Copyright Debate.

I have recently took part in a debate about copyright, our group was against copyright, this was challenging for me because I strongly believe in enforcing copyright, however this was a good opportunity to think about copyright from a different perspective. In this blog I will reflect mainly on the perspective of being against copyright.

Cory Doctorow

•  It can be argued that too many people are breaking copyright laws to enforce it, however people who are for copyright could argue that the people who break these laws need to be punished. 
• It can be then argued that there are too many people to punish and not all of them will be caught and will be able to get away with infringing these copyright rules.
• The Digital Economy Act is difficult to enforce for everyone as it is hard for internet providers to stop people downloading illegally or breaking copyright laws.
• In the article Cory Doctorow's (2008) article he argues "Why  argues that "the cost of enforcement is high" (Doctorow 2008)
• When remixing media people are unaware that doing this is infringing copyring laws (eg dangermouse 2004)  
•  When it comes to people remixing different media I would have to agree with Doctorow when he states that there is a "paracopyright" meaning that groups of people online are creating own rules of what is right or wrong.
• All of the creative stuff people do is culture and as Doctorow argues "culture is older than copyright" for example copyright was recognised in 1710.
• "Youtube would vanish without its storehouse of infringing clips" (Doctorow 2008) If copying on the internet ended it would be the end of culture on the internet, for example sites like youtube and google wouldn't exist.   
• Culture is shared information, natural inclination of anyone who is struck by a piece of creative works is to share it. Sharing= copying (Doctorow 2008)
• Partipatory culture (Jenkins 2006)- Soulja boi explited social media sites to get himself noticed alllowing 'remixes' of the video to crank that.
• Freedom of knowledge and the right to education are human rights and copyright stops this.
• Copyists know they infringe and don't care or believe the law can't possibly criminalise what they're doing (Doctorow 2008)
• BPI, a body which represents the music industry has called for the Goverment to force internet service providers, such as Virgin and TalkTalk, to block sites which allow people to download music illegally. 

 After assessing both sides of the argument, I still believe that there should be some sort of copyright rules in place because it isn't fair on the people who create the media such as photos and music that get copied. Copyright is an advantage to the creator because without it anyone would be able to have their work copied. I also believe in copyright because otherwise the media industry is being destroyed by remixes, and the copying of dvds as the quality of the product will never be as good as the original.