Copyright infringement

Posted on August 23rd, 2009 | by Admin |

Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is a violation of the copyright owned by an author, creator or owner of the said copyright. Such a violation comprises usually of some unauthorized use of the copyrighted work, abusing the exclusive rights of the owner. The copyright violators are commonly called pirates and this application of the name has been in use since the early 17th Century. To get a better grasp on what encompasses copyright infringement, let’s have a look at some examples. The first example is the distribution of mp3 music over the Internet, without the permission of the copyright owner, like it used to happen with the peer to peer sharing software Napster and still happens in similar or other forms, like the torrents or eMule. Another copyright infringement example is the illegal distribution of movies over the Internet, whereby some movies arrived on the Net even before they entered the cinemas. Any unauthorized copying of copyrighted films and movies is prohibited and is deemed copyright infringement, like the distribution of copied DVDs, video files, audio files, pictures, documents, any files related to the movie, but not cleared for distribution. Extreme copyright infringement did arise since the development of handy cams, where movies were taped with camcorders in the movie theatre. Such releases by pirate groups have classifications, like TS, for telesync or even R5 for a bootleg DVD. This violation of the copyright law happens also when someone copies text or pictures from any webpage and post it unauthorized somewhere else. Any creative work is considered copyrighted as soon as the author or creator has made it and if someone uses it without consent from the author, that use is considered copyright infringement. A very interesting copyright infringement case was when Eminem used the music from Dido’s song “Here with me” without authorization. The complaint was settled fast and the single became a huge hit for both, Eminem and Dido. But it was the Napster case that got the world to wise up and collaborate on fighting this form of crime, especially Russia and China withstood for a long time and finally signed on, Russia very probably because the Government was not financially involved in the piracy and China because the enforcement of the nationwide censorship cannot function properly if pirated copies of anti-government material is available everywhere. Nevertheless the international alliance led by the almighty BSA, or Business Software Alliance, funded heavily by the software developers and distributors in order to stop software piracy. Microsoft alone donated a billion dollars for this task, which prompted the hacker alliance to take down hotmail for 24 hours with a huge DoS (Denial of Service) attack.

Media And Copyright