Intellectual Property

Copy right is something that says that a piece of work belongs to one person; this stops other people using the work as their own. Copyright doesn’t last forever it lasts 70 years after the person that owns it has died. A good example of this is the classic books; all of these are cheap and can be published by several different printing companies as the original authors died more than 70 years ago.

This can be easily understood using the three moral rights; the first is the right of attribution this states that the creator of the work has the right to be identified as it, it means that if you do use their work you have to give them the correct acknowledgement for it. Second is the right of integrity this stops you being able to alter anything without the permission of the original creator. Lastly is false attribution, this states that you are notable to take the piece of work and say it is your own.

Copyright is an important thing when it comes to using technology; this is because most things have access to the internet where you can easily find a piece of work. With the interactive media we will face a lot of problems with copy right as it’s inevitable with the kind of work we have decided to do. This could be with images that we want to use on a site or work that we want to use as examples for our own, it is easy enough to make references but it’s easy enough to forget. Also when it comes to using our blogs we have used whatever images we need and also edited some for work we need to do, it’s alright in college but if we go to a work area we will have more problems with copyright than we are used to.

Regarding the topic of downloading people’s products off of sites like pirate bay I’m undecided. It’s simple enough to understand why they are illegal as the companies that originally made the product are losing out on money if people can get it from somewhere else for free. But none of the sites are claiming the work as their own; the original creators are given the rightful acknowledgement as the creators. But soon the companies are going to stop making the application and such because they aren’t making any profit off of it. This will mean that eventually we will have to cope with what we have and nothing new will become available. As a person that is studying interactive media this means that soon there won’t be any jobs for us to go into as the companies won’t make the money from the products that they need to employ people.

Creative commons are a company that deal with issues that arise from copyright, as soon as that thing becomes ours although its copyrighted we might not mind if people want to use it, their main example of this was a base guitarist adding a base over music that didn’t already have one. The group that originally performed the song didn’t mind him doing this and when they met gave him their permission to continue doing so. Due to this he is not affected by the copyright law as he was given the exception, creative commons are trying to make it so people with a copyright can still allow other people to use their work. This is done with different symbols that make it possible to use these works on for different things meaning the main person will still have some control over it.

Personally I believe that we need copyright protection, without it people would be able to more freely plagiarise work that other people have put the effort into making. With copyright protection in place people think twice about what they are doing, also if someone is stealing some else’s work and calling it their own the person that originally did the work in the first place will not bother continuing to do the work if it isn’t recognised at theirs.

This image was found using google images and requested that they find an image for creative commons that had a creative commons licence so that I could redistribute it.

Original Owner: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://irudiak.argazkiak.org/dd86e7c48c5b08890dd69d775e2ca4e7_c.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.argazkiak.org/photo/creative-commons/&usg=__e9c8raBHskBpxf1tffFhwFtSeaI=&h=350&w=350&sz=18&hl=en&start=3&sig2=DQqceM8Rg-vwZDxo-Dtd_Q&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=V8dGRgZk9xPh9M:&tbnh=120&tbnw=120&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcreative%2Bcommons%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1900%26bih%3D922%26as_st%3Dy%26ndsp%3D21%26tbs%3Diur:fc%26tbm%3Disch&ei=IknmTbK9AY6whQftyoXCCg

Privacy Issues on the internet

Privacy has become a big issues when it comes to the internet as people are able to publish stuff anonymously this means people no longer have to worry about the law chasing them us on what they said. There are several examples of this; the first is injunctions and super injunctions.

Injunctions stop people being able to talk about what a person has done; this means the newspapers are able to talk about someone taking out an injunction but not to talk about what the injunction is about. Whereas the next step is a super injunction this stops people being able to talk about any information regarding it and even the fact that it exists. This further protects the person that it involved being mentioned, a recent thing where this has happened with a football player shows that with a lot of money you will be able to take one out whereas the other person involved in it was unable to do this so it was still made public. Furthermore when the other person involved it confronted about it they are unable to say anything regarding the matter otherwise they will be breaking the super injunction. In a case where this has happened the person involved can face going to prison, this leads us on to how the internet has caused problems for this.

On the internet people are able to create accounts without using their real identity as you can easily make an email address for someone that doesn’t exist and further go on to sign up to other sites using this address. An example of this is when someone anonymously started accusing a British writer of having a super injunction (gagging order),this supposed gagging order is allegedly so that intimate photo’s will not be able to be published . The person that started these rumours has managed to keep their identity a secret by doing it anonymously but in a serious case police can try to trace them but things like internet cafes will make it a difficult job for them.

In the above case the internet has cause problems but other ways the internet is able to do so is by publishing private information. The Star Wars Kid was a boy who posted a video on youtube that got millions of views, it also lead to him being bullied online and probably by those who know him. Due to the popularity newspapers we happy to state his name which would undoubtedly go on to cause more problems for him, but Wikipedia decided that they weren’t going to publish his name after requested by his parents. Newspapers are something that go to pass but what is up on the internet will stay up and can be found by anyone and at anytime.

This are just a few examples of problems that are being faced, the main thing that people have a problem with is that the super injunction is affecting our freedom of speech.  The worry that most people have regarding the topic of super injunctions is that these many be taken out against important things that we feel we have a right to know, something a lot more serious than someone famous having an affair. With celebrities and their private life it has been argued that it’s not with-in the public interest, although the public are very interested in the gossip they don’t feel that it is something we need to know. Personally I feel that I understand why super injunctions and injunctions exist but its extreme for someone to face going to prison just for talking about something they don’t want them to.