The internet is a giant gateway that connects people all around the world. It's a place where people can post a thought that they are thinking and other people can respond to those thoughts. It's a place for knowledge to be shared among people of all ages. On the internet, you have the power to publicly display your thoughts and opinions about whatever you'd like. A lot of freedom exists on the internet but when you have that much freedom, there has to be rules put in place so that the freedom can be maintained. Like everything else in society, we have rules put into place known as laws. These laws aren't there to make our lives miserable or to prevent us from achieving our goals in life. They are put in place in order to make sure our lives are healthy ones and that we can live in a peaceful community. In order for a thing as big as the internet to exist in our lives, there also has to be rules to make sure that the internet is maintained as a peaceful environment for people to use. A lot of laws exist on the internet that coincide with things we do daily. One of these things is called a copyright law. Copyright is a system put in place so that when someone comes up with any idea, it can be prevented from being stolen. It's a way someone can "put their name on" something. If a copyright law is broken (someone takes the idea and calls it their own) then the person who took that idea can be penalized. A lot of copyright issues occur on the internet and have to be dealt with. How would you feel if someone took your idea and put their name on it? They would take credit for all your hard work and that wouldn't be fair. Many websites would have to follow these copyright laws in order to stay online and avoid lawsuits. Different websites that follow these copyright laws are Google, Flickr, etc. In fact, these laws have been in question recently when a company known as
Viacom sued Google for not penalizing their users for copyright infringement. Google owns a website we all know and love called YouTube where users are allowed to "Broadcast themselves." Users take advantage of this phrase and create their own videos that are personalized to their liking. Many huge companies such as Universal Music Group, Ultra Records, and
Viacom upload their own copyrighted content onto YouTube as well for other users to enjoy.
Viacom owns the rights to many media based ideas such as movie rights, music, tv shows, etc. Being such a huge company, they have been hitting YouTube with charges against these copyright laws being broken. According to
Viacom, YouTube has not been putting their foot down towards the users of the website in order to stop copyright of
Viacom's media. This is a big issue because it has been affecting the users of YouTube and making a lot of people angry. YouTube took this lawsuit into consideration and have been putting in place DMCA's against any video that may have material referencing copyrighted material. A
DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It enforces US copyright laws and will force you to take any copyrighted material you have on YouTube to be taken down. YouTube employees have been taking down videos left and right without any show that users are even using copyrighted material. This is a huge issue that still is being sorted out as users are now "false-DMCAing" other users in order to show how YouTube doesn't care for it's users and will take any videos down in order to avoid being sued again.
*This picture shows that it really is important to be unique and not take other people's ideas. Do it yourself!These copyright laws and DMCA's can show the significance of why having something that is under copyright shouldn't be used on a business' website or any other internet service. That business can get into a lot of trouble and even be forced to take down their website. These laws are something every person on the internet must know when they are publishing media that is not solely created by them.
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