“I'll just make a copy of that...” we say in a moment of inspiration. Somewhere in the back of our minds we suspect we shouldn't but, CD ripper or photocopier here we come...
Copyright (legal rights to control the reproduction of an artistic or written work), is a complex issue. Copying recordings
Copyright exists to protect creative people and their works; otherwise they'd not be able to afford to create. Copyright operates slightly differently in different countries, and is based on the idea of intellectual property.
The term ‘intellectual property’ is a bit an oxymoron! But to apply the same judgmental criteria, so do the ideas of ‘owning land’ or ‘water rights’. One finds oneself wondering when we will be paying for fresh air! This is because we recognise the spiritual truth that we don't really own these things.
Inspired music and writings, works of art and brilliant scientific ideas certainly seem to ‘come down’ through us, and hence really ‘belong to Spirit’. The more we align the mind to spirit, the less attractive ‘material’ concerns appear. However, this doesn’t solve the problem of how to live in the material world!
For thousands of years, people laboured in the fields or crafted physical items of trade in order to survive. They were forced to create systems of ‘ownership’ in relation to their labour in order to have justice in society.
Nowadays an increasing number of people are ‘labouring’ solely in the intellectual field. When their work is justly attributed to them, they can claim their share of profit when the work is sold. Otherwise they’d have little or no income.
Recognising firstly that everything is Spirit, one then has to adjust in the material realm as best one can, according to the times. Buying and selling music and books is essentially no different from buying and selling baked beans.
Any product we use - be it nourishing the physical body or the mind and spirit, has a monetary value in relation to the human labour that went into it.
Everyone has material needs. Meeting these needs costs in money or labour. Even great religious teachers who give all their time to society and receive no personal income are nonetheless supported in the material world by their followers.
If artists, writers and publishers were supported thus, there’d be no need for copyright law. But we’re not ‘up there’ – we’re workers in society like everybody else.
Copying our work is similar to stealing something from the supermarket - that's probably why people don't want to know...
Great spiritual teachers' discourses are copyright-protected, obviously not for financial reasons. The other very important roles copyright law plays are to protect the sanctity of the ideas so they do not get distorted, and to keep an accurate ‘lineage’ as to the source of the ideas as they spread.
No one taking the responsibility of teaching another wants his or her words distorted, as great harm could come of it! An excellent example of how quickly ideas become distorted is to play the ‘whisper-a-message-in-a-circle’ game. Hence the need for copyright.
Last Updated: August 08, 2007