Essay On Copyright Infringement

843 Words2 Pages

Copyright infringement is a major issue with media ethics. Many people confuse copyright infringement with trademark infringement (Miller, 2012). However, copyright infringement is when someone unlawfully uses a particular work that is protected by copyright law. These works can include: movies, pictures, songs, albums, artwork, pieces of literature, and newspapers. There is no reason for any of the previous to be copyright infringed, because there are ways to correctly cite all of them as sources, without illegally copyright infringing them. Most people simply do not use their resources to help them with their citing.
The Internet has actually helped and hurt the ethical issue of copyright infringement. It has become more difficult to plagiarize or steal information that comes from books, newspapers, journals, etc. that are for scholastic purposes, due to sites like turnitin.com and Safe Assign. These have become tools that help teachers, professors, and even students prevent copyright infringement and plagiarism. The Internet has hurt the act of copyright infringement, however, by making it a lot easier to have access to information. This easy access to information gives people millions of articles, books, newspapers, journals, etc. to steal information from. It has become very simple to type a subject into Google, click on the link, and cut and paste information from their website. Many students are being taught the correct way to give credit to a source author and avoid copyright infringement. The Internet is actually helping many of the youth in America, because they are learning the right way to incorporate cited sources through citation machines. This can also be seen as a curse, however, because many people in other countr...

... middle of paper ...

...e songs for free? With things like music, these rules of copyright are seldom followed. Many times, music is not distributed with the artist’s permission. The artist’s song, or even album, will often get leaked on a website before the actual album or song gets released by the artist. It connects back to one of the issues with the Internet when it comes to copyright infringement. Often times, people will try to alter the voice, beat, or tempo of a song to protect themselves from a lawsuit for copyright infringement. This can be risky, however, because artists may try and argue how the song lyrics are still theirs, even if the beat is altered slightly. Music downloaders like iTunes are better at protecting the rights of artists, because they require listeners to purchase the music they want to listen to. This helps out a lot when lawsuits could very much get involved.

More about Essay On Copyright Infringement

Open Document