Copyright Law

The copyright law is a law which protects authored works of individuals or groups. This is done to prevent the stealing of intellectual properties of authors and artists; and also to give them exclusive rights to their work to compensate them for their work. There are several types of work that can be copyrighted: artworks, music, computer soft-wares, or videos. For works created post-1977, the copyright act lasts a lifetime for the copyright holder and 70 years after his or her death. Copyright infringements means to use the copyright protected works without permission from the individual or groups, and would often lead to lawsuits between two or more parties.

There are several issues that are associated with the copyright law. One such issue is the issue of copying of music between musicians and also the copying of artworks between artists (copyright and plagiarism are separate entities). The issue of copying surfaces when one song sounds similar to a song created in the past. The problem with the issue is that it is difficult to determine whether or not the song artist copied the past song or was simply inspired by it enough that they created a similar song. If a musician is caught copying or creating work very similar to a past work that is copyrighted, they are committing a copyright infringement. The punishments for this offence vary across different countries. In the United States, if a person is caught committing copyright infringement they will have to pay severe fines and may even face jail time.

The other issue related to the copyright law is piracy. Piracy is a term used to describe the distributing of work without permission from authors or copyright holders. This issue arises due to the emergence of peer-to-peer (...

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...puppies, and the sculpture created by Jeff Koons. The court came to the conclusion that if a person was to look at the artwork, they would be able to recognize it as it has the same exact content as the photograph.

As can be seen from the two court cases, the argument is that the copyright law is strongly effective for the authored works. Huge settlements – as high as 5.4 million – can be won if the defendant is proven guilty by the court. This is a great way to protect intellectual property because it hugely discourages scammers from copying the creative works. Without the copyright law, artists would be more reluctant to share their works with others in fear of it being copied and distributed without their knowledge. The copyright law is similar to the patent law, but whereas the copyright law protects authored works, the patent law primarily protects inventions.