Copyright laws (lecture)

Copyright law is about getting the benefit for something that is you intellectual property. This means that you get the credit for your ideas in theory and protects the creator from others using and profiting from their ideas and creations. The use of downloading and internet stores like iTunes has really opened up lots of problems for copyright as it is harder to track down those selling yoru ideas or songs for example, but as the internet develops the controls are getting better and this seems to be becoming less of an issue. In the UK the applicable law is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and this is applicable to films and other creative media. More recently The Digital Economy Act has become law in the UK and this is itself being accused of being big brother ish and not dealing with the real issues, along with being very expensive. It is attempting to deal with tracking down the culprits but by trying to make it harder for them to avoid responsibility, there are accusations that it means that eg big bosses in a company can be held accountable for one errant employees actions. It is a start though, and I suspect there will be much negotiating til a suitable compromise is reached, this is of course important, without copyright there is no incentive really to design new things, it will be interesting to see how this develops.