Copyright Lecture

Jason Hardin, the Manager of Access Services, came to our class yesterday to talk to us about basic copyright information.  I thought he brought up a lot of interesting points, several of which are pretty controversial.  One thing he mentioned was how a former Trinity student was sued for copyright infringement.  According to Hardin, the student downloaded a somewhat obscure album of country songs and ended up going to court and paying somewhere around $15,000 for her crime.  Upon hearing stories of copyright infringement, it's easy to think that it could never happen to you and that you would have to really go out of your way to get caught for such a crime.  But hearing the story about the former Trinity student sort of made me reevaluate what I had previously thought about copyright infringement.  In reality, most (if not all) of us do it every day, especially because the internet makes ridiculously easy to obtain movies, pictures, songs, etc., in a matter of minutes.  And since violating copyright laws is so easy to do, it almost makes the law less real (or at least less personal).  When you picture stealing something, you probably don't think of clicking a 'download' button.  In the minds of most people, stealing takes considerable planning and effort and involves a tangible item.  

That's why I can't help but feeling slightly upset when I hear stories like the one about the Trinity student.  Our generation is so desensitized to the fact that it IS stealing that they (usually) don't even consider themselves to be breaking the law.  And out of the thousands and thousands of teens that violate copyright laws, it seems that only a handful of them are actually punished.  So when that one unfortunate student is busted for breaking the law and is forced to pay thousands of dollars, the distribution of "justice" seems a little off.  Obviously, a majority of people committing  a crime doesn't make it less of a crime.  And I completely understand why copyright laws are in place.  Copyright laws help stimulate our economy and work to protect people's ideas and creative works.  But the consequences of breaking the law (and getting caught, of course) seem to be on the harsher side.  And especially since I'm a college student, I know that the person who faced the law suit probably didn't have an extra 15 grand just sitting on his/her desk.  I feel like more time should be spent educating teens on what is and isn't legal, what the consequences of breaking the law are, and what some alternatives to downloading illegal files are.  Because simply lashing out at a few guilty individuals does nothing to deter copyright infringement - if anything, it makes it more of a high-risk game for those who ARE fully aware of the copyright laws.

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