Itellectual Property Rights

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate November 2001

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Jason Cordero October 10, 2001 Intellectual Property Rights A minimalist position is that trying to protect intellectual property rights is pointless and not possible. Therefore we should just let it be, and let the Internet stand as everything can be shared, copied, and/or distributed. They believe it would be to hard to do anything about that why should we waste our time and effort trying to fix the problem.

In the case of Napster a minimalist would just leave it alone. They would figure that if you got ride of Napster then two more music servers would pop up. If they got ride of them then four more would pop up, and so on. So why should they bother getting ride of Napster. To them all it means is that the artists would have to get more money elsewhere and if they didn't like it then so what.

A maximalist position would give publishers rights over any file, copy, or just about anything dealing with that producer.

Basically you would be charged for anything and everything that you download or just come in contact to. It would also make Internet service providers responsible for copyright infringements.

A maximalist would agree with what they did to Napster at the present time. To get songs from Napster you have to pay money so the server can pay royalties to the artists. If the server did not comply with there decision and did not charge money then the server would just be shut down. It would mean that you couldn't download anything from these severs unless you paid for it.

I think we should go with the minimalists point of view, witch would coincide with the utilitarian point of view, just let it be. Even though we have many rules now most people have found ways around the rules. Many of the people don't even know that there breaking the rules, because there is so much freedom on the Internet. Bothering to change all of the rules will take years and tons of money. The problem will probably still not be fixed.

Especially with the free music servers since they opened cd sales have gone up. So even without charging for downloaded music the artist made more money. People would download a song, like it, and go out and but the cd. So the minimalist point of view makes a lot more sense. It also save time, effort, and most of all our tax money will be spent on areas that need more attention then charging for downloads.