With the appearance of the Internet, authors’ rights over their own works are undergoing a crisis. Since almost any content that is uploaded to the web can be easily downloaded to any computer, the number of people that violate the law by reproducing protected works or distributing them without permission has increased.
Authorities believe that it is necessary to prevent access to this copyrighted material in order to gain more security for the authors and thus stimulate the production and competitiveness.
Nevertheless, there are those who stand against this perception. The license known as copyleft was born as a subversion of copyright laws. Copyleft supporters maintain the idea that sharing promotes team-work, eliminates egoistic attitudes and encourages altruism between the members of a community.
Richard Stallman, coiner of the concept, defines copyleft as follows:
“Copyleft uses copyright law, but flips it over to serve the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, it becomes a means of keeping software free. The central idea of copyleft is that we give everyone permission to run the program, copy the program, modify the program, and distribute modified versions–but not permission to add restrictions of their own.”
Not to be confused with all types of free software, placing a copyleft license requires that any derivative work be distributed under the same copyleft conditions.
Besides informatic programs, the license can be assigned to any other creative product such as books, music, photos, etc.
References:
- About the GNU Project (January 21, 2008). In GNU Operating System, by Richard Stallman. Retrieved September 21, 2009.
- What is Copyleft? (June 8, 2009) . In GNU Operating System, by Richard Stallman. Retrieved September 21, 2009.
- El autor y la autoría en el mundo digital (February 15, 2009). In La artes@ digital, by María Jesús Lamarca. Retrieved September 22, 2009.
- ¿Qué es copyleft? (2009). In Fundación CopyLeft. Retrieved September 21, 2009.
- Copyleft (September 3, 2009). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 22, 2009.
- Europa baila al son de los derechos de autor (January 27, 2001). In BAQUIA knowledge center, by Ignacio Gómez. Retrieved September 25, 2009.
- FAQ sobre edición y copyleft (March, 2006). In Traficantes de Sueños. Retrieved September 21, 2009.
- La difusión de las creaciones en la era digital: El Copyleft para distribuir creaciones en la era digital (January 11, 2007). In Acimed, by Mabel Rodríguez Mederos. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
