Copyright

On Tuesday, February 3, the class had a presentation about the copyright law.

U.S. Copyright law dates from 1790.

Public domain is materials that can be used without requesting © permission which means they are publicly available.

The term of copyright for U.S. published works is now author’s life plus seventy years. Just because the author is dead does not mean the work is public domain.

The Sonny Bono Act (also called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act) refers to a bill passed in 1998, which extended the term of copyright an additional twenty years. Disney is a powerful organization and when Disney characters were about to go public domain, this bill passed.

“Orphan Works” are publications for which no author, publisher or other copyright holder can be located.

The RIAA, MPAA, and ESA are disproportionately interested in campus-based filed sharing. RIAA is Recording Industry Association of America, MPAA is Motion Picture Association of America, and ESA is the Entertainment Software Association.

Trinity University is within Congressional District and Diane Graves is in charge of copyright law on campus.

It is a felony to commit a copyright infringement involving more than ten copies and a value of more than 2500 dollars.

An “author” applies to a poet, musician, visual artist, filmmaker, choreographer/dancer, photographer, and writer.

Many college students argue that downloading songs from shared music program such as Limewire is not illegal. Most of my friends say the same thing when this issue comes up to our conversation. "Downloading a song that is already on the Internet is not illegal! Sharing and providing your music are illegal! So we are not doing anything wrong!" I am sure I have said that more than once as well.

Yet, most colleges do not allow their students to get on or download music for free from programs as Limewire because they are more familiar with the copyright law than most students.

After I learned about the copyright law, I started feeling strongly against downloading songs for free off the Internet. Also, when my guardians who I lived with for two years in Houston found out their children and I had been downloading songs from Limewire, they started buying us iTunes gift cards for every Christmas because they said it was an illegal action.

Musicians work very hard to be famous and get people to like their music. Then money from selling their albums is a return from a hard work and another step to make better music. However, since a big number a people keep downloading musicians' songs illegally off the Internet, the musicians' financial problems get bigger and bigger. Therefore, everyone should pay for all the musicians' music for their hard work and according to the copyright law.

Thank you.

Hye-Won.

hkim1@trinity.edu