The Notion of Copyright - Research Paper Example

Copyright affiliation Copyright is an ized act that is formed by the statute of a nation, which awards the inventor of unique work exclusive privileges to its application and distribution. This study focuses on copyright infringement and the rights of media consumers, how these infringements affect the businesses and media creators financially. Additionally, it also looks at two music-streaming services that are the Pandora and Spotify. Lastly, it talks about the copyright regulations in the United States of America. Copyright Copyright is an authorized act that is formed by the decree of a nation which awards the inventor of a unique work exclusive privileges to its application and distribution. This is usually for a short period, with the aim of allowing the inventor to get reimbursement for their unique work. Inventors are individual like an author of a book, music artist, software designer, video producer, among others. Moreover, copyright is a technique of intelligent assets used to any expressed illustration of imaginative work. It is frequently shared between numerous authors, who individually hold a set of authorizations to license or practice the work. This individual is known as rights holders. These authorizations often comprise of distribution, control over derivative work, public performance, ethical sanctions such as attribution and lastly reproduction. Copyright violation or infringement has had a substantial effect on the global economy. This is the illegal use of works that are governed by a copyright statute, violating certain exclusive privileges given to the rights holder. Furthermore, for work to be considered as infringing copyright, its usage must have befallen in a state that has local copyright rules or obeys a joint tragedy or recognized global agreements. Inappropriate usage of materials outside the law is not considered as copyright infringement rather it is considered as unauthorized edition (Cockburn, 2005). The violation of copyrights frequently happens with music, film and software. Nevertheless, copyright infringement on books and other writing are normal, particularly for scholastic reasons. However, statistics concerning the impacts of copyright infringement are hard to find out. Millions of jobs and billions of dollars are lost each and every year to copyright violation. Research has tried to find out whether businesses affected by the infringement of copyrights are prone to financial loss by forecasting what quota of pirated share would have been acquired legally if it were not easily available. Other sources show that the infringement of copyrights does not have a hostile result in the showbiz industry. Moreover, it can have some positive impacts on the industry. It can be impacted positively because sometimes free music that is available on the internet can increase sales and not necessarily reduce sales (Karaganis, 2012). For another thing, the violation of copyrights also affects the quality of customer goods through substandard counterfeit products. Through this, the original right holders do not get the full benefits of their work rather they are faced with financial crises. The government also loses tax due to the unlawful sale of counterfeit products and also in efforts to copyright implementation. Often, the right holders invoke the technological and legal measures that are put in place in order to punish or prevent violations of copyrights. Copyright violation is usually resolved by direct discussions, hearing in a court of law or through a warning and takedown procedure. Recently, a campaign was launched by the music industry to curb the unlawful downloading of music through file sharing and the internet, peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent, Morpheus, LimeWire, Gnutella and Ares. The most common ways of downloading illegal content among all these networks are mainly through BitTorrent. These networks offer the framework for students and individuals to appeal and obtain digital broadcasts of sound recordings that is copyrighted by other individuals on the same network. And within flashes, that unlawful file is transferred to the appealers desktop. The argument that media producers should or should not prosecute individuals and students who are suspected of downloading copyrighted materials is still a major issue. The majority of individuals is aware of the illegality in downloading materials that is copyrighted from illegal networks. However, streaming of music or movie virtually appears to be uncertain. There are high chances that watching movies from websites like Hulu or Netflix is legal. The same applies to sites like Spotify and Pandora, which are used for streaming music. But the argument is about how an individual can know that the content he or she is viewing has been acquired legally. The law protects an individual who listens to music or watch movies from a site that has unlawful content. It is against the statute to make an illegal post of a video or music available online. Therefore, the individual who made the posting is the one who should be prosecuted and not the viewers of the video. Nevertheless, if an individual tries to redistribute or replicate the music or video obtained illegally, then that is a copyright violation. For instance, trying to download it to your storage device id breaking the law and one should be held responsible. Therefore, before the law charges one, right holders, music producers, and the government should consider the circumstance under which the victim was caught viewing the content (Arai, 2011). Several technology giants like Apple and Google often offer online music streaming services, but there are also other popular third party applications like Spotify and Pandora that are also used. The functionality of Pandora and Spotify is very diverse from each other. Listeners who use Spotify can select what songs they wish to play and the time they wish to play them. However, Pandora is just a radio service that does not allow individuals to create their playlists. Instead, individuals create a radio station founded on songs, artists or genres that interest them. Then Pandora’s work is to find songs that are similar musically through their Music Genome Project (Joyce, 2006). Thus, Pandora is a good way for individuals to find out new melodies that are similar to their tastes, while Spotify is good for individuals to share and stream songs that users love and are known to them. Finally, statistics show that Spotify is considered by a large number of users as the best compared to Pandora. This is because Spotify has fewer adverts since it is a private company, unlike Pandora that is subjected to better income demands of stakeholders and openly traded, therefore having more ads. In addition, any music that an individual likes in Spotify goes into a playlist that is easily available anytime when a user wants to listen to them. Unlike in Pandora, a song can take centuries before being played again. Finally, the chances that Spotify has full albums for streaming is high because it is said to have numerous record contracts with a majority of the labels (Kreitz, 2011). Copyright security was present at the time a unique content is formed in a tangible, fixed form of appearance. Immediately after the production, the copyright, therefore, becomes the property of the main creators and only he or she is the one entitled to claim copyright. The copyright statute of the United States attempts to inspire artists and authors in the creation of culture and art by gratifying them with a set of exclusive privileges. Copyright law gives artists and authors the elite right to brand and retail, reproductions of their works, right to display their works publicly or perform at public events and also the right to produce unoriginal works. Though, these elite rights are only valid for a limited time and expire 70 years after the demise of an author. Moreover, the 1976 copyright act rules these laws. These laws are founded by the Congress, which has been given authority by the constitution of the United States. Therefore, the authority of the Congress is to encourage the continuation of useful arts and science, through safeguarding limited time for the elite rights to investors and authors for their respective discoveries and writings. Finally, the management of copyright registration, copyright transfers, recording and other administrative aspects of the copyright statute is done by the copyright office (Association, 2007). References Arai, Y. (2011). Civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringement. Information Economics and Policy, 23, 270–280. Association, M. L. (2007). The Copyright Law and the Health Sciences Librarian. Sciences-New York. Cockburn, B. (2005). Music and Copyright (review). Notes. Joyce, J. (2006). Pandora and the Music Genome Project. Scientific Computing, 23, 14 – 41. Karaganis, J. (2012). Copyright Infringement and Enforcement in the US. Culture (pp. 1–10). Kreitz, G. (2011). Spotify — Behind the Scenes What is Spotify ? Europe.  Read More