The Copyright Law System In The Usa
What is copyright? Generally, copyright is a right for creators of musical, dramatic, poetic content (or any other content that can be considered “intellectual property”) to: own, sell copies, write more, and make money off their work. The authors are given “exclusive rights” for their work, yet there are limitations at times such as: fair use. Fair use lets the author’s work be used for: nonprofit educational purposes, comment or criticist of the work, or news reporting. But, intellectual property not being used for any of those purposes lies under the copyright law. In this essay I will go in depth about the copyright law in the United States of America and how it operates.
There are multiple purposes for copyright, the main purpose is to promote artistic/musical work by securing it for a limited time (70 years). Another purpose is securing your content and not letting users make money off of it (unless it's considered fair use). This is a law in the USA and breaking it may cost charges. Incidents of the law being broken are pretty common on media platforms largely on YouTube. YouTube warns creators breaking the law by using strikes, after collecting 3 strikes the user’s account is deleted or banned. Yet, for more severe situations the case is taken to court, where the lawbreaker can get a penalty up to 300,000 dollars and deletion of your copyrighted content. An example of that is a famous case where Art Rogers took an image of two men sitting with a line of puppies which was later discovered a copy of a statue by Jeff Coons. The case was taken to court and Art was charged with a penalty for copyright.
The copyright law has a ton of different opinions surrounding it. Most think it is good that there is a law supporting creation of new content and money making. Others think that the law is too harsh and could be loosened a little bit. I think it is good the law is that strict in the USA and having it be that way helps so many creative artist and creators share THEIR work. As the USA is one of the countries with a huge population and a lot of plagiarism a rule/law like this makes perfect sense to me.
So in conclusion I can say that the copyright law system in the USA is there to inspire you and many other talented creators and individuals to put your work out there and not be afraid by having the law on their side.
