Running head: COPY RIGHT AND INNOVATION: THE UNTOLD STORY 1

Copy Right and Innovation: The Untold Story

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Introduction

Works of art, culture and entertainment emanates from human imagination that has

played a crucial role in shaping the world and expanding our horizon and these have been

codified into copyright law. In USA this is a cornerstone of a vibrant creative economy that leads

in creativity, technological innovation and economic growth. These copyright laws have endured

in part as a result of their flexibility through working with existing and future technologies to

foster innovation and growth. These protection as provided by current law supports business

models that give consumers diverse choices and access to more content in more formats and on

more platforms than ever before. This means that today’s advancement and the ever expanding

media landscape exists in part because of a copyright system that empowers creativity and

promotes competition.

Copyright laws and innovation

Supporting copyright law is therefore to support technological ingenuity that is beneficial

to everyone. It is about providing the right incentives that makes sure everyone has access to

multiple platforms and the people who make that content are able to continue doing so. In the

digital world, copyright is an vital feature of novelty as production is boosted by novelty that

comprise design of new patent workings and novelty in legal admittance, allocation, storage and

utilization of those works together with original ways of generating or sharing out goods and

services or brand new methods of supervising the existing procedures of doing so.
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Nevertheless novelty normally flourishes in the presence of competition consequently by

restraining the copyright domination; exceptions may be able to also trigger competition and

arouse novelty. Restructuring copyright exceptions might for that reason be viewed as an effort

to seek the optimal position at which conception and innovations are capitalized on. This is a

contentious perception but it is imperative to be aware of the inconsistency and the trade offs.

Privacy theft and rogue websites

The digital world is shrouded with online piracy hence the efforts of the Hollywood to

stop these by promoting two bills; the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and a version form senate

called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) that were aimed at creating a list of blacklisted censored

websites engaging in copyright infringement through online piracy. They included

indistinguishable characterization that could have included websites hosts such as Drop box,

rapid share and Media fire. They also included sites that discussed piracy such as pirate-party.us,

torrent freak and p2pnet, together with varied sites for user produced content e.g. sound cloud,

deviant Art etc.

The bills were however overwhelmed by a massive crusade initiated by EFF plus other

organizations. Even though the legislations were aimed at overseas websites devoted to

channeling pirated content, their stipulation would have allowed for exclusion of massive

quantities of non-infringing substance e.g. free speech and political news. Had the bills sailed

through the collateral destruction for these bills would have been enormous. These legislations

would have permitted a legal representative or any other persons to generate a blacklist of

expurgated sites without a court of law having found them to have violated or infringed on

copyright law.
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The origin of these laws can be traced back to the behavior of the record labels when

confronted with the digital music revolution. The sources of the bills can be traced to the

innovators and investors reactions to the district court injunction in the case involving peer-to-

peer (p2p) service Napster.

Napster

Napster was a company started in 1999 that allowed users to swap MP3 music files

stored in the hard drives of their computers-a first public application of peer to peer computing.

Napster's users download the files sharing software and then exchange files for free. Napster as

company hosts in its servers a directory of all MP3 files stored on user’s hard drives but not the

files themselves and had over 50 million users. The company was sued by the five largest record

labels in the world plus others represented by the recording industry association of America

(RIAA). They claimed that Napster was guilty of copyright infringement as it carried on its

service without permission of the copyright owners. Napster argued that since it did not store the

music file on its servers, it was not guilty of copy right infringement. The 9th US Circuit Court of

Appeals upheld an injunction by the Lower District Courts.

It prohibited Napster form copying, assisting, enabling or contributing to the copy or

duplication of all copyrighted songs and musical compositions of which the record companies

hold rights with some exceptions. These were that Napster is likely to be found liable for

contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and ruled that Napster had a responsibility to

police its own systems for infringement and ordered the district court judge to amend her original

injunction to clarify Napster’s policing responsibility.

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Napster failed in its argument where it attempted to rely on a judicial precedent of 1984

in a case between Sony and Universal Studios which stated that the manufacturers of home video

recording equipment were not liable for copyright infringement. The 9th circuit ruled that “actual,

specific knowledge of direct infringement renders the (sonny case) of limited assistance.” The

court also rejected Napster argument that its services were excused by principles of fair use and a

federal law governing home audio recording. The court ruled that the recording companies have

the burden of informing Napster of copyrighted material works available through its system

before Napster must disable access to the offending content. This ruling was a blow to the

company sending it to bankruptcy.

Discussion: impact of Napster ruling

These ruling can only be said to have slowed down innovation and brought uninteresting

innovation. The content industry downplays the importance of technology and services where

they always mock and degenerate new inventions; getting angry if these devices make money.

Content is important but it is not the main or only driver of the innovation as content alone won’t

make those services successful. The services are successful because they innovated and provided

convenience, access, ease of use and other features that were not there before. There is a need

for content and the services working together so as to bring the huge potential in innovation and

maximize the opportunities available in the music space.

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Conclusion

Therefore copyright laws ought to sanction creativity, novelty and knowledge

distribution. They must promote liberalized markets plus competition by distinguishing definite

and enforceable chattels rights and incentivize creators to be risk takers. Copyright ought to

sustain a free internet that is beneficial to every person plus presenting creatorship modern

protection as technology and markets are shifting more rapidly than the law. Thus copyright laws

should be elastic enough to adapt to future scientific transformations. Finally the copyright laws

should afford for inducement and responsibility with growing infringement situations as solution

to this is in society’s best interest, therefore revised copyright laws must effectively protect

creator’s rights.