Com125 Assignment 3: You better put a C on that lol

Why is it so important to have copyright? The are various reasons why copyright is used. Do you want you stuff stolen for people to profit off of your material? Well you better put a copyright on it! Copyright is enforced on harshly on some things more then others. People in today's society steal people stuff every day. Take for instance downloading music and movies. There are site where u can download programs where you can download music for free. Its illegal to do it but majority of the people in the world do it. There are even bootleg DVD's and CD's that you can purchase at some local corner stores. even People belongings are stolen all the time thats why we created something called copyright.

What is copyright and where did it begin? According to Wikipedia, copyright was not invented until after the advent of the printing press and with wider public literacy. It originated in Britain from a reaction to printer monopolies. Charles II of England was so worried about unfair copying of books he used the royal prerogative to pass the Licensing Act of 1662. Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This order of protection is accessible to work that is published and unpublished. A copyright last for the authors life and 70 years after their dead. There are many sections to the copyright law. The proper way to place a copyright notice is as follows: Copyright © (first date of creation) (name of owner). An example of this would be Copyright © 2007 John Smith. Copyright has grown greatly over the course of time. It went from regulating published books and maps to covering things such as sound recordings, films, photographs, software, and architectural works.

People even freely copy things off the internet without people permission(more info on internet copying). What's better than getting things for free? There is a website where people can copy images to place on their own sites. For instance, there is a website where people can get free web layouts. There a website where people can get free ringtones. People even use limewire or ares to download music. Free stuff is easily obtainable all over the net. I don't see what's the point in suing people who download and share music because everyone does it. You can't go around suing everyone in the world because that would just be stupid.

Copyright infringement is a very big issue in the world today. As stated on Wikipedia copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material which is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it. The slang term copyright infringement is bootleg (derived from the use of the shank of a boot for the purposes of smuggling) which is often used to describe illicitly copied material. People sell bootleg copies of movies that have just been shown in theaters or music albums that haven't even been released in stores yet for their own profit. That would be considered copyright infringement, but people still do it anyways. The foul acts of downloading pornography and sharing recorded music in the form of mp3 and other audio files are also considered copyright infringement. Its sort of stupid I think for downloading and sharing to be considered stealing because stores sell mp3 players and ipods which are specifically made for putting music and movies that you download on them.

Less music artist cds are purchased because people just download their albums. Its kind of beneficial for artist there music can get heard and make people want to buy their cd. Your not going to want to buy a rookies cd that you haven't heard before that just came out into the industry;your going to want to download some of their music to see if you like the artist or not. Then again people may not want to buy it once they had downloaded it. I know there has been times when people have bought a cd and was pissed off because it wasn't as good as they thought it was going to be. Then they wish they have never bought the cd which could make them not want to buy a cd again because they might think other people cds might be the same way. Artist may often put out singles that people can just download that probably want be on their cd. Artitst shoudn't even be concerned if people download their music because they are already rich enough a few unbought cds is not going to hurt them. Least to say people are punished for infringement. Lawsuits are placed out on the infringer. If you don't want to get sued or anything of a kind I would advise you not to download any music or movies, but there is a high percentage that you won't get sued.