MP3 Copyright Infringment
Copyright Infringement: The Battle Against It In the past years, several technological advances have blessed us with many new conveniences. ... Copyright Infringement is now causing many problems across the business world, but most severely the music industry. With technology always expanding the internet user’s capabilities musicians along with other major corporations face an up-hill battle against copyright infringement. A copyright is a form of intellectual protection that is provided to the authors of “original works of authorship” (Copyright Law 1).The Copyright Act (codified at Title 17 of the United States Code) states that an original work of authorship that is entitled to copyright protection includes literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, regardless of whether they are published and unpublished (Copyright Law 1). In laymen’s terms, a copyright gives the owner the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, prepare derivative works, distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work, perform the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted work publicly. (Copyright Law 1) Infringement of these copyrights can be committed by copying, sharing (making available to the public), or use of the copyrighted material without consent from its owner (Rhodes 3). There are many widespread misconceptions about several copyright laws. “Private Use” is an exception in many countries’ copyright laws that allows the consumer whom purchases a copyrighted material to make a copy of that item for his/her personal use. “ Under Britain’s existing legislation it infringes copyright to convert a song from a CD into MP3 format, or even just to copy a CD to cassette to play in your car[…. ... But Britain has long resister giving individuals a ‘privateuse’[sic] exception in its copyright laws. ... com) The British music industry could sue anyone who shares MP3 files using services like KaZaA. ... Recently, in October 2003, Britain passed legislation to implement the controversial European Copyright Directive (Out-law. ... The new law in Britain states: “A person who infringes copyright in a work by communicating the work to the public- (a) in the course of a business, or (b) otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the over of the copyright, commit an offence if he knows or has reason to believe that, by doing so, he is infringing copyright in that work.