File sharing and copyright
November 17, 2009
With many opinions against and for and with a constantly present debate, copyright is a pressing issue. While the Swedish party “Pirat partiet” is doing everything they can to remove the copyright, musicans and producers all over the world fights for its existance.
Copyright isn’t easy. Many people around the world want the copyright to disappear. They want to be able to use all the knowledge and culture in the world without paying and without caring about the laws. But is that such a great idea? Probably not, no one wants to work for free, and that’s what the producers and musicans should risk if the copyright didn’t exist. In the film “Good Copy Bad Copy” there is a man who has an idea of making people pay 50 dollars a year and then have access to everything. It sounds quite good, but it wouldn’t work because the business around music and films and so on, are too dependent on controlling the market, and with this; they would lose all their power and control.
There are millions of people all over the world using illegal downloading programs, instead of buying the film or the record they want. I found that quite strange, becuse people usally want to be honest and not break the law, but in this case it seems like no one cares about their illegal action unless they don’t get caught. John Buckman, Magnatune records, thinks that one reason to this could be that people are seeing the whole business as nasty and unserious with a bad reputation, so they refuse to feel bad about steeling from them. One other reason is probably the money. People don’t want to buy anything they could have for free, from illegal downloading sites.
As it is now, I think that the copyright is way too aggressive. It has gone so far that the record-companies have started to sue their own fans and that can’t be a good sign, it isn’t the individual persons which shall be punished, it’s the true bad guys like the founders of illegal downloading-sites. I don’t think that the copyright should disappear, but I do think that the business around the copyright needs to fucus on the right stuff, not the individual persons. The film and music business needs to find a way to make people want to benefit the industry, not cheat on it.
November 18, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Good article. I believe that as long as we all download we create a majority and they can’t put us all in jail. Haven’t still decided if I’m pro or con?!
November 18, 2009 at 7:28 pm
I agree with you that the current copyright law needs to be altered in some way or other. In many ways the law is out-of-date, and it needs to be adjusted to our modern digitalized world, which I think it will be. The question is how soon.
November 27, 2009 at 10:39 am
Of course I understand the companies’ demands of protection for their works, but criminalizing a whole generation must not be the right way. So I think there has to be a change of attitude at these giant corporations to develop new technical solutions for us to buy or rent i.e. movies by streaming it to our homes.