Legal Concepts Worksheet
Legal Concepts Worksheet
Robert D Scott
University of Phoenix
Legal Concepts Worksheet
Concept Application of Concept to the Issue of Downloading Reference to Concept in Reading
Copyright Law
The "MP3 compression technology allows one to quickly download near-CD quality digitized sound recordings and to store them using minimal disk space" (Harvard Law School, 1999).
The Act itself comes from 17 U.S.C. which provides the protection of "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium or expression, currently known or later developed, from which the work can be perceived, reproduced or otherwise communicated, either directly or indirectly, with the aid of a machine or device" (17 U.S.C. § 102(a)). This protection allows music companies to fight for their right of ownership of illegal downloadable media as the MP3. The Copyright Act of 1976 protects against the illegal distribution of music and videos.
To ensure copyright protection, three criteria must be met:
"A work must be original. It must be created, not copied" (Reed et al., 2005).
"The work must be fixed in a tangible medium of expression like a book, canvas, compact disc, tape, or computer disk" (Reed et al., 2005)
"The work must show some creativity. (Reed et al., 2005)
Copyright in the cyber age
Due to "the growing popularity of downloading music online in 2001, the legal battle to protect copyright was focused on the efforts of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to challenge large
file-sharing networks like Napster. Though the RIAA won its case against Napster and effectively forced the site to shut down in 2001, a myriad of decentralized file-sharing
services emerged and millions of Internet users simply migrated to the new systems" (Madden & Lenhart, 2003). "Criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits for file sharing'...
View Full Essay