Copyright is Right (Copyright on the Internet)

Member Name: Karon

Product:	Copyright on the Internet
Date:	20/12/00 (21 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Availability of stuff

Disadvantages: Loss of earnings for artists

The internet may be a brand new place for ideas and information to be shared but that is not a reason for it to be outside the long standing rules of our society.

We already have copyright laws - copyright that says recording films or Videos or Dvd's and then selling your recording without a licence is illegal. We have laws that says making copies of commercial available records/tapes/Cds and selling them is wrong. We have laws that say taking another person's piece of writing and trying to pass it off as your own is wrong.

These laws don't change becasue the information has been posted up on the Internet.

Why should it?

The only areas which I think should have leeway are

a) posting a brief snippet of a song or film/Tv programme or someone;s writing. This should come under the "fair usage" laws and be okay

b) Live performances that are not commercially available. In these instances I think offering them for free over the Internet poses no harm to the artists ( as they were paid for their performance and do not intend to sell the performance in a video/cd etc). This could also in fact put bootleggers out of business as why would anyone pay for a potentially sub standard recording when they can get it free at Napster etc.

Summary: