Copyright

Although I have been to many info sessions and presentations including the one in NSO about copyright, I found this presentation is the most informative and I learned a lot of things from it.

First of all, "Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression." In another words, copyright protects individuals right of something of their own creation, and others will be responsible in terms of using their work. Copyright encourages people to have more new creations since they are legally protected.

I did not know that copyright began such long time ago, which was in 1790. Anther interesting fact I learned is that the term of copyright from U.S. published works is the author's life plus 70 years.

The most frequent time people violate others' copyright is from Internet, such as free music downloading. From the presentation I learned that there are people whose job is to stay on Internet and monitor who has downloaded illegal music and then they will record everything down and that person has to pay for what he/she has just violated. Usually the fine of copyright violation is very high.

There are some interesting websites that we can use for getting information about copyrights and protecting our own copyrights. such as The Creative Commons, the Fair Use, and the Public knowledge.

For downloading illegal music, there are both sides of this issue. On one side, the musician's work should be respected and their right should be protected by law so that no one else can claim the work as their own. On the contrary, downloading can expose the music more so more people will get to know about the songs as well as publicity of the musician. It actually helps to promote the musician and his songs. I think one's copyright should be protected, and therefore download music should be illegal as it already is now. It encourages the musician to create more good music, and copyright is something everyone deserves for their hard working. Buying music can also give credits to the musicians. The songs are not that expensive anyway.