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Intellectual Property: Information Must be Freely Available to Everyone

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“Ask your average high school kids if they use Kazaa, and the answer is a resounding 'duh,'” (137) according to Jennifer Peloso. Kazza, BitTorrent, and other technologies like it allow the sharing of information, all for free. There is a stark contrast in the availability of information today than there was just a few decades ago, due in large part to the internet. On the internet, all information is free. Capitalism is based on the idea that to be successful, you need to have something that others want; something that is worth money. The internet made information a commodity, bringing an end to an era where in order to create and access content, you must have money. Over the past decade and a half, the United States government has created …show more content…

In order to examine the issue of copyright, we first must define what intellectual property is. Simply put, intellectual property is something you create that is unique from anything else. According to Sandip Patel, an intellectual property lawyer that I interviewed, “Intellectual property is often defined by inventions and expressive works (musical, theatrical, visual) that have an existence separable from a physical article. In the patent law context, for example, it is typically defined as a right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an article or process.” This means that this essay, for example, is copyrightable. It also means that I could prevent anyone from using this essay for their own purposes. Raymond Kurz, author of Internet and the Law, defines intellectual property as “the product of one’s intellectual endeavors. For example, inventing a new and improved widget would be an intellectual endeavor,” (1). This is considering that you have the rights to the old widget. Here lies the problem; when should I be able to improve on the old widget? Do I need to pay the original creator of the widget? Also, who owns the rights to said widget, the manufacturer or the creator? Questions like these prompted the first copyright law. The Statute of Anne, created in 1710 under the rule of Queen Anne of Great Britain, was made to protect the creators

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