These are the main promoters of protection for copyrighted music and movies in the United States which is moving for more control over the sharing of such material online. They might be backed by big business but they sure are making it difficult for many to get music that is not only royalty free but liability free. Many have tried and failed at this attempt but that doesn’t stop them from trying. They truly have the right to do so for the work they promote to protect are their own. We have heard about many issues regarding the matter and have been sick and tired of them ever since. There are a great deal of people who buy (really buy!!!) music for they realize the benefits of such. Added features such as free MTV’s and such give the small majority of legal owners of these music and videos value for the money they pay.

The problem started with the creation of the MP3 format for audio which revolutionized the way we keep and listen to music. Older WAV files took a lot of disk space and was kind of cumbersome to have stored on your hard drive. MP3’s allowed a full length song to have a average total size of around 3 to 4 megabytes opposed to their predecessor formats such as WAV that had them at around a couple of dozen megabytes limiting the amount of songs one can store. Other formats such as those used by proprietary software and Consumer electronics manufacturers have reduced the size even further but with some trade-offs such as sound quality and other issues. This would have been a good time to initiate control measures for as the issue was developing the internet was beginning to boom and spread to all corners of the earth. That meant, wherever you may be you can get your hands on the latest music files from a friend or a friend of your friend. P2P further muddled up the problem with people who are willing to share their songs in exchange for some they like from you formed communities and web sites that posted them as available for download straight from your computer’s hard drive. The proliferation of P2P download groups and sites (like Pirates Bay) were attacked and shut down by government people only to have them re-open in a couple of hours or days.

It might be too late to initiate control over media that is currently coming out of the market and being shared uncontrollably over the internet. The industry has suffered a great deal and those who buy original music are left without the edge ( the edge of being the first to own a copy of your favorite artist’s album). It may be too late, but we as users of the internet are left to be responsible in their use and sharing. We as parts of the greater internet community are expected to be responsible and accountable as such for without responsibility the internet would be a ruthless place to be in.

Tags: Copyright-Protection, MPAA, RIAA

Categories: Downloading Legally, Mobile Phones, Music, Podcasts, Providers, Resources, ipods

1 Comment

YouTube is considered to be one of the best sites for sharing stuff on the web such as video, Music video and video logs or simply blogs in video format. From humble beginnings in 2005, when the company was conceptualized by three former employees of Pay Pal it is now considered to be the best way to share video on the world theater. The final deal came when Google purchased the rights for the company to the tune of more than 1.5Billion US dollars worth of Google Inc’s stocks.

Media as a whole loved the free spirited approach of YouTube without the hassles of multi-million dollar advertising deals and many other legal stuff that comes with it. Though many treat it as a place where they can say or show anything, well think again. YouTube follows the rulings and provisions of the United States Copyright law and do take out materials that are categorized to have broken these said laws. Nudity and vulgar content is also un-allowed and they are removed from the site accordingly.

The control and freedom have to be balanced and the site has to ensure that the rights of all are protected whatever side they may be on. They are always open to new stuff that can be shared to the worlds billions upon billions of users who visit and upload stuff they deem necessary. The legal side of YouTube is that many people who are directly affected by the said site, celebrities remain very much divided on the said site and how it works. Marketing people love the site for they use it in a form or another to promote stuff they normally spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars in ad fees and many other costs associated with it. The Legal advisors on the other hand hate it due to the proliferation of pirated stuff on the site which cannot be taken out of circulation on time. Recently, the company allowed Media companies to ban their stuff and pull them from the gallery without prior approval from the owners or the company.

So what do we expect for the future of YouTube, well like all things that start out to be free and un-regulated it will mature into a site that satisfies most of the parties involved. So future moves by the site might mean more strict controls and other measures to filter out stuff automatically but there will always be detractors as with any other issue.

Tags: copyright-infringement, Copyright-Protection, Free-Video, legal-issues, youtube

Categories: Downloading Legally, Freeware, Photo Images, Podcasts, Providers, Site News, Videos

Leave a Comment