Copyright Laws, the Way to Go?

Copyrighting is a tricky and controversial topic. Many people are against copyright laws, but there are also many people are for the copyrighting laws that are set today. For me I have started to lean toward the later of the two. Long before being assigned to read and write a blog about copyrighting, I thought that the copyrighting laws were stupid and useless. I felt that the Copyrighting laws were limiting people’s scope and creative ability. But now reading the articles assigned in class, doing outside research, and talking to my brother about Copyrighting, I have changed my mind. I believe that the laws set in place to protect the creators creativity is necessary a worthwhile.

People apposed to the Copyrighting laws say that person to person file sharing has increased sales because it has allowed the users to “learn about music that they would not otherwise be exposed to,” Oberholzer-Gee, Strumpf, 2005). Others claimed that with copyright laws, people are limited with their creativity. An example of this is the American Edit album that was put out on the internet(Carapult, 2007). They claim without the ability to use other people’s music to play around with, new and interesting things will never be able to be created. I believe that both these claims are bogus. If a person wanted to be exposed to new music or things, all they have to do is to pay for them. The creators have spent a long time working on the finished product and deserve to collect the benefits that they have earned. Plus with songs only costing the buyer less then a dollar a song and music stores online making billions of songs available at a click, it shouldn’t be hard for the public to be exposed to new music. The other claim people say about the Copyright laws hindering creativity shows how naïve the people are who say this. You don’t need to take from someone else to be creative. If a person says this to me I think that they only have a limited outlook on things. People need to learn to think outside of the box and come up with new and original ways to create music instead of taking other peoples ideas.

Downloading Music

Downloading music for free is stealing, which is illegal. If you do download music for free, from site like LimeWire, DC++, and Napster, you should also know the consequences that come when you click that download button.

Here is a clip from South Park showing (a bit exaggerated) what could happen if you download music illegally……

If you get caught downloading illegal music you could be fined up to $150,000 (Ovalle, 2005). I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t have that kind of money to throw away on downloading something that costs less then a dollar on music stores such as iTunes. Also, if you believe that you wont get caught you are mistaken. Below is a case where a kid was caught and fined for his mistake of downloading illegal music.

Like I mentioned in the last paragraph, having to pay a fine for downloading illegal music is stupid. You are better off just downloading a song off of iTunes. It would be cheaper in the long run because you would always have that possibility of being caught. This is why I think that iTunes is the solution to the problem of people downloading illegal music. With iTunes you are able download millions of different songs, movies, shows, and audio books for cheap (Wikipedia, 2007). You are also able to either buy a whole album or show or you can just buy one song or episode that you want. ITunes is also cheap. No longer do you have to spend 15 dollars on a CD, $20 on a DVD or $40 for a season of a T.V. show.

As of right now though, people aren’t using iTunes as much as they should be because downloading music for free is still too easy to do. I think that the government should go after a lot more people who are downloading music. Right now I think that they are being too relaxed about it. I feel that if they can catch people stealing things from stores then they should be able to catch people stealing music off of music sites. Only then, will people start using iTunes more out of fear of being caught.

In an ending note, here is a video that I thought was interesting from when the iTunes store was first opening.....

References:

(2007). Remix culture: a rights nightmare. Retrieved January 31, 2007, from Carapult: making ideas happen Web site: http://www.abc.net.au/catapult/indepth/s1645533.htm

iTunes. (2007, January 31). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01:09, February 1, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ITunes&oldid=104514548

Oberholzer-Gee, Felix, & Strumpf, Koleman (2005). The effects of file sharing on record sales an empirical analysis . Retrieved January 31, 2007, from http://www.unc.edu/%7Ecigar/papers/FileSharing_June2005_final.pdf.

Ovalle, Carlos (2005). An introduction to copyright. Retrieved January 31, 2007, from i312 Information In Cyberspace Web site: http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/%7Ei312co/1.php