DMCAThis copyright act has been a part of many discussions as the meaning of this act allows others to use copyrighted material with out the creator's permission basically throwing fair use out the window and leaving the copyrighted material up for grabs, the owner unprotected and anyone who feels they could use the material free to do so. Congress has held many hours of talks and has three bills pending and possibly others to halt this use of materials. While there are also groups that are protesting to keep this Digital Millennium Copyright Act in place as they feel it has to do with freedom of speech. Certainly the creators of copyrighted works do not feel the use of their materials have anything to do with others freedom of speech. These copyright holders most certainly feel that those who are taking the copyrighted work are stealing it rather than having the right to just use and take what the copyright holder. However with this act in place there is little that can be done to stop this problem. This has gone as far as the United States Supreme Court who ruled that copyright lengths are not to be shortened, so this ruling favors the copyright holder. Combating digital piracy is something that the film, music and software industries have supported legislation on and worked tirelessly to make this happen as well as the development of technologies that threaten the health of the public domain. In the film and music industry alone there are thousands of dollars a year in stolen movies and music. This of course has a trickle down effect, when these industries lose profit because of piracy it trickles down to what innocent people pay. On the other side of the scale DMCA also does not work for those who have honestly purchased a work that is copyrighted and want to make a copy of this work such as a computer software program and the user wants to make a backup copy in the event something should happen to the original. This act makes it illegal to copy this work even for personal use. All sides of the copyright users the creator and the user of the copyrighted work are displeased with this work and feel it needs change, as it is actually unclear if it protects anyone. When this began it was due to the motion picture studios along with record producers and some book publishers asked Congress with a simple request to give them a law that would stop the pirating of their works of technical nature. To safeguard these works so they would be free to provide the public and especially the community of Internet users as creative works of all kinds had begun being published on the Internet. Since the writing and imposing of this new copyright act Congress has agreed that it is a primarily flawed bill, one that will need revision if it is to protect while still granting fair use. | |
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