Copyright

On Tuesday, we learned about copyright laws in the United States from Jason Hardin. He started his discussion by talking about the history of copyright. The copyright law goes all the way back to the U.S. constitution, and it is mentioned in Article 17 of the U.S. Code. This was added to encourage entrepreneurship and creativity among citizens. This way, someone is motivated to invent their own product because they know they will be a able to profit off of it. Over the years, there has been surprisingly little change to the copyright laws. Around the 1930's to 40's (he didn't say which exactly) the law was changed to increase the time of copyright so it applied for the life of the author plus 70 years. This amendment has been called the 'Mickey Mouse Protection Act' because it allowed Disney to hold on to its copyrights for a little longer. Nowadays, if a student at Trinity is caught illegally downloading something, most companies are nice enough to send a takedown notice, pinpointing the exact act of copyright infringement and politely asking for the student to take any violating software off their computer. However, the company is not obligated to do this. They could sue the student without any warning. From their perspective, I'm sure it seems fair to sue a student right away, as Jason Hardin told us has happened before. For students, however, it would seem very harsh to get sued for a large amount of money for songs that may have been worth very little to begin with (like old Gene Autry songs). I believe that making an example of a student is unnecessary and is actually just a way for these companies to get money. Nobody who is illegally downloading is going to think about a case that was settled out of court and decide against downloading whatever it is they wanted. I believe that take down notices are fair and all that is necessary to control the problem. Suing a student for their first offense seems, in my opinion, unfair.


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