News Social Issues Paper

New Social Issues Paper

The law tries to balance the rights of individuals with the rights of society. Intellectual property rights relating to online materials and new types of surveillance that is enabled by digital media are the two areas that make the law challenging. The way our society creates, distributes, and consumes media is constantly changing. With the constant changing, understanding the effects that the technological advancement have on our creative processes is very important. This paper will explain my views on the law achieving its given goal in balancing rights that involves copyright protection and digital surveillance.

The Ease of Copying and Sharing on the Internet

For the past few decades the Internet has become the main source leading to copyright infringement because it allows individuals to share their software television shows, music, movies, and other files at no cost. Downloading any type of media that is under copyright protection could also commit piracy. According to Hartman (2012), “constituting piracy includes even reading an email attachment that may contain materials that is copyrighted (Para. 3). With the constant creation of more powerful computers and faster broadband networks, this will only cause an increase in the number of individuals who illegally share and copy movies, music, and more . Because it has become easier for individual to download media illegally, copyrighted material is leaked more and more each day.

The Open-Source Movement

According to Bucy (2005), “The open-source movement basically refers to any free software that may be viewed, adapted, or modified by an individual” (p. 89). This is a worldwide movement that is composed of many individuals who have the same goals of successfully producing programs of high quality. Instead of utilizing open-source software that depends on content licensing, some developers instead composed of many individuals who feel that they are better off producing software with other individual who have the same goals of successfully producing programs of high-quality. There are many individuals who believe that open-source software is the best way to obtain software that is created by various independent programmers. I believe that major companies, such as Samsung, Intel, Dell, Apple, and others are increasing their investments in the open-source movement in order to help their company further their innovation.

Relationship Between Creativity and Innovation

Intellectual property is implemented with rights that enable the creation of inventions and other creative works. There is a crucial conflict between right restrictors (individuals who favor a decline in rights) and right enhancers (individuals who believes in maintaining and increasing copyrights that are in digital context). The argument