Online Content Owners - Essay Example

Online Content Owners Introduction There are several issues and questions raised over whom own the content that has availability online. The content can be available on the internet, websites and social media platforms that other people can access. There is growing concern over who benefits from online content. The possibility of somebody else, other than the acclaimed owner of the content to receive the recognition for content and information found online. For example, the Google search site provides immense information on a wide variety of information. There are photographs, essays and data available on various online platforms. The research aims at analyzing the principle question of who or which party owns the content found online. Among the concerns analyzed in the research include the issues of copyrights that allow an individual or a group of people to have ownership rights over the content found in online platforms. The research involves the analysis of whether the ownership rights of the online content owners translate to financial gain. The issues of pirating on the information in the online platforms are also an issue of concern and under evaluation in the research. Social media platforms collect a lot of data from their users. The research encompasses the interest of the social media owners in the personal data of their users. The social media platforms have the obligation of honoring and maintaining the privacy of the content found on their sites about their registered users. The concern is whether they respect that obligation and what they do with the immense information accorded to them. Use of Online Material - Copyright The law of copyrights regulates the usage of online materials. Copyright is a legal term that relates to the creator of original content. There are several blogs, essays and data found online and individuals, or a group of people posts them online. These people create the content. They, therefore, have a legal right to the content they created. However, they do not have the protection of the law if they do not obtain a copyright for the work they have posted online. The copyright protects the owners of the online content from their work being altered or claimed as a work of some other party (Bridy 699). The copyright protects all kinds of contents posted online, ranging from written material, pictures, images, and music. Nobody has the right to copy the work and claim it as their original work because the possessor of the copyrighted content has the right to the creation. The owner of the content found online has the legal right to copy, sell, alter or reuse the material found online (Economides 104). The possessor is the only person who has the right to give another party the permission to use the work copyrighted. Usage of the content without the consent of the owner is a case of copyright infringement and attracts fines according to the law. Getting copyright for original work found online is a simple task since it is an automatic process requiring less authorization (Bridy 724). A copyright protection of the content found online lasts throughout the lifetime of the person who created it and an additional seventy years, for purposes of ensuring authenticity. However, some online contents do not have a copyright. These online contents have the consideration of being public domain. These online contents include content with an expired copyright and content owned by the federal government. Another public domain online content includes excerpts taken from online contents that have copyrights and contents donated for the category of public domain. Users of online content cannot, however, claim not to have knowledge that a work is a copyrighted material. They cannot have protection from the fines of the law by assuming that the content is in the public domain category (Bridy 705). However, copyrighted online content has the exception of ‘fair use’. The concept of fair use allows other people to benefit from the copyrighted online content through usage of the online content in learning processes and the conduct of research. Other authors can also refer to the copyrighted online content but have the obligation of referencing the source of the work used. Social media data collection Social media sites collect a lot of information about the lives of their users. There exists a shared rights relationship between the users of the social media sites and the owners of the social media platforms. Users upload content into the social media including posts, videos, and pictures. There does not exist a standard practice of the industry that dictates who should be the sole owner of the content that the users posts into the social media platforms (Economides 103). However, the social media companies have the right and the capability of manipulating the contents of their users. The users have the sole ownership right to their contents before they post it online to the various social media sites. Among the major approaches used by the social media site, management is that, they allow the users of the sites the managing rights of the content they upload on social media (Yung & Jure 199). The rights of management include the right to change, use, and copy their individual contents. However, the owners of the social media sites reserve the right of using the content in their way as they deem fit (Choi 123). They allow users to utilize their content but maintain the ownership rights of the users content. The users, in agreeing to post their content online through the social media sites, use the control over their content, and the management of the sites end up owning the content. Most of the rights of the social media sites are in the terms and conditions section of the sites. Issue of Piracy The owners of online content deserve to enjoy the proceeds that follow the ownership rights of any original online content. The issue of piracy involves people who do not have the right or protection of the law illegally using, stealing or copying any original online content without the permission of the owners (Chen 388). The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) equates online piracy as violators who plundered ships in the high seas. Pirates take what they do not own. The three main types of piracy for online contents include music piracy, software piracy and movie piracy. YouTube, for instance, is a renowned online site that contains a lot of music videos and other types of online contents that have the ownership rights of their creators. However, there are some parties that attempt and do steal those contents without paying for their dues or without the direct permission of the owners (Bridy 698). The piracy of content from online sites is a crime. It deters artistic and creative enhancement and cut into the profits of the industry the content categorizes. Translation to Financial Incentives There are a variety of benefits that accrue to the owners of online content. They get to earn financially from the various ratings and site visits their content gets (Marshall & Frank 2940. For example, people who post their content to YouTube get a financial incentive depending on how many people visit the site to check their videos. Other forms of financial incentives include online content owners for blogging sites. The writers for the blogging sites maintain the copyrights for their blogs. They get paid by the agents of the blogging site. The online marketing of the owners’ content is insufficient. Many online content owners find more financial satisfaction in creating media offline (Chen 348). The offline means the opportunity of greater heights of creativity and diversity than that provided through online means. Further, people who have their contents online face a lot of threats from piracy and copyright infringements. They would rather have their content in the media offline where the chances for the occurrence of such cases are at a minimal. There are greater financial incentives for having contents in the media offline than online. Online media does not pay or create as many returns for the content owners subject to the many risks involved. Whereas, in the media offline, there are more returns due to the low level of ownership risks involved. Conclusion There exists a lot of content on the online platform. The social media has a lot of data collected from its users. There are issues with the division of the online content ownership rights of the data contained in the social media platforms. Most of the social media companies insist on having the ownership rights of the content found on the social media sites. However, social media users reserve the right to change their content. The users are the owners of their content, but once they upload it to the social media sites, they lose the 100% controlling rights of their data. Information of the ownership rights and changes are normally in the section of the terms and condition of the social media site. However, not many users take the time to go through this section. The person who creates online content has the automatic rights of the ownership of the content. These rights are the copyrights for ownership of online content. The copyrights give the owner the rights to use, sell, copy and change the respective content. There is also some other online content that do not have copyrights on them and have the consideration of being public domain. Public domain online contents are the works of the federal government excerpts of copyrighted works. Due to the minimal financial incentives earned from being an online content owner, most content owners prefer to create media offline because it has more financial rewards. Work Cited Bridy, Annemarie. "Is Online Copyright Enforcement Scalable?." Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law 13.4 (2011): 695-737. Chen, Ying-hsuan. "Ownership Transfer Mechanism of Digital Content in Mobile Environments." (2013). Choi, Jaeyoung, et al. "A survey on content-oriented networking for efficient content delivery." Communications Magazine, IEEE 49.3 (2011): 121-127. Economides, Nicholas, and Joacim Tåg. "Network neutrality on the Internet: A two-sided market analysis." Information Economics and Policy 24.2 (2012): 91-104. Marshall, Catherine, and Frank, Shipman. "Exploring the Ownership and Persistent Value of Facebook Content." (2015). Yang, Jaewon, and Jure Leskovec. "Patterns of temporal variation in online media." Proceedings of the fourth ACM international conference on Web search and data mining. ACM, 2011. Read More