Copyright is important to society because it encourages innovation. People have a reason to create because they do not have to worry about the security of their work with copyright laws. A copyright lasts through the authors life plus seventy years and their heirs can benefit from the author's work. A document can be called copyrighted as soon as it is in a fixed, tangible medium.
Every computer has a unique IP address that can be traced so you are never anonymous on the internet. At Trinity students receive take down noticed when they are caught downloading or sharing any files illegally. Once you receive a take down notice you should immediately delete file sharing software and and illegal downloads.
The technology of LimeWire, BitTorrent, Kaza, etc. is not illegal. It is the downloading and sharing that becomes a legal issue. When on YouTube you are generally safe if you are only watching streaming videos. However, when you are uploading, you must be sure that you are uploading your own content and not someone else's. When you are downloading videos from YouTube you must be careful also.
Four things determine when usage of content is considered "fair use". Purpose of reproduction, nature of the reproduced work, amount of the reproduction, and effect on the market for the work are all involved.
Jason Hardin also told us about Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a non-profit agency that has developed alternative copyright licenses. People can use this to copyright their material the way the want it copyrighted rather than using the inflexible Title 17.
The case of Harper v. Maverick was also discussed. A San Antonio student, Whitney Harper, downloaded thirty seven songs illegally off of the Internet when she was seventeen. She was sued for $27,750 dollars. $750.00 per song that was illegally downloaded. She tried to claim that she was an "innocent infringer" which would have reduced her fine to $250.00 per song. However, the Supreme Court and the fifth circuit court of appeals did not let her claim this. They believed that she should have assumed copyright laws on the songs.
I disagree with the courts decision to fine her for such a large amount of money. I do realize that Harper was in the wrong, however, it was only 37 songs and I believe this is too large of a sum to pay for a few songs. Whitney Harper was not trying to make money from the illegally downloaded songs by selling them and was not purposefully trying to do any damage to the industry. Her punishment was far to harsh for the crime.
Copyright by Alison Buck is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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