The Fight for Copyright

A few weeks ago I was put into a group for a debate on copyright; unfortunately I was put in the group that was defending copyright which personally I am against. Needless to say my group won the debate but when it was over the teacher asked us which side we would have preferred and 90% of the class agreed that they were against copyright. During the research for the debate it showed that there were plenty of decent reasons to defend copyright and the reason against it were feeble. So instead everyone agreed that there should be a compromise, copyright should be enforced but with common sense and reasoning. I pointed out that my opinion that there is a fine line between a fair system and taking advantage. Who decides what is eligible for downloading and what isn’t? Who monitors the people that decide?  

Abusing the system is unfortunately why many government officials agree to strengthening copyright laws; many of these people don’t even understand illegal downloading altogether. So for a compromise to occur both sides would have to understand where each side is coming from. Yes the music industry is suffering because of illegal downloading, but how many of those songs have been taken from older songs and remixed? Yes creative industries are struggling to get by but doesn’t that get rid of the talentless fame hungry people and make room for people with actual individual talent? It’s unavoidable, the ‘copyfight’ will have to be resolved but when and how is yet to be determined, Pirate Bay seem to be leading the opposed of copyright and doing a fairly good job. If only they would be more diplomatic and persuasive maybe governments and industries would be more willing to listen to the reasons Pirate Bay believes in.

The way I see it, I pay to see films in the cinema (not the food though, unbelievably expensive), I buy DVD's and pay for my television licence as well as for cable channels. I feel as if I pay enough, not to mention all those people who pay for entering competitions or voting in a television contests. The creative industry is doing better than what they are pretending to be with endorsements and tours that bring in nice sums of money, which in the end is what they are fretting about. There is no need to panic all because so many people are sharing music files that the industries will become bankrupt,  Beyoncé's 'I Am....' tour  for example profited $108million hardly spare change. We need to look at the bigger picture, the internet is large and fast with constant upgrading and new software, copyright is becoming harder and harder to control and monitor the choice is whether the two sides of the debate form a coalition or begin a war but either way things will have to change.