Copyright Controversy's

Copyright owners these days, are not essentially impecunious writers, artists, or philosophers chewing at their tattered overcoats (Rimmer, 2005).
Corporations own many copyrights, and trade groups are aggressive in asserting the "exclusive right" to control and profit by copyrighted works.

In the 1970s, for example, The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) tried to stop grocery stores from playing radios unless they paid fees for the songs that were aired. Twenty years later, ASCAP demanded fees from summer camps for songs the children sang around their campfires. The Walt Disney Company threatened daycare centers that had likenesses of Mickey Mouse painted on their walls. From attempts to stop the technology of "piano rolls" in 1908 to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, restricting access to copyrighted works today, media companies have pushed for stronger controls.

It is a mistake, however, to think that the monopoly control bestowed by copyright is absolute. From the beginning, copyright law was intended to balance the rights of owners against those of the public – to give just enough incentive to enhance creativity. Understandably, copyright owners are concerned when cultural sharing is multiplied from a few friends to millions around the globe (many to many). But the industry tends to lump together all copying under the nefarious heading of "PIRACY," when in fact there are substantial differences between large-scale, for-profit enterprises that sell unauthorized copies of music, software, or movies, and, for example, students' or scholars' sharing of favorite songs or news articles through a university network. Although copying on this level is generally assumed to be unlawful, it is not clear that the remedy is to make criminals of millions of people.

Modern technology has made copying vastly simpler, and achievable on a worldwide scale that was never possible before. It has also enabled media companies to exercise unprecedented control over the use of their products through systems of digital rights management, or "DRM". As a result of DRM, some CDs now come with locks to prevent them from being played or copied on computers. Some Web sites include lengthy agreements that flatly require viewers to relinquish their fair-use rights as a condition of accessing the site. The tension continues to grow between strong copyright control and the values of free expression and access to information. For those of you, who may want to know more about the copyright rules and legisation, i have attached a video that helped me, get my head around copyright and ownership laws, and was an easier way then reading millions of articles.

References:

Rimmer, M. 2005. The Grey Album: Copyright Law and Digital Sampling, In Media Internation Australia. p.40-52.