Copyright Infringement: Why Legislation Won’t Help and More
On January 18th, 2012, over 75,000 websites voluntarily went dark ("Go on Strike!") to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Most notably, Wikipedia, the sixth most popular website in the world, blacked out all of its English language content for 24 hours ("Action.", “"Alexa Top 500 Global Sites."). Many other sites such as Google, Reddit, WordPress, Tumblr, Flickr and Vimeo posted links about the acts and/or enabled their users to black out their own content for 24 hours (“Action”). Tech companies, websites, and consumers alike feared the passage of these two pieces of legislation and flooded senators and representatives with phone calls and e-mails to persuade them. Blocking websites to discourage piracy is an inherently flawed plan that threatens the free, uncensored nature of the internet. To discourage piracy, the entertainment industry must make legal content more accessible to users than illegal content.
On the video sharing website YouTube, thousands of hours of video are uploaded each day(“Statistics”). The automatic filter Google constructed into YouTube’s basic framework will often filter out uploaded content it recognizes to be infringing on copyrights in order to remain compliant with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Passed in 1998, this law is the only legislation in place in the United States to protect copyright holders from online infringement. The DMCA also protects service providers from responsibility of the illegal content their users may post, provided that after infringing material is removed from the site in a timely manner after receiving a takedown notice (Digital Millennium Copyr...
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Internet-based file-sharing systems are gaining popularity, and consequently the sharing of copyrighted materials has become rampant. Fueled by server-based systems such as FreeDrive and peer-to-peer systems such as Napster, copyrighted materials are being propagated all over the Internet, and while shutting down such systems seems to answer some of these problems, it is in no way a complete solution. By examining these file-sharing systems and the legal issues that envelope them, more appropriate regulatory means may be discovered.
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To begin with, it is known that musicians had to be signed to record labels to gain any traction with their careers, otherwise, their careers would be known to flop. However, this has changed with the shell-shock of upcoming technology. “As file sharing eroded the power of the majors and wiped out these music retailers, new distribution channels, firms, and power relations began to emerge” (Hracs 449). The music industry and technological advancement went hand-in-hand, with the compact disc used as one of few sources of playing music. Since the introduction to the MP3, the sharing of music across the internet is a major contributor to the downfall of production labels, and it has been this way since 2001. “Recent developments in online music distribution suggest that it is not so much the availability of music on the Internet that concerns the music industry majors but rather the fact that it is free” (Gündüz 205). This included the pirating of songs from online file sharing networks, which hit the industry with full force. ” According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), CD sales have been falling continuously (except for a status quo in 2004) from 2.5 billion units in 2000 t...
McArdle argues that although music file-sharing is easily assessable and available in the millennium generation, free music file-sharing is causing damage to individuals involved in the music industry and in the entertainment industry. McArdle starts off the article by mentioning that record labels suffer the most financially in the year 2009. She also mentions that for the last decade, record labels business are experiencing decreases in revenues. McArdle criticizes the millennium generation for violating property rights of recording labels and the music industry. Moreover, McArdle points out that many young people in this millennium generation are the ones who are downloading music for free. She discusses how hard it was for people to look for music and to copy music in the past history compared to the present. She also points out that young people in the millennium generation do not see downloading music for free as a huge problem. She concludes her article by stating that perhaps music piracy is not such a negative trend. Although it affects individua...
With websites such as youtube.com, facebook.com and instargram.com, people have been able to share more with each other than ever before. Scenes from movies, music clips and other copyrighted materials are being shared every day. We saw it once in 2012 when the US government tried to pass two new acts. Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act.
Copyright seems like a simple thing to understand and respect. You don’t go and use someone else’s work and claim it is yours. However, with the rise of Youtube came people who would break copyright rules and upload others work or even upload entire movies and shows. The solution for taking down or de-monetizing any videos found guilty of doing this was for Youtube to put a bot in their algorithm and let it deem which videos where guilty of copyright. Now in the first few years this actually wasn’t a bad thing as only videos that where committing plagiarism where getting taken down. Sadly though around mid-2010 Youtube decided to crack down on copyright and made the bot more aggressive.
Physical piracy-the copying and illegal sale of hard-copy CDs, videotapes, and DVDs-costs the music industry over $4 billion a year worldwide and the movie industry more than $3.5 billion. These numbers do not factor in the growing (and difficult to measure) problem of Internet piracy, in which music and movies are transferred to digital format and copies are made of the resulting computer file. Journalist Charles C. Mann explains why Internet piracy has the potential to be vastly more damaging to copyright industr...
Music piracy is a developing problem that it affects the music industry in many different ways including being responsible for the unemployment of 750,000 workers, as well as a loss of $2,5 billion; therefore, I want to explore ‘To what extent has music piracy affected the music industry market in the United States over the last 10 years?’
The Internet has been hailed as one of the most prolific inventions in modern times. Although many believed it to be a passing phase at its inception, it has proven to be a driving force especially in the business world. Most industries have seen a boom in business due to the access of the global market the Internet draws. However, many have had to deal with the increase in competition. The music industry is no stranger to some of these challenges. Much has been said about how music piracy has decreased the revenue for some in the business. The Internet has revolutionized not only how music is made. It has affected economically the record companies the artists and those who listen to their music.
All around the world people connected to the internet are downloading free digital content through P2P file sharing software.
The subject of my paper focuses on movie piracy. Movie Piracy by definition is the illegal copying of movies for personal or commercial use. This is a new epidemic that is affecting the film industry financially on a global level. What are the necessary steps that can be taken on behalf of the film industry that can stop this illegal practice from occurring? Once you walk down the city streets of New York, you can easily find vendors selling their bootleg DVD copies of new released movies for half the price of a movie ticket. At the moment the quality of the movies aren’t at its best, but with the technological advancements, the quality of these bootleg DVD’s are getting better, which means that movie piracy is actually on the rise. This continues to worry both film studios and copyright activist. Movie companies are the ones suffering the most from this illegal practice. While they continue to produce $100 million movies, their profits continue to fall, when people decide to either pick up a burned copy or download the movie off some illegal Internet site. This essay takes a look at the different forms of movie piracy and what different organizations, such as the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and its international counterpart, MPA (Motion Picture Association), are doing to combat this illegal practice.
At the dawn of the internet, many things such as books and text became obsolete, due to insufficient monitoring of internet activity and sites. Individuals were able to gain free access to books and publications that normally needed to be bought, or required a fee. This is something that has caused problems for booksellers and publishers. Now, as technology advances, it also begins the decline of music, software, and television industries—but something can be done before it’s too late. Illegal downloading is a problem that affects us all, either directly or indirectly. Many people do not take it too seriously. They have not realized that it is an epidemic; like a disease that keeps growing as people become more knowledgeable about computers and learn more about how software runs. People openly burn music CDs and download music and movies for friends who in turn give it to their friends; it’s a never-ending cycle on illegal practices. The problem started when Napster came out and should have ended when it was shutdown. Unfortunately, not enough has been done to stop the illegal transfer of files. It’s time someone takes full action and ends this detrimental offense.