200902292 Kwanhyung Lee/legality on sharing copyrighted materials/thursday 56

Legality on sharing copyrighted materials

 

Have you ever got caught trying to download any pornography or sexual contents in the Internet? You do think it is wrongful to do so, but you keep downloading it because it is addictive. Now the government has passed a law that all sexual contents, and who upload and download them are deemed to be punished. As so, piracy in the Internet is widespread nowadays, and every administration are trying to set rules against those who practice illegal downloading or sharing copyrighted materials from the Internet. It can be said that it is justified to put legal measures against individuals who are involved in piracy, but not to a far extent.

             The justification for punishing individuals who upload and download in the Internet is that some of those contents and materials are private properties. It is believed that one's human rights to own their properties without any appropriation, especially in a capitalist market. If a person illegally upload or download a property, they are deemed to be penalized just as people trying to steal real assets, such as car, money, house, jewelry and so on. It cannot be exempted because it is an intangible asset and exists in a virtual world. As Alvin Toffler claimed about the information era and the 3^rd wave in the world, we have to take serious attention about every piece of information that is around the net. To explain the gravity of the situation, one illustration could be an employee leaking corporate information to its competitors. If the employee was involved in embezzlement, it could be some amount of money that could be stolen, and forgotten. However if it was corporate information, for example a manual on computer chips, the competitors can exactly produce the chips and the loss will last until the competitor die out. Hence, it can be said that a piece of material floating around the Internet can be very important, more than real assets, and we have to take extreme caution about its security.

             On the other hand, I believe that creating information property measures too strictly on the web can cause much expenses and it can be hard to figure out the protected material to the unprotected if we try to put too much regulations. First off, if individuals try to salvage their properties on the web in an excess way, I believe that it could cause tons of sunk costs. If a company has a line of film that has hundred different versions, it can be wasteful trying to protect every single one. It could be special edition, uncut movie, behind the scene, sorted by ratings and so on and so forth. If the producer tries to put a seal every one of them, they could be spending massive amount of opportunity cost of investing other films of different genres. In addition, if the information and materials are overly protected, I believe that it will be hard for the court to figure out which one is which of the protected and unprotected. Also if a company files a law suit against a competitor and both of them have similar covers for their intellectual property, it can be a time-consuming and costly fight for them. For example, the long fight between Apple vs. Samsung have ended with both of them with astronomical costs for the lawsuit, without any fruitful results.

             To conclude, it is a great idea to regulate individuals who are involved in piracy over the web, trying to make off with copyrighted materials and intellectual properties. But I believe that if they are measured overly excessive, it could be just overwhelming and costly. In an information era we are living nowadays, it is essential to understand the concept of properties over the web, and try to regulate the properties with more caution and care.