Would you burn this disk for me?

by Group 7

It is well known that in the last few years, all over the world, the laws protecting copyrights have been enforced, punishing more severely those who violate the laws, especially in countries where the culture has a heavy influence of the media, such as the United States. Since the USA is such an important producer of digital media, it’s natural that it has imposed some of the most relevant laws regarding this topic.

To go deeper into this topic first we need to know what “copyright” really means. By definition, a copyright is a “set of exclusive legal rights that protect works of authorship, composition or artistry. A copyright protects the publication, production or sale of the rights to a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or computer program or to the use of a commercial print or label.” The purpose of this is that the author receives the proper recognition or profit for the use of his/her work.

A copyright is a form of protection to anyone who creates "original works of authorship." Essentially, a copyright protects many things which are created by someone, some of these are:

1. Literary works

2. Music, including any vocal accompaniment

3. Dramatic plays, including any musical accompaniment

4. Choreographic works

5. Pictorial, graphic and sculptural works

6. Motion pictures and other audiovisual works

7. Sound recordings

8. Architectural works

Copyrights can be applied to almost any kind of art, work or even objects. But we will focus on digital media, since it has gained a lot of importance in the last years with the growth of internet, and with that, the lack of regulation for sharing files. In other words, piracy. It is also a common thing in our lives, because the use of computers is widely spread to almost every corner of the world, and without them, the current society would not work as we know it.

As we previously mentioned, the USA plays an important role in this subject. One of the most important laws regarding piracy is the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Basically, it’s a law that standardized the use of copyrighted material, by giving the internet service providers (ISPs) the opportunity to “grow”, but with the responsibility of regulating an individual user’s material in case the latter broke a copyright. For example, if a certain user shared a certain protected file, the author has the right to contact the ISP and ask for this material to be removed from the server.

This is, of course, an ideal scenario. But in the real world things are different. With so much people with access to the internet, it’s impossible to monitor every single thing that each person shares; pictures, videos, files, data, programs, etc. As a result, online piracy has been as old as the internet itself; we can even point out who are the “best pirates”, so to speak. China and Russia are in the top of the list. This situation has led to many lawsuits against popular websites or peer-to-peer (P2P) programs, such as Napster, iMesh, Kazaa, eDonkey, BitTorrent, among many others. Surely it seems easier for the authors to sue a single company or group than a whole country or go one by one, but in the end, the users will always have the means to share files with each other without any regulation whatsoever.

With these kind of laws we wonder what really motivates an artist to create something, the money or the need to express himself/herself and show the world what he/she is capable of. The image of the author should be respected, but that doesn’t mean that the consumers should pay for every time they want to have access to a new material.  But in the case the copyright laws were completely effective, we would be faced with a reality in which the access to the material would be more than restricted, which in the end would harm the author, because there are cases in which there are no other ways to get the book, song, game or movie we want.

Nowadays, the internet gives us the possibility to have contact with other cultures, other kinds of art and music. By creating such strict laws they would only be limiting this kind of content to an specific public that can afford it, and thus, they would hinder its distribution. Authors and companies want the contents to be as widespread as possible, but at the same time they sell it as if it was private property. The truth is, it is beneficial for artists and directors that their works are distributed by the internet, so people can know about their projects.

What do you think? If you really liked an artist or author, would you support it by buying their products? Or would you be satisfied only with the copies? Are you concerned about breaking copyright laws?