Joan Smith

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I can’t help thinking that “copyright” is becoming a dirty word. In a weird inversion, something that’s essential to protect authors – and dear to the hearts of ALCS members – is increasingly being characterised as an assault on other people’s rights, even an attack on free speech.

I can’t remember a time when so few people cared about the notion of intellectual property

Ludicrous though this argument is – I spent years working on behalf of imprisoned writers at English PEN, and I know a genuine threat to free speech when I see one – it is being used more and more frequently; it provides respectable cover to people who wrongly believe that once something’s been published it belongs to everybody. It’s in their interest to suggest that mean old authors are trying to stop the public reading whatever they want, in whatever form they want – and even have the cheek to demand payment.

I can’t remember a time when so few people cared about the notion of intellectual property, always assuming that they know what it means. Individuals who upload music to share with friends and strangers express apparently genuine outrage when artists or record companies (quite rightly) take them to court; when JK Rowling brought a case in the USA to protect her copyright, she was portrayed as greedy and grasping rather than someone who legitimately wanted control over the products of her imagination. Not long ago, I even heard a BBC journalist complaining that he’d been taken to task after posting a home video on a social networking site accompanied by a song that was still in copyright; he seemed to have trouble grasping the notion that what he thought was a bit of harmless fun was actually a matter of using someone else’s work without payment. Perhaps he’d feel differently if his articles started appearing in magazines and websites without his permission, directly affecting his ability to pay his mortgage.

A victimless offence?

ALCS has done terrific work showing how little authors earn in this country

The idea has got around that stuff we’re familiar with – a song, a poem, a favourite book – ceases to be the property of its creator. Re-using published work without paying for it is widely regarded as a victimless offence which only killjoys (and wealthy authors) could possibly complain about. What people who aren’t writers and artists don’t appreciate is the hard slog that goes into producing a book or a piece of music, and the fact that most of the individuals who do these things lead financially precarious lives. ALCS has done terrific work showing how little authors earn in this country, and we all know how demoralising it is to try and survive as a writer in the current economic climate.

We need to be bolder about saying this, and unapologetic about the fact that we expect to be paid for our work, wherever and however it’s used. This is especially important in the age of the internet, when hostility to professional writers – and hence to copyright – is growing all the time. Journalists are the most frequent victims of what is in essence a form of theft; often an article or column has barely appeared in the newspaper that commissioned (and paid) for it before bloggers are posting it on their own websites. Either they think it’s flattering or they disagree violently and want to say so; either way, it’s obvious that they don’t give a moment’s thought to the fact that they’re breaching the author’s copyright. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked for permission before someone reproduces one of my articles in this way, and I’m sure that if I complained most bloggers would respond that they don’t get paid for writing. They’re not (usually) making money from re-using my material without permission, so why the fuss?

Just because you love something doesn’t mean you own it.

Readers need to be reminded, gently or otherwise, that writing is work

There is of course a world of difference between someone who creates their own blog, choosing to spend time on it without being paid, and an author who writes books or articles for a living. Anyone is welcome to read what I write; I don’t mind whether they love it or hate it, but I do expect to be paid if they reproduce it. Just because you love something doesn’t mean you own it and can do what you like with it; no one expects to be able go into a shop, pick up a dress, leave without paying for it and start knocking up copies for their friends when they get home. If they did and got caught, they wouldn’t be surprised to find themselves in court, yet doing much the same thing to a writer apparently doesn’t count.

It’s hard to believe in the 21st century that we need to go back to basics like this, but we do. Readers need to be reminded, gently or otherwise, that writing is work. Copyright is our protection against exploitation. What’s so difficult about that?

Copyright © Joan Smith

Joan Smith is a novelist, columnist and human rights activist. She writes a weekly column for the Independent on Sunday and her work also appears in the Independent, the Sunday Times, The Times, the Evening Standard and Tribune.

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