Among the most fractious debates to have arisen from globalisation and the expanding reach of the internet is that of copyrights and what they really stand for.
This year, particularly, is seeing an upheaval in the copyright war. While some believe that copyrights ought to be attributive and not exclusive to the creator (which means that a creator should be properly credited with the work, but the creation should be free to be reused and developed upon by people), others – and perhaps a far stronger lobby – believes in the system of copyrighted work being exclusive to the owner of the copyright, to do as he pleases with.
The internet has brought with it unprecedented distribution of digital content. Movies, music and written work are easily available, and can be had with flagrant violation of copyright rules, such as the payment of loyalty fees.
Viacom, earlier this year, sued YouTube, claiming that the video sharing site was overriding copyright rules by permitting people to freely exchange television shows owned by Viacom.
Media owners in Belgium, too, united to eject Google’s news service from the country on grounds that Google ‘rides on the work of others’, by selling ad inventory on pages that link to news articles written and owned by newspapers and magazines, and by caching these articles.
However, people have argued that if news from, say, Belgium, is difficult to find, fewer and fewer people will try to acquire it. Eventually, then, news from the country will become more obsolete – it will lose patrons, not gain any. Google News makes Belgian stories easy to find, and is, by that argument, aiding news services in the country.
In April, French-language Belgian newspapers, which had earlier condemned Google, returned to the search company’s news service, allowing it to cache fresh content, with the intent of charging for archived pages, reports the Associated Press.
Wired News, owned by one of the largest magazine publishers in the United States, Conde Nast, recently announced a decision to release some of its content on a Creative Commons license, allowing people to develop upon and reuse content, so long as the original creator is duly credited.
Some weeks ago, internet surfers from across the world were bookmarking a webpage that contained a key to hack HD-DVDs, which are encrypted. These webpages were being sent to Digg.com, a social bookmarking site. Digg’s administrators, for fear of causing widespread infringement of copyright laws, started deleting these web pages from the site.
When people (regular ‘Diggers’) saw this, the movement only grew – they sought and even created pages with the hack and bookmarked them to Digg, in droves. Finally, the chief executive of Digg stepped in and promised not to delete any hack pages, even if it meant that the site would have to shut down, because he felt that the ‘citizens’ of Digg preferred that, to bending before larger companies (who hold rights over the film HD-DVDs).
Such are the small movements on the internet, earlier seen to be ‘merely fun’, that are poised to turn the tide of things in the offline world.
This year, particularly, is seeing an upheaval in the copyright war. While some believe that copyrights ought to be attributive and not exclusive to the creator (which means that a creator should be properly credited with the work, but the creation should be free to be reused and developed upon by people), others – and perhaps a far stronger lobby – believes in the system of copyrighted work being exclusive to the owner of the copyright, to do as he pleases with.
The internet has brought with it unprecedented distribution of digital content. Movies, music and written work are easily available, and can be had with flagrant violation of copyright rules, such as the payment of loyalty fees.
Viacom, earlier this year, sued YouTube, claiming that the video sharing site was overriding copyright rules by permitting people to freely exchange television shows owned by Viacom.
Media owners in Belgium, too, united to eject Google’s news service from the country on grounds that Google ‘rides on the work of others’, by selling ad inventory on pages that link to news articles written and owned by newspapers and magazines, and by caching these articles.
However, people have argued that if news from, say, Belgium, is difficult to find, fewer and fewer people will try to acquire it. Eventually, then, news from the country will become more obsolete – it will lose patrons, not gain any. Google News makes Belgian stories easy to find, and is, by that argument, aiding news services in the country.
In April, French-language Belgian newspapers, which had earlier condemned Google, returned to the search company’s news service, allowing it to cache fresh content, with the intent of charging for archived pages, reports the Associated Press.
Wired News, owned by one of the largest magazine publishers in the United States, Conde Nast, recently announced a decision to release some of its content on a Creative Commons license, allowing people to develop upon and reuse content, so long as the original creator is duly credited.
Some weeks ago, internet surfers from across the world were bookmarking a webpage that contained a key to hack HD-DVDs, which are encrypted. These webpages were being sent to Digg.com, a social bookmarking site. Digg’s administrators, for fear of causing widespread infringement of copyright laws, started deleting these web pages from the site.
When people (regular ‘Diggers’) saw this, the movement only grew – they sought and even created pages with the hack and bookmarked them to Digg, in droves. Finally, the chief executive of Digg stepped in and promised not to delete any hack pages, even if it meant that the site would have to shut down, because he felt that the ‘citizens’ of Digg preferred that, to bending before larger companies (who hold rights over the film HD-DVDs).
Such are the small movements on the internet, earlier seen to be ‘merely fun’, that are poised to turn the tide of things in the offline world.
2 comments:
For a wanderer lost in the world of words, your article really wanders. an interesting read, but for the liberal use of commas. tenses too seem to be getting lost in the tension of writing... loosen up on the tension-think lateral-he tenses will correct themselves. Critically, think original, nay away from the Net lest it weave you in its words. For a youngster, however, a decent attempt.
www.sonalirajdelhi.blogspot.com
thanks for saying the nice things... the commas i now have greater control over and your comment did help.
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