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Music copyright infringement How Does Music Copyright Infringement Affect Me? Music copyright infringement happens all around us every day, by both well meaning people downloading music from their favorite social networking site to the guy who’s reselling MP3s. To be certain, most people who commit music copyright infringement don’t realize what’s going on, and are in turn doing something very illegal and prosecutable in the United States. Copyright Infringement, as defined by Wikipedia.org states: “Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is protected by intellectual property rights law particularly the copyright in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it. The slang term bootleg (derived from the use of the shank of a boot for the purposes of smuggling) is often used to describe illicitly copied material.” We’ve all heard of ‘bootleg’ recordings – usually audio recordings taken from concerts and sold on home made cassettes or CDs and distributed (sometimes out of the trunk of a car) to anyone that will buy. Bootleg recordings have changed, however, as music copyright infringement has branched into video recordings. Music copyright infringement has exploded with the advent of the internet, and now people from all over the world are sharing every type of imaginable file – from eBooks to audio to music – and small label artists began feeling the pinch years ago. However, many new and older artists are beginning to see the beauty of the internet, and are offering their music for sale track-by-track on iTunes and other MP3 sales websites, as well as through their own band websites and MySpace pages. The internet has exploded in the possibilities it’s given up and coming musicians to become visible, while at the same time drastically increasing the number of music copyright infringement cases – some of which were against innocent people who just weren’t informed. Music copyright infringement cases have helped to create organizations that protect the fair use of an item, such as a song. Organizations such as CreativeCommons.com and the Electronic Frontier Foundation help individuals to know their rights under copyright acts. While there are organizations that help you understand your rights as a purchaser of copyright use, there are organizations that want to limit the ways in which you use the products you buy. It is rumored, for example, that record distribution and production companies want to limit the ways in which you use the music you buy – they don’t want you to put it on your computer or make a Mix Tape or CD from it – for fear of ‘sharing.’ It seems to me, however, when music publishers and distribution companies limit uses like this, they’re opening up a tidal wave of music copyright infringement cases. By limiting the use of purchased material, the companies are alienating their client base and pushing all their sales away from physical products and toward electronic ones – which are much harder to control. A way in which these companies tried to limit the uses was by creating a DRM program, which severely limited the where a CD could be played (on one computer, for instance). And, in one drastic measure, Sony placed a DRM program on all their CDs in the Winter of 2005, and severely crippled several networks when their ‘program’ was actually malware that seriously crippled network security. As you can see, music copyright infringement is something that is currently being fought between end users and music production and distribution companies. In this new century, we must find a way to retain copyright, and allow the customers to use the products they buy in a meaningful way, or otherwise the market will shift and the industry as we know it will be abandoned.

Staying Computer Safe while Searching for Freebies on the Net Who doesn’t love the idea of getting something for nothing? Free stuff can bring a smile to anyone’s face, and the Internet is destination number one when you are looking for cash in on a few freebies. The downside of free stuff online is that if you aren’t careful, the free item could end up causing plenty of headaches and heartaches, not to mention a lot of cold, hard cash. If you want to score with free stuff online, make safety your number one priority by following these tips. First and foremost, treat your personal information like its cash. That might sound a little dramatic, but anyone who manages to steal your identity online is after one thing, and one thing only, your money and any addition money they can grab by cashing in on your credit. Protecting your name, address, credit card number, bank account number, phone number, social security number, and so on and so forth when you are registering for free offers is the first step to making sure you don’t get hustled when you’re just trying to enjoy a good freebie. That means that if you are asked for some personal information that you don’t feel comfortable handing out, let the freebie go. Likewise, make sure the site from which you are getting your free stuff has a privacy policy and that you know it, understand it, and can live with it. Speaking of that site that is handing out the free goods: just who are these people? If you were walking down the street and a shady looking person said they would give you a free DVD player if you followed them, chances are you would run the other way. Online, it is hard to tell the legitimate people from the people looking at you like a free lunch, but there are a few red flags you can look out for. Does the website look like it was thrown up in about 5 minutes, full of clip art and bad spelling? Is it hard to find information about where the website is registered, or where the business the website is supposedly promoting is registered? If the website purports to be affiliated with a certain brand you know, does it really look like it is, or does the logo look different/colors look off? If you can’t get a reasonable feel for who are dealing with online, don’t deal with them. Red flag number one? Asking for too much personal info should send you running. Another way to protect yourself is to build a virtual fortress around your computer. The net is filled with people who know how to walk right into your virtual home – your computer – and flip through everything you have on there, taking whatever they want. Many of these kinds of hackers draw you in by creating phony freebie websites. The way to keep them out is to keep your computer on lockdown. Make sure your firewall is stronger than you think it needs to be, and make sure it is always updated. Also, make sure you have antivirus software on the patrol for you and that you keep this software updated as well. Last but not least, keep those passwords in the vault, and make sure they are extra strong. No freebie website has any reason to ask you about the passwords for your accounts so don’t give them away – and don’t give them to anyone else online for that matter. Also, if you’re using your birthday or child’s name as password, don’t. Sure, it isn’t as easy to remember, but your password should be a random word and contain a collection of numbers and symbols as well. This will give you the extra layer of protection to make sure your online house is in order when you cash in on the freebies.

People caught of copyright infringement Why Are People Caught of Copyright Infringement? When you hear of people caught of copyright infringement, many different things can happen to them. First of all, copyright infringement is both a civil and criminal crime, so people caught of copyright infringement are likely to get both sued and tried in criminal court. Because of the nature of copyright laws, if and when people are caught of copyright infringement, it’s likely that they will get repercussions from far and wide. First of all, people are always looking for people violating copyright laws. Copyright owners and/or agents surf the internet, so they may find the violations themselves. Usually, is someone finds that people are violating their copyright rights, they’ll notify the person or entities involved and ask that they take the content down, if it’s available on the Internet. They do this by either asking the person directly to take it down, or demanding of the website server to take it down (which they will, immediately, and probably suspend the account) If the person or entity hosting the violation doesn’t take it down, more serious actions will be taken, such as a lawsuit or criminal charge. People caught for copyright infringement do not automatically go to jail, although some entities like major television, music, and movie publishers and distribution channels may lead you to believe otherwise. For the example of YouTube.com, there are many people caught for copyright infringement, but they only need to take down the material. In many cases, YouTube.com will take the material down before the poster (the person who put the copyrighted information on the site to begin with) has a chance to see the warning. Other times, a work will be present on a peer to peer file sharing service, such as Kazaa or Napster, and the host of said service will blame the end user (you!). So, even if you found a file on a file sharing service, such as Kazaa, doesn’t mean the copyright is open for you to take it. Many people caught of copyright infringement have been found through these peer to peer networks, and it has been found time and again that the user that downloads the material gets charged and not the file sharing service. Be careful, if you are ever to use a peer to peer service such as Kazaa (or bit torrent, which is the code/program for another type of peer to peer file distribution tool) that you’re only downloading, and sharing, items that aren’t copyrighted works – or you could be punished severely. Sometimes, people are caught of file sharing from their IP addresses – because they download something from a secure site, their servers can track your IP address (your unique location on the internet, four sets of numbers, separated by periods, with at most three numbers in each set – i.e. 216.239.51.100 which is the IP address of Google.com). So even if you think you’ve bypassed the copyright law, you can still be found years later by tracing that IP address. There are many ways to find people caught of copyright infringement, you can search through Google.com or look through newspaper databases. One thing, however, remains the same in all these cases – the people are downloading, sharing, or in some other way using copyrighted materials. The only problem is, especially in the internet age, is that even if you’re using something anonymously, you can still be tracked – and prosecuted – for the infringement. Be careful, in all you download or use, have the rights to use the item – sometimes it’s as simple as asking permission that will keep you from getting sued or sent to jail.