6. Digital copyright
If you want to have a music file or a film, or a photograph downloaded to your laptop nowadays, unless the file author has authorized a free download, you need to pay for obtaining that file, if you would like to do it legally. Of course sharing your legally obtained file with others for free online is not allowed, as this would be a copyright law infringement.
As pinpointed in the article "The case for copyright", the current copyright law should be addressed and changed in order to allow free non-commercial sharing, shorter commercial monopoly, free sampling and ban of DMR(technologies that restrict consumers ability to download and share digital files).
Surely discussion of authorizing above proposals is a heated debate, as there are those who are strongly for and those who are strongly against it.
Authorizing above proposals does make sense as well as the reasoning behind those proposals. People have been sharing things for centuries and restricting the digital sharing equals to restricting the rights of citizens.
From the other side, sharing online has much larger amplitude than sharing offline, and in case sharing free is fully authorized, everyone could download everything freely, in unlimited amounts and the impact of this is not known at the moment. In reality this is already possible, even though it is not yet legally authorized.
Of course the debate is heated further because it is hard to tell for sure, how will such proposals affect the media authors. Will it have a negative financial impact on the authors or maybe even the whole industries is the question that might be hard to answer with confidence.
However, at the same time, it is clear that internet age changes the rules and it is reshaping the way we do things, our laws and lives in general. Copyright laws might not be an exception and might need to be revised in order to meet the needs and realities of the changing world. With internet giving endless opportunities for sharing and spreading information, we might want to face the new reality and explore what this new reality has to offer.
Copyright law change will most probably affect the cultural workers the most for example photographers, digital artists, writers and musicians.
We know that non-commercial sharing has risen dramatically in the past 25 years, however, the cultural industry has been statistically growing and expanding over the past decades. So not only internet sharing has not impacted the growth, who knows, it might have even positively affected it.
Cultural industry growth might be due to different aspects, but internet sharing might have allowed for a larger amount of people to share, to discover and to follow different artists.
Artists now have a chance to spread their work around the world much faster and to much larger amount of people via internet and free sharing. This certainly contributes to their growth and popularity.
At the same time, even if there is a chance for an unlimited free download of digital media, people still like to have a physical media of their favorite art - paintings, music or novels - majority of the time, art is transferred to a physical media and is enjoyed by the fans around the globe.
For example, many have feared that e-book will end the paper book industry, but it never did. People still buy paper books even though they can download it free for their kindle.
Above example, might not be relevant for all art forms that are there in the digital forms, but it is certainly true for many.
I think, that things will slowly change as they tend to do and there will certainly be negative impact on some of the artists. Changes are always hard for some, surely this change wont be an exception from the rule. At the same time this change will bring positive impact to other artists, as sharing will contribute to spread of culture, and will give artists a way to promote themselves among more people.
Above all, problems tend to get resolved and new solutions appear to address the issues that took place due to revolutionary changes. I think that digital revolution will continue to modify our lives and have both negative and positive impacts, which will result in further changes and innovations.
As pinpointed in the article "The case for copyright", the current copyright law should be addressed and changed in order to allow free non-commercial sharing, shorter commercial monopoly, free sampling and ban of DMR(technologies that restrict consumers ability to download and share digital files).
Surely discussion of authorizing above proposals is a heated debate, as there are those who are strongly for and those who are strongly against it.
Authorizing above proposals does make sense as well as the reasoning behind those proposals. People have been sharing things for centuries and restricting the digital sharing equals to restricting the rights of citizens.
From the other side, sharing online has much larger amplitude than sharing offline, and in case sharing free is fully authorized, everyone could download everything freely, in unlimited amounts and the impact of this is not known at the moment. In reality this is already possible, even though it is not yet legally authorized.
Of course the debate is heated further because it is hard to tell for sure, how will such proposals affect the media authors. Will it have a negative financial impact on the authors or maybe even the whole industries is the question that might be hard to answer with confidence.
However, at the same time, it is clear that internet age changes the rules and it is reshaping the way we do things, our laws and lives in general. Copyright laws might not be an exception and might need to be revised in order to meet the needs and realities of the changing world. With internet giving endless opportunities for sharing and spreading information, we might want to face the new reality and explore what this new reality has to offer.
Copyright law change will most probably affect the cultural workers the most for example photographers, digital artists, writers and musicians.
We know that non-commercial sharing has risen dramatically in the past 25 years, however, the cultural industry has been statistically growing and expanding over the past decades. So not only internet sharing has not impacted the growth, who knows, it might have even positively affected it.
Cultural industry growth might be due to different aspects, but internet sharing might have allowed for a larger amount of people to share, to discover and to follow different artists.
Artists now have a chance to spread their work around the world much faster and to much larger amount of people via internet and free sharing. This certainly contributes to their growth and popularity.
At the same time, even if there is a chance for an unlimited free download of digital media, people still like to have a physical media of their favorite art - paintings, music or novels - majority of the time, art is transferred to a physical media and is enjoyed by the fans around the globe.
For example, many have feared that e-book will end the paper book industry, but it never did. People still buy paper books even though they can download it free for their kindle.
Above example, might not be relevant for all art forms that are there in the digital forms, but it is certainly true for many.
I think, that things will slowly change as they tend to do and there will certainly be negative impact on some of the artists. Changes are always hard for some, surely this change wont be an exception from the rule. At the same time this change will bring positive impact to other artists, as sharing will contribute to spread of culture, and will give artists a way to promote themselves among more people.
Above all, problems tend to get resolved and new solutions appear to address the issues that took place due to revolutionary changes. I think that digital revolution will continue to modify our lives and have both negative and positive impacts, which will result in further changes and innovations.
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