Legal+Issues+Associated+With+the+Copyright+Law

=Introduction=

toc Ever since the existence of human beings, people have been trying to create new ways to tackle daily tasks. Yet, intellectual property is a term that describes how mankind manipulates their intelligence and knowledge to create new tools that help people to accomplish their daily obstacles. However, the term intellectual property can be further divided into three categories, which are patent law, copyright law and trademark law. Among those three laws mentioned in above, the copyright law is the most offended law due to many illegal practices of obtaining copyrighted materials. Therefore, I would like to focus more on some of the legal issues associated with the copyright law. In order to identify when we are protected by the law, and when we are violating it. First of all, we need to understand the basic rules that constitute the copyright law, in order to identify under what circumstances that we are protected by the law. Secondly, we will be looking at some of the legal issues associated with the peer-to-peer file sharing programs. The advantages provided by the peer-to-peer sharing programs prompted people to obtain pirated software, which violates the copyright law. Finally, we will be looking at the existences of MP3 digital format music and Napster that lead to music piracy issues. The advantages provided by MP3 and Napster prompted users to download digital music illegally, which is also against the copyright law. Firstly, we need to understand more in depth on those rules that govern the copyright law, in order to understand the nature of the law.

=The Copyright Law=

A copyright is basically a set of rules and regulations stipulated by the government to protect those creators who sell their own work to make a profit. Copyright grants exclusive rights to creators of different forms of work, which includes arts, architecture drawings and designs, public broadcasts, musical recordings, movies, software, literatures and more. The creator of a productpossesses the rights to stop other people from trying to display, perform, reproduce, use and sell his/her work without his/her permission. When an individual develops his/her own work, it will be protected by the copyright law automatically, when it is completed and presented in a tangible form. However, the function of acquiring a copyright only informs other people that a specific work belongs to an individual or a company. In a case where other individuals attempt to reproduce, use and sell an individual's work. Obtaining a copyright protection doesn't allow the victim to sue for breach of copyright law. Therefore, for those people and companies who wish to make a profit from producing their own work, a registered copyright must be obtained from the Library of Congress. Upon acquiring a registered copyright, which gives those creators the rights to sue any individual who tries to reproduce and distribute their work. However, if an individual agrees to distribute and display his/her own work without receiving any royalty fees in return. Then any individual who attempts to infringe the owner's intellectual property will not be charged against violating the copyright law. Another objective of the copyright law is to make sure that creators are profited from their creative work. However, there is a limit to the amount of time that an individual should benefit from his/her work. According to the copyright law, an individual's work is protected throughout the life of a creator, in addition of 70 years on top of it. As illegal practices of acquiring copyrighted materials increases rapidly, copyright law is becoming even harder to reinforce. Therefore, for any individual or company that sells intellectual properties to make a profit. It is very important to be familiar with some legal issues associated with the copyright law, in order to receive maximum protection from it.

=Legal Issues Associated With the P2P File Sharing Practice=

One of the victims that suffers from the invasions of the copyright law is the software industry. The reason that pirated software is so attractive is due to the high royalty fees that users have to pay to use legitimate software. However, when internet service providers started to introduce the high speed internet connections to common households. Along with the introduction of the peer-to-peer file sharing programs. People can download copyrighted software from each other without paying royalty fee to the creator. Yet, most of the software that are being shared among peer-to-peer program users are pirated. This also means that illegal serial codes are offered to help users to break the protection barrier that protects the software from being used in illegal ways. However, the US Supreme Court is opposed to the concept of illegal file sharing. Therefore, the developers of the peer-to-peer sharing programs are responsible for any illegal activities, such as illegal sharing of copyright materials through the peer-to-peer programs. However, the advantages provided by peer-to-peer programs such as, obtaining copyrighted software conveniently at home for free. This prompted many people to share and download software online. Either they didn't realize or ignore that they have infringed the copyright law. As a result, the existence of the peer-to-peer sharing programs facilitated the processes of obtaining copyrighted software without permission from the creator, which is against the copyright law.

=Existences of Mp3 and Napster That Lead to Media Piracy=

Another victim that also suffers from the invasions of the copyright law is the music industry. Music is another popular copyrighted property that people tend to download because of over priced CD albums. Traditional CD albums adopt wave format files because of the high quality sounds that wave files are capable of producing. Since wave files tend to occupy more spaces, therefore, the introduction of the MP3 format file solves this problem. The disk space that a MP3 file occupies is approximately one tenth of a wave file, but only losing very little qualities that a wave file possesses. Due to this reason, MP3 files can be downloaded fairly quickly compare to wave files, which is the reason that most people adopt MP3 music.

Napster is one of the earliest peer-to-peer programs that allows people to share copyrighted music conveniently at home without paying royalty fees to artists. However, the Recording Industry Association of America became aware of this problem and claimed that “Napster is about facilitating piracy and trying to build a business on the backs of artists and copyright owners (McCarthy, par 3).” As a result, music companies are losing billions and billions of dollars on CD album sales. Therefore, this leads to many lawsuits filed against Napster for facilitating illegal sharing of copyrighted music online. As you can see that advantages provided by MP3 and Napster is the leading cause that prompted people to acquire copyrighted music, which is also against the copyright law.

=Conclusion=

In conclusion, I think the copyright law should be reinforced furthermore in order to defeat any illegal methods of acquiring copyrighted materials. I also think that technology advancement is one of the reasons that leads to illegal file sharing issue. As peer-to-peer file sharing programs grew popular, this encourages users to share copyrighted materials for free. Yet, majority of the people didn't realize that downloading copyrighted materials illegally equals to stealing a CD album or a software program from a store. The fact that people don't perceive acquiring copyrighted material in an intangible form is also against the law. This leads to many lawsuits filed by the software and the music companies against the peer-to-peer program developers. If majority of the people believe that music artists and software developers don't deserved to be paid for their work. Eventually, people will stop putting efforts to create new soft wares and music that all of us appreciate.

Food for Thought: Technology Law and Society Comic

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