Copyright Infringement

I took an online creative writing class a few years ago. One of my assignments was to write a poem and post it to the class discussion board to allow other students to critique it. I did beautifully on the assignment, I received a perfect score and the other classmates said nothing bad about it. About a year later I was reading the Poetry Anthology Journal. To my surprise, I found that same poem that I wrote in that creative writing class. I am trying to remember if I took my instructor’s advice on copyrighting the poem. I am almost positive that I did. I know that I didn’t sell it or give permission for it to be published. I am impressed that it was good enough to be in there, but I did not send it to that magazine. This is my intellectual property!

Intellectual property is something created in the mind of someone that is used for profit. These creations include inventions; art such as paintings, sculptures and music; literature such as poems and stories; and designs. There are two categories in the term intellectual property. They are industrial property and copyrights. Industrial property is things that are trademarked or patented. “Copyright protection is governed by Title 17 of the US Code and applies to literary works, visual art, dance, musical compositions, radio and television broadcasts, software, and other types of intellectual property” (Mahalo,2011). Copyright is the category of intellectual property poetry falls into.

Copyright infringement is the biggest problem that anything copyrighted faces. According to the National Information Infrastructure, copyright infringement is when someone takes someone else’s copyrighted material, copies it, and uses the material as their own. Copyrighted material gives the writer or creator sole rights to copy, modify, distribute, display, preform, or give permission to anyone to use the material. Failing to comply with this is considered a crime and the offender could go up on civil and criminal charges. According to the US Copyright Office, anyone who willingly violates copyright laws shall be punished under section 2319 of title 18 if this act was for private financial gain or commercial advantage. “Courts usually require a copyright owner to prove ownership of the copyrighted work and "copying" by the defendant to prevail in an infringement action” (NII, 1995).

Some acts that would be considered copyright infringement would include file sharing networks such as LimeWire to download free copies of music, movies, or programs. Another act would be burning copies of cd’s or movies and distributing or selling them to others. This also falls under anti-piracy laws. Taking the written work from an author, rewriting it and selling it as your own falls in the category of copyright infringement as well.

There are some acts that can make it so copyright infringement doesn’t work. These limitations can hinder any civil or