Copyright and copywrong

I AM interested in this business of intellectual copyright. Much pressure has been brought to bear in recent times, particularly by the Irish Music Rights Organisation, to collect royalty monies due for the use in public places (especially pubs) of copyrighted music and song.

A new journal, Irish Intellectual Property Review, now reveals that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Indeed, if the creator of that latter metaphor could be identified, his or her descendants might well be able to claim small but significant amounts of cash every time is used. Through the services of a good lawyer, of course.

Irish Intellectual Property Review is not a list of desirable properties owned by Irish intellectuals. No. It relates to the fruits of intellectual labour and the ownership thereof. And more pointedly, the money.

We will be hearing a lot more about it too. The editor of the new journal, Ms Pauline Walley, has noted that intellectual copyright has become a hot issue for lawyers, the traditional creative industries, media and broadcasting professionals and computer software houses.

But it may well become a hotter issue for lawyers, at least in terms of an income generator, than for any of the other groups mentioned.

As regards software and music and other material available on CD, many purchasers might well presume that a charge sufficient to pay all royalty charges is already built into the often exorbitant prices. Perhaps now the consumer should consider offering an extra 50p per purchase to compensate the manufacturers and creative originators for the time spent in dividing the spoils.

In the meantime, someone might let us know who gets all the profit from the ludicrously high prices charged for a few pages of classical sheet music. Does it go to the estate of the classical musician?

No doubt the honest decent supermarket shopper is delighted to be paying surcharges on foodstuffs in order to compensate the shopkeepers for theft due to inadequate security. However, it may take a little longer to convince schoolchildren (and their parents) that they really should pay for mimeographed music, as recommended in Irish Intellectual Property Review.

Good lawyers are already working on the argument. My own modest suggestion is that we should designate schoolchildren as "professionals", and that any photocopy of just about anything at all by a child over the age of two should involve a small but meaningful charge. In this way young people will learn that nothing is free in this world.

It might also be useful to point out to small children that when they paint pictures of the sun and the sky and the stars, they are making unauthorised copies of original designs, for which payment may one day be exacted. (And it seems highly unlikely that lawyers will not be involved at some stage).

Somewhere out there too is the descendant of the writer of "Goosey Goosey Gander." He (or she) is not necessarily looking for a lawyer, but you can be quite sure that a lawyer is looking for him (or her), and eager to build a lucrative copyright case.

You might imagine that these are the wilder shores of the great copyright debate. Not so. A lawyer in the US has already opened up a whole new area for potential exploitation in the field of sports.

Mr Robert Kunstadt has identified what he calls "sports moves". He suggests that athletes might copyright their particular moves - such as Dick Fosbury's Fosbury Flop, Bernhard Langer's inverted putting grip, Rob Andrew's "crouched" kick and Australian cricketer Shane Warner's "Flipper". Any athlete attempting to copy these styles, or stylistic variations, would then have to pay an appropriate (i.e. substantial) fee.

You will excuse me at this stage if I go away and lie down for a while.

Right. I remember submitting an item to the famous "Pseuds Corner" column in Private Eye some years ago. To my delight it was published, and I received a few pounds from the magazine. I now wonder if I should not have passed on a proportion of the fee to the originator of the item: in deference to his pseudointellectual rights.

Certainly, if charges are to be made for using another person's works, there should be higher charges for abusing it. This might act as a valuable deterrent in public houses and at parties, when "cover" versions of popular songs are attempted with the usual embarrassing results.