Copyrights

Copyright infringement is a very sensitive legal topic in the United States. Everyday hackers are hired to find people who try to download material from the Internet without the right copyright permits. Copyright is very important to this capitalist nation since it encourages innovation. In order to understand all of these topics, schools, institutions, companies and various other entities provide the population with the correct information on how to handle copyrights and what they are. This is considered a crime and if its not respected and applied it could cost somebody a simple take down notice or a very expensive lawsuit such as Harper vs. Maverick.

The Harper vs. Maverick case was a lawsuit, which began with a San Antonio teenager who decided to illegally download a few songs from a file sharing software. She tried to argue that this was "innocent infringement" but the jury and court decided that this was invalid and that she was guilty of this fault. I personally agree that if she was warned about copyright earlier in her life the court had all the right to punish her. On the other hand, if she was unaware, like a lot of young people are, that this great software which offered free music was illegal and could ignite a costly lawsuit then she should not have been held liable. I just believe everyone living in USA should be informed of the copyright laws.

Thank you to Jason Hardin, Manager of Access Services at Trinity University, for all the valuable information on copyrights.


Copyrights by Andrea Pinto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.