Intellectual Property and Security - Essay Example

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND SECURITY Human brain is a remarkably designed biological phenomenon. It can think boundlessly, create versatility and above all target perfection of the minutest details. Like the freedom of expression, freedom of religious practices and the freedom of livelihood within the prescribed limits assuring protection along with liberty; there is a dominant concept of Intellectual Property or IP rights. This concept provides ownership to the creator and allows him to enjoy certain strong assets available in the society. These rights protect the creator’s work from getting stolen or imitated by a third party. Rights include copyright, patents, trade dress and trademarks etc each of these holds an important position in one or more professions commonly acknowledged in daily lives. Along with providing legal benefits to the creator, these rights also have the power to subject law breakers under various penalties and can stamp law breach as well which in turn might lead to criminal investigations. Law makers name this breach as infringement. (Parr and Smith, 2011) Be it art, music, writings, drug design or a blueprint; inappropriate utilization of them is a serious offence. Calling offences like computer hacking is still moot. These people are addicted to information. Operating under an ethic that information should be openly available, they seek out ways to unlock pass codes, tress pass firewalls and go peeking around the storage files even if they are highly classified. It doesn’t matter how far we upgrade our security protocols; protection of systems cannot be guaranteed completely. These people operate on different excuses which, need be, can be proficiently told and escaped from the situation. Usually they target files and systems that are highly coveted by rival parties or themselves. These people acquire information by deceptive means, and then they either sell it out at a price or keep it as bait in case a higher bidder comes. Their ethics are self- made no law recognizes the stealing of information as legit. Individuals who break into computer systems or who write vandalware usually use one of the few rationalizations for their actions. Most of these individuals would never think to walk down a street, trying every door to find one unlocked, then search through the drawers of the furniture inside. Yet, these same people seem to give no second thought to making repeated attempts at guessing passwords to accounts they do not own and once on to a system, browsing through the files on disk. (Spafford. 231) Presently lives have become increasingly hectic and competitive. No one stops to double think before acquiring an opportunity to eat from someone else’s plate without having to work for it. Un-deserved benefits, easy money and respectful back seats of power are craved by everyone. Those who do manage to get their hands on such power are slowly addicted to the uselessness. They put on guises of importance but mostly just eat the profit from the jobs executed by their sub ordinates. Call that inhumane verbally but that’s the mode of operation in leading firms and organizations. Un- lawful devouring of assets is often masked by a greater degree of deceptive backbone. You have strong sources or friends with powerful seat? What the heck? Eat all you want. The world is yours. After affirming the application of requisite rights, the idea should be claimed to himself by the creator; it should be owned and protected before going public. Imitations and theft not only spoil the competition but also kill the morale of the owner party. Infringements can later be subjected to law suits but the loss of intellectual property cannot be compensated because the idea’s credibility becomes a thousand way biased. It must be noted that an idea may be threatened both internally and externally. Internal threats cause immense psychological torment to the owner and he starts to regret compliance. Disclosure may not always be the appropriate strategy as it can be harmful for the company’s reputation, in case it’s testing deviated from the expected result and may refute all reliabilities to its customers. It may put the loyalty of the staff at risk and eventually sabotage the entire infrastructure. This blowing the whistle concept might appear to be morally ethical but a deeper insight shows how destructive in nature it can be if proper channels and legally prescribed ways are not followed to register a complaint. No matter how severe in nature. Making public disclosures of internal happenings instead of resolving the issues at home, ruins the customer graph and this immediately falls to the origin. To avoid this, proper board and channels should be organized to give an ear to all sorts of internal issues and effort should be made to put an end to the problem before it crosses the border and into the world of paparazzi. All the employees need to be heard, their problems taken care of; this increases the sense of importance and responsibility among the staff and helps in consolidating the infrastructure. In addition the whistle blower will be held responsible and subjected to legal suits. Many governmental employees have been known to blow the whistle on their respective departments. This not only sabotage’s the department but also the government and country as a whole. The whistle blower usually fares very poorly at the hands of his company, as we mentioned before. Most are fired. In some instances, they have been blackballed in the whole industry. If they are not fired, they are frequently shunted aside at promotion time, and treated as pariahs. Those who consider making a firm’s wrongdoings public must therefore be aware that they may be fired, ostracized and condemned by others. (De George. 519) When an idea is cultivated, its safety should be guaranteed. If need be precautionary steps should be pre-determined and care be taken for the problem to be solved internally. Pharmaceutical companies need to keep their drug designs under safe protection until further testing ensures public disclosure. If these designs are illegally caught, held or utilized not only they jeopardize the company but also impose health liabilities on the public. If wrongly manufactured samples are franchised, a great health hazard is imposed. This is disgraceful and self biased. Some might franchise their not yet ready products just to meet the deadline and to keep manufacturing costs within check. Even in such cases blowing the whistle on the company even if morally right is illegitimate. The employee might be labeled as disloyal, a threat and condemned. No one can own an intellectual property of the other. This can only be used for the greater benefit of the public without giving room to unauthorized buying selling or black marketing. Smuggling is another type, steal the goods, take them across border and start selling it. Eventually it gets public and is publicized, however laws across borders may differ and therefore may or may not impose penalty upon the aggressors. Aesthetic work should not be available for ownership auction, it is the property of the creator and he should be able to use it as he please, however like the ethics of computer hackers, people are of the opinion that art should be made available and easily accessible to people from all over the globe. Art and music can be bought, pirated or copied and sold at a profit. The quality differs but one who hasn’t tasted the original knows no difference and becomes a happy customer. Even play station, Xbox games are fluently sold despite their copyrights. We have laws to prevent unlawful ownerships and publicities but they will only come in handy if art is honored and respected the way it rightfully deserves. Intellectual property rights are therefore a survival mechanism for such works to thrive and evolve remaining on the highest standards of quality. Needy writers often give up their work for lesser money than they rightfully deserve. (Boyle, 1996) It should not be surprising to find individuals in the art world who profit from the creative work of others. It is a common practice for music producers to receive coauthor credit for popular music and participate in songwriter royalties. Perhaps if the producer provided support for the artists during the recording process and financed the subsequent marketing of the product then the compensation would be just despite the fact that the producer in not an author in the usual sense. (Graybosch. 382) There are people distasteful to this notion, yet others favor the immoral stance of being able to profit from someone else’s brain. Such piracy and plagiarism should be stopped, it dishonors aesthetics collectively and craves to the most primitive of human feelings, the sense of acquisition, the want of obtaining and deriving profit from anything whether it has been claimed or not. This controversy has no moral background. It should not exist at all. Such work of art, if found pirated, should be destroyed instead of airing its propagation and unlawful derivation of profits or the creator should be fairly compensated. An artist has the right to keep it hidden or disclose it as and whenever he pleases to. These perpetrators are definitely lucky but equally corrupted ethically. CONCLUSION: Intellectual property is under the ownership of the man or group of people who gave birth to the idea. When the idea is legally registered no one has the right to unlawfully make an effort for attaining illegitimate profit. Copyrights, trademarks, trade dress and patents serve the purpose of protecting the work art from getting stole or unauthorized change of ownership. People like computer geeks, hackers can easily attain this information without feeling embarrassed or guilty whatsoever. Even if none of our information can be provided a guaranteed protection yet self- satisfactory measures ought to be taken. In case of wrong dealing or such happenings whether internal or external, the probable whistle blowers should be contained and sorted out. Such sensitive matters need professional problem solving targets. Involving the public and media would not only put the entire system in jeopardy but also terminate and condemn the employee who seeks to make the company notorious more if not less. Other than this, it can put the credibility of the public at a line. The employee might not be trusted for a new job and in the end the whole infrastructure collapses and bankruptcy is the ultimate fate On the other hand, those who argue that whistle blowing is always at least morally permissible typically approach such acts from the point of view of the right of free speech… the right of free speech, of course, is a limited right. One is not free to yell “fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire. One is legally prohibited from making libelous statements. (De George 521) Therefore complaints should be properly channelized to a legal board and proper steps be taken to tackle the situation without involving the public. Aesthetic arts such as literature, paintings and music are definitely not available for an ownership auction. In case of franchising the work, proper compensation should be made to the owner and black marketing should be avoided. Generally all such unauthorized acquisition should be openly declared as immoral, guilty and subject to various penalties including deportation or termination. Software piracy. Theft of programs, data, documentation and other information can result in loss of of revenues, loss of recognition, loss of control, loss of responsibility without loss of liability, loss of accountability and other consequences. (Neumann 218) REFERENCES: Boyle, James. Shamans, Software and Spleen. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press. 1996. Print. De George. Whistle blowing. 2011. Print Russell L. Parr, Gordon V. Smith. Business and Economics. John Wiley and Sons. 2011. Print Intellectual Property: Valuation, Exploitation and Infringement Damages Spafford et al. Are Computer Hacker Break-Ins Ethical? 1989. Print Read More