Intellectual Property Analysis

742 Words2 Pages

Nicole Schiera
CS320-I01
Professor Covert
4/4/14
Response 8
Way before their time Esther Dyson and Lance Rose both had their own opinions about the future of 'intellectual property' in the digital age. In 1995, two authors noticed this emergence of change. In the Wired article "The Emperor's Clothes Still Fit Just Fine" Lance Rose suggested that the norm of copyright infringement being a criminal act such as stealing a car would prevent this practice from becoming something that would be acceptable in society today. This leads into his argument that we do not need to change the current laws (in 1995) to prevent future copyright infringement. Esther Dyson's Wired article on the other hand titled "Intellectual Value" expresses a completely opposite view of this very same issue of copyright. Her arguments support the claim that copyright infringement would become more prominent in society and cause major revision of how we approach and pass laws toward the handling of intellectual property. Both of these articles were very predictive from the time they were written and have been proved accurate by events through the years.
When comparing both the articles to today's prevalence of the internet and rise of copyright infringement, the most relevant article is Esther Dyson's. In her article she states "Intellectual property that can be copied easily likely will be copied. It will be copied so easily and efficiently that much of it will be distributed free in order to attract attention or create desire for follow-up services that can be charged for" (Dyson). This same concept is what many popular mobile applications and software companies have adopted to create revenue for their company. Many software applications such as Microsoft Wor...

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...intellectual property copyrights would be escalated. With the increase in the pursuit of charging those who commit copyright infringement and more internet companies holding their customers liable, offenders could be scared off enough to dwindle this growing concept of downloading free movies and music. If this were to happen Rose's arguments would become more concrete in predicting even farther into the future. However, the current state of more and more people becoming aware of ways to access free content and software back the initial predictions made by Dyson. Rose and Dyson may disagree on many points, but both arguments have the optimistic goal of bringing the internet and laws of copyright back to why they were originally created, for the creators/owners to get the recognition and profit they deserve while satisfying and informing a global base of consumers.

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