1949 doesn't need his work to continue to waste away under copyright protection.
Unfortunately, proprietary culture is a much better tool for authoritarian, oligarchic, plutocratic* societies and the self-styled elites that favor them.
The battle is, very likely, already lost.
*Hmm, I think I mean 'Facist'
I suppose that the validity of that statement is rather dependent upon the jurisdiction under which you have chosen to live. As for the dire consequences of this particular example, I shall be hard pressed to lose much sleep; first of all, the statement only applies in those circumstances in which the creator of the video clip does not desire to allow you to use their product in such a manner; if one find such a practice objectionable, one is free (nay, encouraged) to go forth and produce more free content which one may then release under more permissive conditions. Surely society would be well served by an increase in the amount of original content facilitated by such a course of action. Furthermore, the primary valid reason which would prompt one to desire to create a "video mashup" would appear to be satire, which I believe is still protected under most jurisdictions irrespective of the wishes of the person whose work is being satirized; as such, I fail to notice the problem. In the unseemly circumstance that the owner of the work does not desire to allow their work to be satirized, and the jurisdiction under which one finds themselves actually cares about such matters, one is presented with two options: relocation, or the creation of satire without inclusion of the original subject matter in one's own work. Neither of these two options seem all that horrendous.
Both of those appear to be reasonable courses of actions; I am impressed with the apparent understanding of both the philosophy of individual liberty and the workings of the free market exhibited by this individual.
I am unfamiliar with the finer nuances of the English language. When one refers to an entire group ("opponents"), without using an adjective such as "some," does one imply that the rest of the sentence applies to every person belonging to that group? Can one be a proponent of "free read-write culture" without having strong financial and political (whatever that means) backing? If I were to become a supporter of "free read-write culture," would I instantaneously receive "strong financial and political backing?" Is the intention to imply that one cannot be a proponent of the ideology espoused by this individual by one's own convictions, but rather, only by having some sort of sinister motive or receiving a large cash payoff?
How can a debate be controlled by "lawyers and lobbyists," and even if such a thing was possible, how would this lead to the loss of the debate? If you have truth and reason on your side, you shall surely win the debate if both parties are allowed to express themselves. That being said, one may surely lose the battle of having one's ideas implemented by law, but seeing as the two ideas mentioned by the individual above were matters of individual choice and working within the free market, I fail to see what "lawyers and lobbyists" have to do with anything. After all, neither lobbyists nor lawyers shall prevent free citizens from "sharing works under a Creative Commons license and redirect money they would spend on restricted content to organizations that support a fair use and free culture" as long as the citizens in questions can be referred to as free.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
You have to remember, however, that Lessig is able to be "generous" because he is "subsidized." In other words, as a professor, he draws a hefty salary (typically over $100,000 annually) with low health insurance rates , and anything else is gravy. In addition, he has retirement pension and benefits.
However, if you are a screenwriter or an author or independent artist, you don't necessarily have the luxury of giving away your creative works for free, because that IS your livelihood, and you are probably working on it 24 hours a day, whether conciously or subconsiously (i.e. thinking about it even while you are sleeping). An artist may have a lot of success now, but the artist's next work may be a failure and lose money. Buying independent health insurance can cost about $175 per month alone. Plus an independent artist will not necessarily have retirement fund with matching employer contributions as Lessig has.
Lessig is passionate about free stuff because it benefits HIM, not artists. He stands everything to GAIN, and nothing to lose, plus he's getting paid for it. Giving away his book for free is just part of the charade.
FTFH: Lessig Defends Free Culture in Keynote
If he's going to be defending "Free Culture," then shouldn't he really be doing it in Impress and not Keynote???
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
This is the real question.
For example: Do you think that the original Battlestar Galactica TV show constituted theft of the ideas in Star Wars? Did Lucas steal the plot of Kurusawa's Hidden Fortress?
The problem with your interpretation is that plot ideas, characters, and so on do not spring from a whole cloth out of the author's mind, unaided by the culture and society in which the author lives. James Joyce couldn't have written Ulysses were it not for Homer's Odyssey. How could schools of artistic expression spring up unless one artist was taking and expanding upon the ideas of others? Placing inordinate barriers on creativity ultimately thwarts economic growth as well as the vitality of a culture.
I don't have a problem with copyright. I do have a problem with the persistent belief that creative works are the same as tables or bicycles or computers. They are not. The Constitution created copyright as a spur to creativity, *not* as a means of equating the intellectual property inherent in a creative work with the real property in a plot of land. Copyright is an artificial, legal construct.
Copyright exists "To Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts" not to serve as a perpetual income machine for writers and artists.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Are you suggesting community-driven open-source collaborative pr0n development? The idea is appealing, but sourceforge might find it appalling. The "release early, release often" rule would apply just perfect though...
I'd be more sympathetic with copyright holders if they weren't such hypocrites. Much of modern copyright issues can be traced to the Disney corporation. Extensions on copyright are directly linked to the expiration of copyright on Mickey Mouse.
Disney has made billions upon billions of dollars using the "intellectual property" of long dead authors. Do you really think Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, or any of other stories that built the Disney empire were dreamed up by Disney themselves? That didn't stop them from using the material. Where was their concern for the "protection" of ideas back then?
Walt Disney is every bit as dead as Hans Christian Anderson, yet if I tried to sell a story about Mickey Mouse I'd have about one week before I found myself assaulted by Disney's legal department. Why is one protected and not the other?
How do you avoid Muzak and other brands of corporate music played as background noise in grocery stores, on some public transportation, in medical clinic waiting rooms, at the office etc?
Am I given a choice, or do the other 99.999999% of the voting population choose for me?
Not so fast. There exist companies that own exclusive rights in millions of works of authorship. If you accidentally copy part of one of those works into one of your own works, you are a copyright infringer. Such copying is inevitable.
Parody is protected; satire isn't.
With the increasing crackdown on illegal immigration without expansion of legal immigration, how is international relocation feasible?
Given only the contents of a work, how can I determine whether it has been accidentally copied from an existing copyrighted work?
Free market? Copyright opposes the free market, as it is a government grant of monopoly.
If I cannot confirm the lack of copyright in the string of notes that make up the melody of my song, I cannot lawfully publish it under a Free Art License or any Creative Commons license.
Lessig is starting to sound like Stallman. Stallman is more effective, though. What we need is some serious lobbying, along the following lines:
-
Copyright harmonization The US should not go beyond the 50 years of the TRIPS agreement. 50 years from first publication, copyright expires. That's it. Free Elvis! (The US can do that unilaterally. Less than 50 years requires international negotiation.)
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Make copy protection illegal for uncopyrightable material If you can't copyright it, you can't use technical means to protect it.
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Enforce the Audio Home Recording Act Any arrangement between manufacturers and/or content distributors to restrict rights guaranteed to consumers is illegal restraint of trade.
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Free spectrum, free content If it goes out over the free airwaves, like TV channels for which broadcasters do not pay, it can't be copy protected.
Now that's a reasonable agenda to lobby for.But wouldn't you rather watch pr0^wcontent made by people you know?
... that's what XTube is for.
Duh
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Rant on.
Mashups are not fair use for the artist unless the artist releases the work for use as a mashup. If you create a mashup you *are* infringing a copyright -- AND more importantly, a moral and ethical right. The creator of a work has the right to ensure that that work is only seen in a form which the creator approves of. If the artist releases it for use in a mashup, fine. If not, it is not yours to play with. Just because it is easy to steal material and make a mashup does not mean it should be legal. It's easy to spit on people in the street and scratch your keys down someone's door; doesn't mean it should be legal.
And don't tell me there's 'no harm' in it. If I am an artist and you misrepresent my work, you are harming my reputation. You might scare off potential customers, whatever. Even if you label the work as derivative, people seeing will still use it, consciously or not, to help form an opinion on the underlying art.
You could argue that the extra exposure might benefit an artist. BUT it is THEIR choice if they chase that extra exposure or not, not a mashup artist's choice.
A lot of internet discussion revolves around the user's rights, the big fat corporations trying to protect their wallets, all that emotional crap. THe actualt creators, off which 99% of the web feeds like a parasite, get squashed between the two.
Rant off.
Yep, exactly what I was thinking, but you said it better than I could(from one AC to another). I can't give you "mod" points for obvious reasons, but I wanted to give you positive feedback and encouragement. We're outnumbered on this board, but we need to make our voices heard now and in the future; AC or not, doesn't matter. Cheers, mate!
Copyright exists "To Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts" not to serve as a perpetual income machine for writers and artists.
The current abuse of copyright does not mainly benefit writers and artists, it benefits large corporations. How did George Orwell benefit by having the copyright on 1984 extended from 2024 to forever? The author died in 1950!
Mr Card is absolutely wrong. You do not have to defend your copyright, only your trademarks. If any of these characters is trademarked, then he has to act in every case where he becomes aware of infringment. See the recent posts about Google trying to stop people using their name as a verb.
:(
Trademarks must be defended. Patents and copyrights don't.
Interesting to see that OSC would sue over something he obviously doesn't understand. Hopefully his lawyers would stop him.
It's also interesting to see an artist crave that life + 70 year bullshit. He seems more interested in leaving his family money than in contributing to the shared culture of the world. Sad... I expected more of him
I COMPLETELY agree with him!
... GOD FORBID ... if some teenager, or adult for that matter, lipsync or dance to a popular song or play-act with a popular movie or TV show. If they were charging money and calling the work 100% original then that would be one thing, but to show the world that you obviously enjoy that piece of media, for FREE nonetheless, seems to be a win-win situation for everybody.
... if it is copyrighted then it will be off to the pokey for you!!!
I mean
All I can say is that if this continues, you had better watch out what is playing in the background when you leave somebody a voicemail
He also used a really funky "one slide per emphasized word" method of presentation that David Weinberger took great pleasure in parodying in his own talk two days later. :-)
You have a sad view of the world, that you think artists have some sort of ultimate right over how people view their work. Artists can expect a certain moral right that people will not plagiarize their works, but an idea is an idea. If I tell you an idea, I don't have any right to control what you then do with that idea. If I don't want you to misinterpret my idea, my sole recourse is to not tell you in the first place. (Particularly, if you're selling a work in exchange for money, you've just sold something. You should no longer expect to have complete control. If you want complete control, don't sell it.)
Derivative works happen all the time, especially for works in the public domain. Disney makes cartoons based on classic fairy tales (Snow White, Cinderella, etc). Should they need permission from the Grimms Brothers estate, because they may not be preserving their artisitic vision? "Clueless" is basically an updated "Emma". Do you think Jane Austen is rolling over in her grave? Some works are not out of copyright, and have attracted lawsuits, like "The Wind Done Gone" vs. "Gone With The Wind". Should Leonardo DaVinci's descendants have the right to complain about the Mona Lisa's frame? Should MAD Magazine be banned, since a parody (a form of derivative work) may convince me that some subpar movie just isn't worth watching?
Luckily, copyright in the US is not intended to protect any sort of "creative right". We can only hope it never will.
Copyright law in this country is stacked firmly in favor of the copyright owners.
When our founding fathers developed the idea of licensing intellectual property it was originally for 7 years of exclusivity, after which it was public domain.
Then we began to allow people to renew their copyright for a few more years. And then hollywood began to manipulate the law makers with lobbyists and more and more time began being added until it was a lifetime copyright, and then up to 70 years after the persons death.
And then they started allowing corporations to own copyrights, and since a corporation doesn't die, neither does their copyright. They also began the process of "auto renewing" copyrights whether the original author wanted to or not.
This caused a huge problem when works like documentaries on the civil rights movement, where the original copyright owner could not be located, that efectively locked the work out of the public eye.
There are thousands of orphaned works like that and since their copyrights are kept locked up indefinately after being abandoned, nobody can use them.
So we go from 7 years to lifetime +80 years. Basicly every time Mickey Mouse gets close to being public domain, Disney lobbyists get the deadline extended. The last of these was the Sonny Bono act that extended copyrights out even farther.
Look, nothing is created in a vacume. If you write a book, or a movie, or paint something, you didn't come up with all of that yourself. You had influences from other artists, from the public. There is nothing new out there, everything is based upon the work of somebody else. And if we lock everything up and use copyright as an excuse to NEVER release it back to the public then it ends up crippling the next generation of artists and innovators.
Imagine what music would be like if everything by Mozart and Bach, and other classical artists was still copyright. A lot of people don't realize it but the Happy birthday song is copyright and every time it's used in a movie they have to license it.
It was not the intention of the founding fathers of this country for works of art to remain privatized for hundreds of years. They felt that 7 years was enough, and that after that it should become public domain. This cycle of creativity is what creates new art and new artists, and if people are stingy with their art and don't give back, after taking so much, then no new art is created.
I utterly reject the concept of unlimited copyrights and the rampant lawsuits for sampling other peoples music, mashing up videos, making mosaics of photographs, or any of the other things that limit an artists creative freedoms.
I would love to see all that come to pass, but come on... how on earth could such a lobbying agenda ever get funded at the requisite levels? Remember "Rock the Vote," where an entire generation was going to wake like a sleeping giant & give Washington what for? Even with exposure to the saturation point, voter turnout was anemic at best for Rock the Vote's target demographic.
Turning your laudable agenda into reality takes more than tip-jar money - it takes soul-owning money. The other side has quite an inventory of legislators already. For crying out loud, look at the excrable piece of legislation that got Feinstein (D) & Frist (R) cooperating!
I would be *thrilled* to be wrong on this, but I don't think the war can realisticly be won at the grassroots, political action level. Various viral marketing tactics for alternative media is one helpful strategy, and frankly, rogue technology is the other. If those who would control every exposure to media products are swiftly defeated by technological liberators every time the two face off, then all the laws in the US Code won't help the restrictors put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Using free software, people can already share data anonymously, store data invisibly, and view and copy just about any extant media without difficulty. Cobble all that into a single dashboard / portal interface & make it portable, extensible, and a no-brainer for the unsavvy to use, and you have quite a strong weapon against DRM: its own futility. Of course IANAL and I don't recommend anyone do anything illegal; just keep in mind that technology can secure certain liberties when governments fail to.
Pi Ran Out
The problem with Lessig is that his position is not anti-copyright, but reform copyright enough to find a "happy" middle ground. While this sounds nice, the RIAA and MPAA understand very cleary that this is an all or nothing battle and have been using him to confuse and appease the masses from the front-door while they ram down harsher than ever copyright restriction laws and lawsiuts thru the back door. Is he refusing to take a total stand against copyrights because he has some deep moral understanding about the nature of free information that we dont? No. He is doing it because he does not want to be considered "radical" even if that radical position is the truth. We shouldn't follow him, because he is following us by pandering to the masses instead of the facts. While this might help him get good book sells, it will not help liberty in the information age which is really the goal.
Of course, that may be a misunderstanding he used to have.
BUT they'd better not be obvious copies of characters in works protected by copyright, and they better not be named after counterparts in copyrighted works
So, I largely have the freedom of speech, to speak and write about anything I want. Except copyright strips me of that freedom: I can't speak of copyrighted ideas, nor ideas which are "too similar" to ideas which someone else owns.
Worse yet, the courts do not and will not define what "too similar" actually means: IP lawyers smugly re-iterate that there is no "bright line" test for copyright infringement. So, if you express an illegal idea, you'll break the law. And you don't know and can't know if it's legal to express that idea.
Now, how do you ask a lawyer if that idea is legal, if he can't possibly know the right answer, and you can't legally tell him about the idea you're thinking about, without breaking the law?
Copyright is a bad idea. Period.
The fruit seller down the street from me is not guaranteed that anyone will buy his oranges before they go bad. That doesn't make stealing them ok.
The producers, writers and actors of TV shows expect that if they do a good job, their show will go into syndication and sell on DVD. You can't just deprive them of that income because those sales aren't guaranteed. The fact that people are willing to pay for the DVDs and watch those reruns and that advertisers are willing to pay for those reruns to be aired proves that TV shows have a value beyond their first airing.
Also, who are you to decide where movies should be paid for? The fact that there are people willing to pay to buy and rent movies proves that there is a value to DVDs. Your deciding otherwise doesn't change anything.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Unfortunately, I believe that retooling an existing system in such disrepair as the copyright system with patchwork alternative licensing schemes is just creating complexity which wouldn't adjusted existing law, which is the root of the problem.
The original intent of copyright law was to foment the creativity by creating a system where a person's intellectual work was protected for a period of time. During this period of time, the initial work's integrity was guaranteed and gave control over its dissemination to its creator. By integrity, I mean it could not be altered from its original form without permission and attribution, and by control, I mean it couldn't be disseminated without permission. Of course, it was up to the creator to decide whether either of these would be pursued in the case of infringement.
Note that the original intent was not to give the creator of intellectual property perpetual license to profit from his work. This would have given the creator no reason to continue creating since he/she would be able to profit in perpetuity, so the amount of time was intentionally finite, judged to be the amount of time to become (if it was of significant import) ubiquitous to the culture, on the order of 20 years or so. It should also be noted that copyright law does not explicitly give the creator the right to profit from the work, although this is implied in his/her rights of control.
The principle of fair use has always been a part of copyright law principles because an important right to freedom of expression is public debate and political satire. Essentially fair use states that nominal, attributed citation of portions of another's intellectual property for the creation of another intellectual work is not only protected speech, but vital to the political and cultural health of the nation.
However, because of the implicit ability to profit over intellectual works, it was only a matter of time before distribution organizations would pop up, and it was only a matter of a little more time before the laws were amended to maximize the profits of copyright holders, both through the ability to extend copyrights beyond their bounds, lengthening of the interval of copyright protection, and wholesale relinquishment of rights through draconian licensing agreements.
Right now, I believe that if you publically perform a rendition of Happy Birthday, you owe someone a royalty (and if you do so without the holder's prior permission, you are infringing, and thus liable for damages). Given the cultural ubiquity of Happy Birthday, one can reasonably argue that copyright law no longer protects intellectual property in a manner consistent with its inception.
At this point, especially with regard to entertainment media, we have a licensing system that no longer embraces the spirit of copyright law. It has gotten so far out of hand, what with the civil prosecution of juveniles, and the otherwise shotgun-blast method of doling out lawsuits to scare people into settlements, that the law must be changed. Specifically, it must be changed to embrace its heritage, not protect those interested in using it as an instrument of extorting exorbitant sums from people they have the nerve to call their customers.
You pay for it all right, not in money but in the right to compose songs. U.S. copyright case law considers "access" plus "substantial similarity" to equal copying. If you hear a recording of an all-rights-reserved song on Muzak, you are for the rest of your life deemed to have had "access" to the work. Years later, if you ever compose something that is accidentally similar, you are an infringer and a plagiarist.
Should it? For one thing, you're not talking about copyrights. You're talking about trademarks -- which are another form of "intellectual property," but they aren't Lessig's main issue.
The problem with the Sith Lord is that Lucas owns a trademark on the term "Sith Lord." But there are plenty of amateur fictional works about, for example, a guy who travels in time with a few companions in a time machine that's bigger on the outside than on the inside and who undoes the plans of evil robots -- they just can't call those stories "Doctor Who." That's nothing to do with copyrights. That's trademarks.
Even so, it's not as if wanting to protect one's intellectual property is a new idea. Many people consider the first "modern" novel to be Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, which was published in two parts. The first part appeared in 1605 and the second in 1615. Before Cervantes could publish the second part, however, a man writing under the name of Alonso Fernándo de Avellaneda published an unauthorized sequel to the original, in an attempt to capitalize on Cervantes' huge success. Cervantes was pissed. There was no trademark law at the time that could protect him; he fought back by devoting several sections of the authentic sequel to lampooning and chiding the impostor. Some characters in the real sequel even claim to have read the fake one. What's more, academic society frowns on Avellaneda's work, which has come to be known as the "false Quixote" and is often dismissed outright. In other words, society at large perceives the validity of Cervantes' "ownership" of the character of Quixote, even if there is no explicit law on the books that makes what Avellaneda did a crime. So you can't act like this debate is a manifestation of the modern era; in fact it goes back centuries.
Breakfast served all day!