N o t h i n g a b o u t m e

Friday, February 2, 2007

Com 125 QotW3: Copyright & Piracy


Copyright is a protection that covers published and unpublished literary, scientific and artistic works, whatever the form of expression, provided such works are fixed in a tangible or material form. This means that if you can see it, hear it and/or touch it - it may be protected. Thus a copyright would exclusive rights to that individual to reproduce or collect royalties from the reproduction of the copyrighted material. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works (Copyright Issues in Digital Media, 2004).

As Internet becomes more rampant in our lives as the world goes wireless, sharing files and music would be as easy as stealing candy from a baby. With various software that can be downloadable from the Internet and the lack of hash and stiffer laws to prevent copyright infringement what can be done to stop us? Users of P2P programs, such as Limewire, Kazaa and bittorrent, are able to share files with one another online. Let’s say I recently purchased an album from my friendly music store which cost me $25. When I got home I ripped the music into my hard drive and shared it on Kazza and Limewire, where people from all around the world are able to download it off me for free. People who did not buy the album were able to download the songs and it became their property. This is called file sharing. So it does not matter if you made yourself a copy of a CD for your own use, however giving it to someone else, or worse, selling it, would infringe on Copyright laws (Brady, 2007). On programs like Limewire, which connect on the Gnutella server, a song which is four megabytes large can be transferred in five minutes on a broadband connection. On the other hand, on Bittorrent programs, an entire music album, which, for example, could be 80 megabytes in size, can be transferred in under an hour. With these kinds of download speeds, it is no surprise that large amounts of internet proficient users now rely on such networks to download songs and movies, instead of buying them. Needless to say, the profits of the copyright owners have consequently been heavily compromised. Copyright allows content creators to have some privileges, where no one else other than the content creator is allowed to publish the material. In order to obtain such rights, the content has to be “original, creative and fixed in a tangible medium” (Ovalle, 2005).

Piracy on the other hand infringes copyright laws in many ways. Firstly they illegally make copies of the material then they distribute it without a license. The sharp increase in pirated material could only be due to the high demand in the goods; as if there is no demand for the goods then the production would stop. Think about it logically an average person would want to pay less for something yet receive the same benefits. Pirated material has become so advance that the material is almost or sometimes even equal to the original good itself. So why would an average citizen actually want to pay more for something they can get for less. It all comes down to their morals.
From Mp3s to Dvds, piracy is rampant and unless the industries find a better way of protecting their music or movies or even lowering their prices, piracy will forever be like a virus, spreading and infecting everyone. I for one do not believe in copyright laws and sure I do believe that piracy is a crime but I am practical and would not pay for something when I can get it for less.



References

Copyright Issues in Digital Media. (2004, August). Retrieved February 1, 2007, from Congressional Budget Office Web site: http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5738&sequence=0

Ovalle, C. (2005). “What is copyright?”. University of Texas at Austin, Course INF 312. Information in Cyberspace. Retrieved on January 31, 2007, fromhttp://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312co/3.php

Kevin S. Brady (2007). "Copyright FAQ: 25 Common Myths and Misconceptions". Retrieved 31st January, 2007 from http://users.goldengate.net/~kbrady/copyright.html
Litman, Jessica, "Sharing and Stealing" (November 23, 2003). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=472141 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.472141

International Journal of Research in Marketing, December 2003 (Volume 20, No. 4), "How many pirates should a software firm tolerate?"

1 comment:

Kevin said...

Ben: Leaving it up to content creators to lower prices or to control media content through Digital Rights Management (DRM)? If you could have been specific with the "how", this would have a been a better read (e.g. Creative Commons, CopyLeft). Good attempt, so full grades awarded.