Why Should You Care About Changing The Copyright System?

Is important for anyone who has created any intellectual property to protect it. In the music industry, in order for someone to protect their work, they must obtain a copyright. Music has been around before anyone could obtain a copyright and when the invention of the computer came along it made it easier for someone to steal another artist's intellectual property with the help of the internet. This paper will cover what events have taken a big role in copyright protection for artist, the consequences if someone was to break the rules of a copyright which is called copyright infringement, and how will a copyright hold in the future. Were copyrights enacted without the thought of life changing technology, and how can some music companies

The duration of copyright determines the length of protection. Limitations on this length exist to ensure works enter the public domain. Therefore, the length of protection is one of the most relevant and debated issues regarding copyright law. The proponents and opponents of copyright term extension make compelling arguments, but both sides agree that copyright law should encourage creativity and innovation. If Disney is successful in once again lobbying for an extension of duration, a substantial number of works will fail to enter the public domain in a timely manner. This will, consequently, lead to a stifling of creativity and a suppression of innovation that could be detrimental to progress in the realms of science and the useful arts.

When wanting to listen to a song today, one no longer has to buy or download a physical copy. In today’s world, streaming has become one of the top ways of retrieving music content. This major change has led to a profound shift for the music industry and its artists. It has developed a continuous conflict that affects the way music is distributed and how artists make a living. Listeners stream music electronically through their computers, phones, cars, and more. Most of these streaming platforms allow for the content to be free, which directs to the question of whether music should be free or not. Streaming is a topic that has presented itself to be a valid issue on whether it ultimately hurts or helps artists and their careers. Streaming has both pros and cons, but in order to aim to figure a possible solution there needs to an examination of the history of the issue, a proper analysis of both sides, and evaluating its importance.

Throughout our Communication Studies, we have examined the capitalist economy through a critical lens and as a result, corporations always appear at the forefront of debate, blame, and power. From a neo-liberalist economic standpoint, the typical “prosumer” is encouraged to create consumer-generated content, but what happens when you put your creative labour to the test? York University consistently advocates, “this is your time”; in other words, students are responsible for their own success and are held liable for any failures or mishaps they may endure. While contemporary technologies have multiplied and democratized opportunities for musical creativity, intellectual property law has been used to repress our right to free speech, which is guaranteed under the first amendment (Demers 2006). Therefore, the industry’s effort at convincing people that file-sharing is equivalent to thievery have turned an increasing number of artists into intellectual property activists.

The law must come to terms with the difference between artistic intent and economic intent. Artistic freedom is more important for the health of society than the supplemental and extraneous incomes derived from private copyright fees. They create art of police and control, since no matter how the original intent of the copyright laws are, today, they are subverted to censor resented works that suppress the public’s need to reuse and reshape

The Supreme Court has tried to explain that the Copyright Clause of the Constitution was intended to establish independent, entrepreneurial, self-sustaining authorship and publishing as the means of serving the public interest in securing the production of valuable literary and scientific works. To that one must ask what are the consequences of remix? When I think about it remixing has left a positive and inferior aspect of life for many people. When people are able to steal or copy the work of an individual without any consequence they are sending a clear message saying that they are free of the law. Therefore, I propose that the copyright office of the state of Washington should change the copyright policy of remixing so that it may benefit more people than just the original artist.

Over the past fifty years, the British Music Publishing industry has undergone dramatic changes. It has evolved as an entity with innovations in technology, changes and creations of laws and new mediums to promote and exploit songs to a wider audience. Therefore, the way in which the music publishing industry operates and exploits its assets has completely transformed, and continues to do so at a rapid pace. This paper will attempt to explore the ways in which publishers exploit song copyrights and the way in which this has changed over the past 60 years. It is important to define what is meant by copyright and its role within the industry. The Performing Right Society website states: “Copyright

Copyright is the legal right, to an inventor to perform, print, publish, film, or record artistic, literary, or musical material, and to allow others to do the same. Copyright law was developed to provide the creators and inventors of any works with powerful and effective rights of exclusivity over their creations (Patterson & Lindberg, 1991). Over the past, these rights were almost unlimited. People would use existing developments as if they were their own without any regard of the creator’s exclusive rights. The need to balance and limit such rights arose, and governments established these limits for the general good of the public.

The purpose of the copyright system has always been to promote creativity in society and protect the creators’ interests. In applying copyright laws to any creation, three basic guidelines apply. First is the fair return for a creators labor, second is “Fair Use” of the creators’ labor and finally the Progress of Science and useful Arts to further the public good. The application of these three guidelines in litigation for A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, found that the rights of reproduction, and distribution had been violated, in effect upholding the copyrights of nineteen different music companies represented under A&M Records name, this ruling had protected the music industries interests. However it would seem that the publishing industry would not be so lucky, litigation in Authors’ Guild vs. Google ruled that Google’s actions constituted fair use. Under these two scenarios’ the copyright laws’ have, effectively, protected the rights of music artists’, protected the public’s right to “fair use” and sparked new opportunities for creative growth. However, lawmakers continue to struggle to define copyright boundaries between the public’s right of use and the creators right to profit from their efforts.

We live in a world where most humans act like sheep following the herd; most people would rather follow the crowd rather than think for themselves. From cheating on an exam to copying other people’s ideas, that seems to be the norm in our society: most people want the easy way out for everything, as thinking is actually hard to do. So for the very few people who do put effort into thinking and use their creativity to develop novel ideas and implement them through the commercialization of a product or service, they have to be rewarded so that all their effort, time, and money aren’t spent in vain.

Due to how abusable current copyright laws are, they must be reformed to prevent copyright trolling. According to Matthew Sag, “The essence of trolling is that the plaintiff is more focused on the business of litigation than on selling a product or service or licensing their IP to third parties to sell a product or a service” (“Copyright Trolling, An Empirical Study” page 4). Copyright trolls seek to acquire their income from suing others on copyright violations, rather than continually creating new works and using copyright to protect them. Copyright, whether one agrees with the concept or not, was not designed for this purpose. People should not be allowed to make a business off of suing others. This is not only unjust, but wastes the court’s time with actual crimes. The United States must reform its current laws to prevent this type of behavior from happening. According to Parker Higgins, “Like email spammers, copyright trolls depend on the ability to cheaply cast a very wide net, sending out hundreds or thousands of accusations at once and getting settlement payments back from some percentage” (“Copyright trolls suffer big loss” par. 3). Many trolls do not target specific groups or people; rather, they spread it in such a way that any company or organization can accidentally “misuse” it. This creates an environment in which it is impossible for many groups to tell if they can use another party’s content without invoking a ludicrous copyright lawsuit. This is not a

Introduction: Setting the trend for the future, the distribution and consumption of recorded music transformed dramatically with the launching of Apple’s iTunes in 2001. The proliferation of online music subscription services and other music sharing services exerted a great pressure on the conventional music distribution business model. Combined with this transformation, piracy of digital music had a profound impact on the whole industry. These worsening conditions in the market place for recorded music forced both established and upcoming new artists to experiment with new ways of selling their music.

Producers of musical content cannot undo the adverse effects that piracy has had on the industry. Because of the internet and the way individuals have manipulated it to obtain music, many people are unwilling to change their habits. Here lies the issue between the producer and the consumer. Acts like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) work against the incentive of many consumers by telling them that they cannot do what maximizes their utility. Producers are thus working against the likings of the consumer. This is wrong.

Music licensing is certainly not the ideal solution to maintain the integrity of the art. Music licensing has created situation in which people actually have to pay to use folk songs such as "Happy Birthday" in certain circumstances. The company that owns the license to the song actually receives millions of dollars every year for a song that nobody knows who originally wrote. However, compensating artists for their works is a complicated endeavor and does not receive much public funding in a capitalist system. Therefore, even though the licensing practice may be counter-productive the art form and overly commercialized, it is a necessary evil that must be tolerated in modern society.

An alternative emerging approach for licensing music, software, research paper and many other resources on the internet, creative common sharing copyright, is introduced.