Copyright Laws and regulations issues

Essay by rapist815University, Bachelor'sA, April 2005

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With the new millennium now here, what are some of the changes headed towards us? Now that we have Y2K out of the picture, we unfortunately have something new to fear, well at least for some of us. The stealing of intellectual property is on the rise and there are very few copyright laws and regulations out there to prevent these things from happening. Since we are now living in the digital age it is very easy for anyone to get a hold on intellectual property and spread it around to whoever is online. The hard thing is to track down who these people are. More government regulations are needed on the Internet to protect intellectual property. Without more laws and regulations, there will be more Napster imitators in the future. The Internet is a relatively new thing and very unpredictable at this point. New things are being discovered everyday, both for good and not-so-good reasons.

Of course there are also laws and regulations that apply to the Internet. Very few of them protect against intellectual property, but they do exist. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed in 1998, is a law that tried very hard in protecting all sorts of copyrighted digital material such as movies, songs, and books. "The trouble is that all forms of commercial digital copy protection have been broken quickly and efficiently, and will continue to be hacked" (Scheschuk 60). The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) accuses Napster of "contributory infringement and vicarious infringement," not of direct copyright violation. Because of this, The Staple Article Of Commerce Doctrine defends Napster of contributory infringement because Napster provides other non-infringing uses such as sampling, space shifting, and the authorized distribution of music. The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (AHRA) is another regulation that helps...