This week I need copyright law to protect ideas

I was chatting online today with a college friend of mine who had an idea to build a online social network for a major retail store. This kind of relates to last week's topic of Intellectual Property and other regulatory issues. We had a great speaker, Michael Overing, who left me wanting more information about Internet Law. We'll have to wait though for the fall before we get the full course.

But the reason why this is all interesting to me, is that my friend did not want to pitch her idea to the major retail store because she was afraid that they would steal her idea and not give her any credit. She had come up with what was a very good concept for this social networking site and even backed it up with mock-ups! (And they were really good btw) We chatted back and forth excitedly as I helped her develop concepts for community building blocks that I've experienced through 3helix and learned about in Kim’s Community Building on the Web (CMGT 530). But after all that great brain storming, this idea still remains just an idea with no real plan of action because of the fear that this retail store will steal her idea (and seriously, what a shame!). Somewhat ironic because last week I was all about loosening copyright law to allow for innovation to develop more easily. This week, I need it to extend to protecting ideas. Which, I don't think will happen. We'll probably have to think of some creative way to use the current laws for her idea to come through. I guess this just proves a more general point of these laws not providing proper accommodation.

Although I feel like her idea is a great one and should be implemented right away, I understand her hesitancy. I know of one of my friend's (from last year's cohort) pitching an idea to a HUGE internet conglomerate only to later have his idea "stolen". My friend's boyfriend's cousin (Don't you just love 3 person removed stories? I give this one the benefit of the doubt, though) pitched a huge movie/television/everything company an idea about a certain blue pet from outerspace that would later be adopted as a dog to help a certain little hawaiian girl cope with the trials in her life. The company said they had no use for the character. Yet 2 years later, the movie came out. Makes a person like me very wary about pitching ideas to a big companies. I suppose if you look at the big picture, in the end final products are produced and people in general benefit from these new products. But what about the idea person? Is that right to just cut them out of the picture?

As for my friend’s idea? I’m ready to be all in to help her. But first I need to either do more research or wait to take that Internet Law class. Then we’ll know how to approach this idea and hopefully pitch it. Who knows… if you see a social network developing in the future with a red dot and a circle around it, at least you’ll know where it started from.