This week in my Internet Communications class we discussed copyright laws that were created by the media and our government. According to Attorney General, Martha Coakley, "A copyright is a form of protection, granted by the laws of the United
States, to the creator of an original work of authorship including
literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual
works, to control the distribution, usually for a limited time, after
the work enters the public domain". The risks involved in illegally reproducing or distributing copyrighted
material are significant. It is against the law both to upload and
download the copyrighted works of others without express permission to
do so. It is stealing and both civil and criminal penalties are severe. If the penalties are already severe and a huge portion of our generation is still stealing documents, and music than how can we stop this?
I believe that one way to at least slow down piracy of music would be for music artist to lower the cost of purchasing there music. When you purchase a new released album from a store, you may pay anywhere from $10-$20 for an average of 16 songs. You may only like two or three songs on that CD. When iTunes came out it allowed you to purchase not only whole albums but individual songs as well. The average cost for a song would be about a dollar. Now that you could purchase only the songs that you liked for a cheaper price, why are we still downloading them for free illegally?
There are several "file sharing" website that are readily available to the younger generation. I want to see the government place stronger restrictions on this type of website. The government should have the power to shut down a website where illegal file sharing takes place.
Since the media is a huge influencing power, they should do more to let people know that file sharing is illegal. The media companies should also inform the public of the consequences of breaking the law.