It's Easy When You Skip the Intermediary
As of now I am giving permission to use this blog entry for their own works. Isn't it amazing how the laws of this country have changed? With the creation of the Internet it became easier to take and use copy written materials and use them to your own benefit. It makes sense that corporations, musicians, movie studies, etc...were angered because it was easier to take their stuff. However, mixed in this was the problem of people putting things online with the intent of people using them and putting them into works.
It is so easy to mistakenly steal others stuff these days I believe that we should change the way we should think about intellectual property rights. This is evidenced in the interview with Lessig, "00, the magazine, which had been prosecuted for posting links to technology to circumvent the encryption that protects content on DVDs. There were basically two claims here. One was that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was overbroad because it prohibited uses that were perfectly legal. Second was a much more direct challenge to the idea that you could prosecute a magazine for linking to content that might be deemed illegal." This case is a classic First Amendment case. Companies are trying to protect their goods but are infringing on people's First Amendment rights. As this issue grows, we are going to see more and more lawsuits brought by companies that are trying to protect their product. A recent example of this is how hackers have found a way to put new songs on the Playstation 2 game Guitar Hero. On a blog there is a very complicated and tedious process but those who are technologically savvy will be able to do this. Is this an example where people are stealing from Guitar Hero or because people were smart enough to figure out how to hack it should they be left alone?
From my freshman year in college I have never been that worried about stealing music. I took precautions from being caught and talked to some of my computer literate friends to see what the best downloading software was. I was sick of paying for music where there was only one good song and the rest of the CD was crap. I believe that iTunes saved the music industry. People are feeling more compelled to pay for music and stay away from downloading illegally. A friend of mine who started a band actually put his music online for people to download for free to get the music out there. He also asked me and a few others to post the music too. This is an example of going with the current trend and allowing the public to discover new, cool bands. I believe Barlow puts it well when he says the Internet is, "The place where information dwells, the holy moment where transmission becomes reception, is a region which has many shifting characteristics and flavors depending on the relationship of sender and receiver, the depth of their interactivity."
If people give their word that it is fine to use their works I do not see why lawyers or other legal proceedings need to get involved. We need to realize that there are things that corporations need and want to protect but that does not mean that the regular consumer who puts a paper online needs to copyright it so no one else can use it. If he did that, there should be a law in place that pays royalties to anyone who has their things used. Libraries would become useless and so would the internet. We need to be careful where our laws are headed because it could ruin how the Internet is used.