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ARRoGANT CoURiERS WiTH ESSaYS
Grade Level: Type of Work Subject/Topic is on:
[ ]6-8 [ ]Class Notes [Canada's Copyright Law ]
[x]9-10 [ ]Cliff Notes [ ]
[ ]11-12 [ ]Essay/Report [ ]
[ ]College [ ]Misc [ ]
Dizzed: 10/94 # of Words:853 School: ? State: ?
ФФФФФФФФФ>ФФФФФФФФФ>ФФФФФФФФФ>Chop Here>ФФФФФФФФФ>ФФФФФФФФФ>ФФФФФФФФФ>ФФФФФФФФФ
Canada's copyright law is one of our hardest laws to enforce. The
reason the police have so much trouble enforcing this law, is due to
technology. This law is very easy to break, and once broken, it is very
hard to track down violators. So although some form of a copyright law is
needed, the one we have has, too many holes to be effective. There are
three main ways in which the copyright law is broken in everyday life.
They is audio/video tape copying, plagiarism, and software piracy.
The first, and most commonly violated aspect of the copyright law,
is the copying of audio tapes for oneself and friends. Thanks to the
invention of dual cassette stereos, this has become very easy. You simply
take an original or even another copy of a tape, as well as a blank tape.
Stick them both in to the stereo and bingo you have a new tape. You also
just broke the law.
Along with copying audio tapes, now we can copy video tapes almost
as easily. If you hook two VCR's together, they can copy from one to the
other. You could rent a movie form the video store, copy and return it,
with no one the wiser.
The problem with copying video and audio tapes is that for every
copy you make the recording artist, the actors, producers and everyone else
who collect royalties from the tapes lose money. If the companies start to
lose money, they raise prices. Thus a vicious circle begins. As prices go
up, fewer people buy original copies. If less people buy the original
cassettes prices will once again rise.
Another major form of piracy is plagiarism. The stealing of
someone elses ideas or work. The biggest category of people who fall into
here are students. Very often a student when doing a research paper will
"accidently" forget to footnote his work. By "forgetting" to give the
author credit, the student has claimed the work as his own. Another reason
students may copy someone else's work is to sound more sophisticated hoping
that if they use someone elses words it will sound better than their own.
Generally, this provides an easy way for a teacher or the police to catch
them.
Teachers also plagiarize rather frequently. Very often a teacher
will photocopy several pages from a book, in order to save the students the
expense of having to buy the book for themselves. While this is a noble
act by the teacher, in most cases, this is illegal. Unless the author of
the book, gave consent for his/her work to be freely distributed, teachers
can't copy it any more than students or anyone else can.
The third category of piracy is Software Pirating. There are
several forms which this can take. The most common form is very similar to
audio/video cassettes. It is when someone copies a game or program from
his/her computer to someone elses. As long as the two people have the same
type of computer, (they both have apples or IBM's) this is a very simple
process, so long as the programmer didn't put a bug into the program (a
precaution they take against people copying their work).
Another form of Computer Piracy is a "cracker". A cracker is someone
who has an in-depth knowledge of computers and programming. He can then
remove the "bug" that prevents programs from being copied. After he
removes the bug he's able to distribute the software at his own discretion.
This is in direct conflict with the copyright law, because the program was
not meant to be copied thus the bug. It therefore becomes illegal to
remove the bug.
Like audio/video cassettes copying, computer games causes people to
lose money. In this case, instead of it being the singer, or actors, it is
the programmer, and the software companies who lose. This leads to the
same vicious circle. More copies make higher prices etc..
The copyright law is hard to enforce likewise so are the penalties.
If you are found in violation of breaking the copyright laws, you probably
will only have to pay a fine. However, the fines can be quite substantial
and depending where you are in the distribution chain (how many copies were
made before yours) the fine varies, with whoever copied the original paying
the most. In extreme cases, where a contract is enacted upon the purchase
of the original copy like with Word Perfect, a computer word processor.
Upon buying an original set off disks you must sign a contract promising
not to distribute the program. In these cases, you could face imprisonment
because now not only are you dealing with breach of the copyright law, but
with a breach of contract as well. So the moral of the story is enjoy your
large collection of audio/video tapes. Get those good marks on essays you
didn't even write. Enjoy those really fun computer games, because under
Canada's current copyright law and the amount of attention the police pay
to this problem, it is very unlikely that you will ever get caught.