Business Law and Ethics - Term Paper Example

Ethics refers to consolidation of values that defines what is right or wrong in the eyes of the society. It guides the actions of members of the society and influence the behaviour. Most people desire to get and listen to music free of charge. Therefore, pirating music is a desire to get or use something free of charge. It also may mean getting money from where the person has not invested in. They are also willing to spend little money to access the music than it could have cost if it could have been bought from the permitted vendor. However, most people do not know that by purchasing and listening to the copyrighted music without the permission of the author or artist constitutes piracy. The digital technology has influenced accessibility and distribution of electronic products especially music. Advancing electronic technology has promoted piracy of entertainment products on a wider scale. Music piracy has been on an upward trend since 1970’s according to Paradise (164). This has caused intellectual property owners sleepless nights because they are losing monies attributed to them to musical pirates. The copyright laws enacted in various countries have not been able to deter fully production and distribution of copyrighted music. Weiss (193) points out that Napster created a file sharing services that caused massive copyrights infringements. However, the copyright laws have been able to stop Napster from producing and distributing additional copies of unauthorized intellectual properties. The role of business law and ethics in curbing piracy cannot be underestimated. The business laws that protect intellectual rights is the copy rights laws and ethical ones are the moral laws. Issues associated with copyrights According to Craig et al (228), people categorize social ills differently. For example, most members of the society use pirated music because they perceive music piracy as a lesser sin. However, what constitutes a big or small social evil depend on the personal opinions. It is important to consider the following scenes to be able to understand the magnitude of piracy to be able to define the real meaning of stealing. Sticking a gun on someone’s head and demanding money is beyond doubt, stealing. Is making private calls using company’s resources stealing? Is taking additional hour for lunch stealing from your employer? Most people regard minor deviations from the truth as nothing more than normal and acceptable human behavior. All the above scenes define stealing. However, definition of petty and big theft is a matter personal opinion. If thousands of people are copying or using pirated music, it does not mean that their behavior and actions are ethical or legal. Business law Copyright laws cover and protect intellectual property from unauthorized users. Copyright laws grant exclusive rights to authors and inventors concerning their works, and discoveries for a given period. The foundations of granting exclusive intellectual proprietary rights depend on the purpose of those rights and type of protection that is needed by the creator or inventor. According to Busch (101), the main reason for the protection of inventions and creations of persons is to promote advancement of science, literature, music and arts. In addition, copyrights laws are meant to reward creative work. Unauthorized use of intellectual property leads to copy right infringement. According to Warwick, infringement occurs when a person’s exclusive rights are violated through producing, performing, distorting or modifying original intellectual work of a person. Moral rights enable holders of copyrights to halt any production, distribution, mutilation or any form of modification of their original work. The person who feels that his or her copyrights have been violated must prove that their copyright ownership is valid, copying is real and that there has been misappropriation. There are items that cannot be copyrighted. These include facts, themes, contents and ideas that are in public domain. The owner of creative works can protect their work by including copy right notice on their work that warn the public and other members of the society of the risk they involve themselves by copying the work, and registering the creative work with their national registry. When a person is granted copyrights, he or she has a right to produce the copies of the work, create derivatives, and distribute copies of the work to members of the public through selling, transfer of rights, rent, lease or lending. The person has a right to perform as well as display his or her music in public. Finally, he or she can perform work publicly through audio transmission. The chief purpose of the intellectual property right is to ensure that inventors and creators are rewarded for their work. Copyrights law enables the inventors to dictate how they want their creations to be handled and used. According to Warwick, U.S.A government created the copyright law s as policy instrument. Policies are based on choices of preferred expectations. Choices may be based on legal other than ethical considerations. Intellectual property law is controlling and regulating a large portion of most intellectual creation and invention witnessed or experienced today. The main characteristic of intellectual property is that it has to be shared with other people for it to enable the inventor to derive social and economic benefits. It is important to note that copyrights provide protection to limited monopoly. Property rights and ethics Ethics is a set of consolidated norms and values that governs the actions and behaviours of all members of the society. Ethical perspectives have been neglected for long yet it can provide remedy to the copyright challenges. If the society concludes that music piracy is wrong, the members of that society are more likely to avoid copying or buying pirated music. This is because ethics are more likely to offer clear and universally acceptable sense of direction that is lacking in the national statutes. The current situation of rampant music piracy does not imply that ethics does not exist in the society. According to Cavalier (44-45), if ethics do not cause acceptable actions or behavior on the people of the society, it does not mean that it lacks viability. This is because the norms and values of the members of the society may not have been institutionalized. Therefore, it is not only adequate for ethics to exist, members of the society should be reminded of their existence and the importance to observe them to create harmonious coexistence in the society. Ethics has the influence to decisively address the problem of music piracy and resolve digital dilemmas that exist in the institutions of learning and the society as a whole. Ethics wakes up the moral conscience of the members of the society regarding music piracy because ethics promote respect for intellectual properties. Moral norms send clear messages that must be considered at all levels by members of the society. According to Krieg (online), there are concerns that have been raised by various individuals such as Hettinger, concerning the intellectual proprietary rights. He argues that intellectual proprietary rights are social products and there are no concrete reasons for all the rewards to accrue solely on the inventor or creator. He further express that rewarding labour is a social policy rather than a moral right. To Hettinger, a gap exists between the right to use and claim rewards that the market offers. This is because he argues that various people have played critical role in assisting the person to invent or become creative. For example, parents and other members of the society labored hard to make the person inventive and should be rewarded even when the children become adults. Hettinger disagree with the idea that proprietary laws promote fair competition among the players in the market. In fact, he holds the view that protectionist laws such as copyrights hampers and slow down the diffusion of ideas in the society. He doubts whether the quantity of intellectual property has increased significantly. He further questions whether there has been improved utilization of the intellectual property due to introduction of copyright laws. He is of the view that granting exclusive rights to the inventors and authors limits the potential of the ideas to impact the society as well as to the individual in a big and better way. Therefore, he is not perturbed by the idea that a single person should receive a reward for inventions that other people contributed. However, they are proponents of the property rights laws. They include people like Landes and Posner. Both persons perceive copyright laws as a measure of promoting efficient resource allocation. They argue that copyright laws help to strike an appropriate balance between access and incentives of person’s intellectual works. However, they believe that too much protection on intellectual properties increase the cost of creation while on the other hand, too little protectionism provides very little incentive to invention and creativity. However, Palmer is disagreeing with the views of Landes and Posner that copyrights promote efficient allocation of resources. Palmer believes that licenses and trade agreements allocate the resources efficiently and reward the inventors or authors adequately without using copyrights as a means of allocating exclusive rights. The other approaches to protecting the intellectual property are through protection of the moral rights and rights of integrity of the authors or creators. The moral rights approach identifies authors as original creators of their works while rights of integrity approach protect the work of the author from being modified without author’s permission. Copyright law approaches acknowledges that economic rights and property can be sold or assigned to other people while on the other hand, the moral right approach acknowledges that moral rights remain with the author if economic rights are conveyed to others. USA and England put emphasize on economic rights while France and Scandinavian countries emphasize moral rights. What should be done, if anything, to control this type of activity? Violating property rights and copyrights laws is imprudent. It has potentially harmful results because it chokes creativity, innovation and denies authors the right to enjoy fully the rewards of their labour. Therefore, violation of rights and laws is subversive and backward. It may also result in collective damages by leading other member of the society into copyright infringement. Various steps can be taken to eliminate or reduce copyright infringement. The steps are both ethical and statutory in nature. Ethics First, ethical approach is the most effective deterrent to copyright infringement. This is because ethics is about values that the society collectively believes in. Opinion leaders and moral educators should play key roles in encouraging members of the society to respect the proprietary rights. It may be very difficulty to make the issue of music piracy compellingly comprehensible. However, moral educators should work hard to prove their good points by explaining that the society will be worse off if music rights are infringed upon because most artists will not have the incentive to create and sing even better music. Before the issue of music piracy is handled, it is important to understand the members of the society who do the infringement the most. According to Krieg (online), most piracy occurs in the tenets of campuses and is done by university students. According to Bouchoux (292), a college student developed Napster in 1999. Napster revolutionarised sharing of electronic files through peer-to-peer communication. However, the company has experienced major copyrights battles since inception. US based intellectual Property Alliance revealed that twenty million songs were downloaded without permission in 2006 causing an estimate loss of $2 billion. However, the universities and other institution of higher learning have done very little to deter the vice. They have failed to institute measures that encourage the children to act responsibly thus, they have failed to be guardians of the society. The campus administration and the educators still have the moral obligation to stop music piracy in their institutions. The most unfortunate realization is that most students do not consider the risk of being caught pirating the music in campuses. Institutions of learning can play key role in stopping piracy because it where piracy occur most. This can be done thought the following strategies. First, campus administration should integrate piracy and ethical courses in their curriculum. This is because some piracies are happening because student ignorance. Therefore, education will make them understand the magnitude of their actions. Therefore, including courses on piracy and cyber ethics enlighten the students and may discourage them from downloading pirated music or purchasing them. This is because providing internet to students without instructing them on how to use it is comparable to giving cars to students without instructing them how to drive and observe traffic rules. Secondly, moral educators should be allowed to hold symposium in campuses on the effects of music piracy to the artist and the society as a whole. This will prepare the students for using the internet and other electronic media in a responsible manner. Ethics helps in developing and nurturing moral restraint thus is most effective. Copyright laws The infringement of copyrights can also be reduced using applicable statutes. It should be emphasized that breaking the law is not right because it has corrosive effects. There should be teaching about intellectual property laws because according to Albanese (64), most students did not know copyright laws. Therefore, all the members of the society should realize that breaking any law is morally and socially unacceptable. There are members of the society who fail to respect the copyright laws. For such members, enforceable copyright laws are appropriate to deter them form illicit copying of music and other electronic goods. Conclusion Ethic may be more effective in stopping musical piracy because it is made of values that the society accepts and believes in. this is because most people who pirate or purchase pirated music are young adults. The age factor may not make it effective for business law to be considered as appropriate because most violators are young and many. If they are all apprehended they will fill prisons. Therefore, there is need to impact social values and norms to growing population. Violating the rights of authors through alteration, copying and distributing intellectual property is not acceptable in civilized societies that respect the integrity and moral right of its members. Authors should be granted an opportunity to enjoy the fruit of their labour. This is because it promotes advancement of ideas as it provides incentive to invent or create. However, the protection should not be excess or too little because it leads to inadequate access to the inventions and may influence negatively the operations of the market. Furthermore, property right holders should always recognize the efforts of other people in making them achieve their objective. According to Krieg (online), intellectual achievement is built on the labour of other people. The members of the society should be enlightened on ethical and copyright law issues that cover the intellectual properties. Students are the most susceptible members of the society who fall prey to music piracy. This is because they are tempted to abuse online contents and information (Carrie 53). Therefore, integrating courses on intellectual proprietary rights in curriculum of their institutions of learning reinforce messages against music piracy and enhance students’ ability to respect intellectual rights. Finally, ethical awareness seems to be the most appropriate strategy to combat musical piracy as compared to relying on unenforceable property rights. Sources Albanese, Jay. Combating piracy: intellectual property theft and fraud. New Jersey :Transaction Publishers, 2007. Bouchoux, Deborah. Intellectual Property for Paralegals: The Law of Trademarks, Copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets. 3rdEdition. New York: Cengage Learning, 2008 Busch, Lawrence. The eclipse of morality: science, state, and market. New York: Transaction Publishers, 2000. Weiss, Joseph. Business Ethics: A Stakeholder and Issues Management Approach. 5thEdition. New York: Cengage Learning, 2008. Cavalier, Robert. The impact of the Internet on our moral lives. New York: SUNY Press, 2005. Craig, Paul, Honick, Ron and Mark Burnett. Software piracy exposed .USA: Syngress, 2005. James, Carrie. Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project. USA: MIT Press, 2009. Krieg, Laurence..Internet Copyright, Privacy and Ethical Issues Monday, 31 Aug. 2009. 11 May 2010. http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/commentary/content/1999060505.html Paradise, Paul. Trademark counterfeiting, product piracy, and the billion dollar threat to the U.S. economy. USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999. Warwick, Shelly. Is Copyright Ethical? An Examination of the Theories, Laws and Practices Regarding the Private Ownership of Intellectual Work in the United States. 4-5June 1999. 11 May 2010 http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/commentary/content/1999060505.html Read More