The principle behind copyright is to protect creators for a time so that they can profit off their creations for a time period before the creation becomes public domain. This is intended to inspire people to create new things. Imagine you create an amazing new thing, let’s say you’ve invented a brand new method of compressing/transmitting data. In a world without copyright, you will not make a dime off of your invention. Every tech company out there will take your idea, incorporate it into their systems and make bank off it. As a small time inventor, you will not have the ability to compete with them. Copyright forces them to pay you to use your technology. Others will see you profiting from your own creation and be inspired to create their own works.

Sadly, the system, like so many others, has been corrupted. Copyright was supposed to protect the creator for 14 years with the ability to renew it once. After that, anyone would be allowed to use it. Copyright was also intended to protect the inventor of an idea, not corporations. Companies now use the copyright process like a sledge hammer to keep all profits to themselves. Using massive amounts of money and armies of lawyers, they have completely twisted copyright laws to their own benefit. Creating loopholes to allow copyright to last essentially forever and even going so far as claiming ownership of ideas created by employees, the very people that copyright was originally supposed to protect.

The idea of copyrighting works to protect and inspire inventors and authors is noble but, like everything else, the implementation has been corrupted by the greedy and power-hungry.