Please, don't pick my rights…

written by Ikhwan Jamaludin (Intellectual Property)

This article is my intellectual property and it is also automatically copyrights reserved for me as an author of it. This is how copyright laws working. I have right on this article and it now has copyright that can last for my whole lifetime plus 70 years after I die. How I got this right? It was easy. I got this copyright protection because I created this article originally without any help from others and my work fixed in a lucid medium. Based on the reading of the CyberEthics book wrote by Richard. A. Spinello "copyright protects literary, musical, dramatic, artistic, architectural, audio, or audiovisual work from being reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder. Copyright law also gives the copyright holder has the right to " to prepare derivative works based upon the copyright works,". I like to respond on what I've quoted above. It gives us protection on our own work. We deserve to have it because we own it. Our work is worthy for us. What will you feel if someone picks your work that take a long time to create it and make money from it? And even worse, you do not get any credit for it. It is unfair, and it is not ethical. Cyberspace is very wide medium of sharing. We can freely share some works, download music, watch movies and do something that against copyright laws if we take it from improper source. Let me show you an example that makes Lessig worries with. Do you know who Marie Digby is? She is a singer that has a spectacular voice. She has an album at first, but it is not enough to make her popular on the public environment. But, after she sang a song, a single from Rihanna titled 'Umbrella' and recorded it as a video on YouTube, she became very popular with over 8 million views through over the world including my country which is Malaysia. It was an amazing job that became very popular without cost you anything, but is it legal? Being a popular person by singing someone song without any permission and make money of it? It against on what we discuss in the class and also against what Lessig thought. Through the reading of CyberEthics on page 92, Spinello worry about the media sharing file when he wrote "The ease with which these digital media can be shared is of great concern to many copyright holders, who fear that they will have to sacrifice revenues as they lose control over their works". It now happens in front of our eyes without we realize it. I do really agree about copyright laws. It protects our works and it appreciates us as an author. Nonetheless, some people do not agree about the copyright laws in the cyberspace and they think the copyright in the cyberspace is like an anachronism. I do not really support that idea at first, but sometimes it make sense to me. So, we have to find solution about this matter. It is a huge deal to think of like what Lessig try to convey us to the Intellectual property in a balance circumstance. It means it can be privately own and at the same time it also can be publicly own. So, it will be automatically balanced between copyright minimalists and copyright maximalists that have been described by Pamela Samuelson in CyberEthics page 92 and 93. It looks easy to be balance in right, but it is hard for us to do it rather than us just to think of it. You have right to decide it.