Copyright?

I've been seriously considering putting some effort into finding freelance jobs. In researching and looking for basic contracts and such I happend upon an article on the AIGA website about copyright. The author, Brad Holland, wrote the article in 2005 but it felt like it could've been written yesterday since the statements he made were so spot on for today. The article was super intersting and I agreed whole-heartedly with it's statements. Here's a snip from the end of it that really brought things home:

The principles of building construction are a collective body of wisdom accumulated over the ages. This information is available to everyone, as are building supplies to anyone who can afford them. Yet, the house you build or buy is yours and your heirs. Your debt to the fair use of public information does not obligate you to inhabit your home under a limited government grant, then surrender it back to the public at the end of that term. Let the Copy Left explain why individual copyrights should be treated any differently.

Most freelance artists and writers have no other source of income but their creative work. The accumulated value of that work is no different than the value that accrues to your home; and the copyright that protects it no more robs the public of an “entitlement” than does the ordinary ownership of private property. Indeed, without the incentives guaranteed to individual creators under copyright law, the tradition of independence in the popular arts would be at risk-and with it, the variety of independent viewpoints that freelancers bring to public life. That would rob the public in a noticeable way.

For decades, freelance artists and photographers have given shape to the content of popular culture. Within the last two decades their ability to earn a living has come under assault: from publishers who demand they surrender copyrights in return for assignments, from corporate interests who wish to sell access to “free culture,” from cutthroat competition with discount “image providers,” and now from legal “visionaries” who wish to repeal or emasculate copyright.
The case for abolishing copyright can be likened to a scheme for the redistribution of income. In theory it sounds public-spirited. In reality it deadens motivation. Protecting a creator's individual copyrights will cost the public nothing, but it will insure the continued flow of creative work from which the public will ultimately benefit.

You can read the whole thing here: The Copy Left Is Not Right