GOF- Intellectual Property

The chapter “Intellectual Property” explained copyright laws and how technology is often changing them. Intellectual property is objects such as books, articles, plays, songs (both music and lyrics), works of art, movies, and software; items that are protected by copyright, a legal concept. Legal protection is given to intellectual property because the value of a book, song, and computer program is much more than the cost of printing a copy. The value of intellectual property comes from artistic and creative works along with the skills and labor involved. Think about CD’s, and MP3’s; Napster’s case, where eighteen record companies sued Napster for copyright infringement. The law suit against Napster never would have occurred if the technology of the web allowed the transferring of information between millions of people. The Napster law suit brought up questions such as “Was the copying and distribution of music by Napster users legal under the fair-use guidelines?” “If not, was Napster responsible for the actions of its users?” Downloading music is a question of “is it fair”, many people thought that the success of Napster meant the end of copyright, they were wrong. As technology advances, the copyright laws change; and new solutions to problems evolve. iTunes for example charges people to buy single songs, albums, movies and much more. What would it be like if there was a program out that charged a monthly fee and you could download as much music as you want? Do you think that would have an effect on the music world?