Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Chinese Firm Now Owns The Rights To Tiananmen Square Tank Man Photo; What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Techdirt: A few decades ago, Bill Gates got involved in something of a "side project" in which he tried to gain control over the licensing rights of tons of photographs and artwork, in a project that was eventually called Corbis.
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Intellectual property has always been an issue that I’ve felt fairly torn about. On one hand, clearly if you come up with an idea that changes how something is done in a way that can be profited from, you should see a share of that profit. If you make a movie for millions of dollars, you should expect to be able to enforce the fact that whoever plays that movie has paid you for you having made it. But because of the nature of ideas, there’s often a grey area. My biggest problem with IP is that buying the rights to use something, like a song or a photograph, is often very expensive. And because of that, it often becomes hard to use that creation in the context of a larger creation, such as a show. So we use public domain images and music, but the problem with that is that every famous song ever is not going to be in the public domain.
Now, this situation where a Chinese firm has bought the distribution rights to all of these iconic and historical events make me even more split about how IP is governed. They now own the rights to pictures that they did not take, and did not have anything to do with the creation of, but they can still sue you if you distribute the photos without their consent. So, they can erase the images of this moment of history, at least from anyone who wishes to abide by IP laws.
I don’t know where this leaves me morally, but I’d love to see copyright confined to the original creator, being non-transferable to another party, but then it becomes difficult to profit on something you created. Like, if I took a photo, I might want to sell the rights instead of sucking up the royalties bit by bit. So, I don’t know.
This sounds like a problematic mess. It's really quite embarrassing when another country is trying to hide it's history, particularly when it directly affects the citizens of that particular country. What is even more questionable about this whole situation is Bill Gates' involvement. While we don't obviously know all the details of the situation, I kind of feel as though it would be a little bit questionable for him to be selling a company/project that he is involved in to a Chinese firm. For Corbis to own the images in the first place seems like an attempt to keep the images public, so it would be a conflict of interest to be selling them off to a Chinese firm that would potentially attempt to bury the images. While we can save the images for now, what would happen if they were no longer allowed to be published publicly?
I've learned about the Tiananmen Square massacre in school many times, but I've never actually seen any photos due to the censorship in China. Regardless of how many times I've learned/heard about the massacre in class, these photos are still shocking to see. Although I don't know much about copyrights/censorship, I do hope that the Chinese firm which now owns the copyrights to these photos do the right thing and keep the pictures public globally. I do worry that the Chinese government might try to make the firm take the photos down or even buy the copyrights of those photos in order to censor them from the world since not only pictures, but anything even related to the event (text, news articles, web searches, etc) are completely censored in China. There's nothing much we can do now but hope for the best (and save the photos while they're still available).
The issue of people using copyright laws as a means to get away with censorship has always skeeved me out. In general, there’s been a lot of talk recently about the privacy of a country's’ information, and who does/ doesn’t have the right to view that information. Specifically, the conflict over the Tiananmen Square photos, and the efforts of certain people in leadership positions in China to “hide” those events is scary and strange. My mom was born and grew up in China, but moved to America when she was a young adult, so she has talked to me a lot about the differences in American and Chinese culture, and how invasive of a role government has played in her life. I was so surprised to hear how many websites are blocked in China. Recently, I just learned that you can’t even search for the word “tank”, or any iterations of the date of the Tiananmen Square events in China. Even photos that play off of the composition of the original infamous Tiananmen Square photo aren’t allowed. I think world-wide known issues such as this are a good opportunity for us to reflect on our own country’s policies; how much do we not know, and how much do we need to know?
This would be a lot more scary if I didn’t know the internet. It is unfortunate that there is now the potential for the Chinese government to try and restrict the use of these images worldwide but I’d imagine if they did the backlash would fairly certainly make sure that those images never left. At least I hope so, the censorship of the internet is incredibly difficult but could have an immense effect on the solidification of power by governments across the world. I hope I never see the day where the US government actually complies with a request to censor these image but the potential is certainly there and that is scary in and of itself. China maintains the biggest totalitarian state left in the world and they do it through the use of censorship and intimidation. The idea that you can protest but the government will stop you and cover up your attempt is quite intimidating.
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