Global Content
I have downloaded illegal, plagiarized content in the past, but my pirating days are over. I used to pirate music and movies when I was in high school, simply because I; was poor, wanted it, everyone else was doing it, and didn’t have a moralistic understanding of plagiarism and copyright. These days, I have studied art and participated in uploading my work to multiple sites, I have studied copyright law, and have a good understanding of plagiarism to keep my artist group on Facebook safe for all the members and spread awareness and knowledge and hopefully change a few hearts. I have learnt how horrifying and disappointing it feels to see someone take credit of a good friends artwork they spent years to craft their style and technique, and poured their heart into their characters, only to have it completely snatched away by the click of a mouse, I can’t begin to comprehend how horrific it would feel personally. I am quite passionate about protecting artist’s rights to their work and intellectual property, being through university studying art, with copyright making a fair chunk of the course has well educated me and further changed my mind on whether downloading from the internet is ok. With art, there are mostly just positive outcomes of copyright laws, although there are of course negative impacts as well. Positives include basic rights to the artist, their work is protected from being downloaded and sold without consent, and therefore protects their income, of which artists generally make very little of. It also protects their intellectual property, of which they can also lose money this way, but often it is more personal to the artists and they don’t want their property misused in a demeaning way. Negatives are most distinctly that the work created and protected is less accessible, and usually has a cost. It is less accessible as it cannot be shared around as easily if it has strict protection, for example, sites like Patreon only allow people who “pledge” to the artist with money to see certain things. However, if an artist makes their work accessible, and is easily shared by sites such as Tumblr and Facebook, and Instagram, and protect their work with a watermark, they can more easily get their work and their name out there through global networks. However, people are always valuing money over time and skill, “…the more IT we have, the easier it is to access any given piece of information — for better or for worse.” (Doctorow, 2007) So instead of paying an artist for their time for an image, they are willing to sacrifice their own time, and use their own skills to photo manipulate a watermark out of an image so they can use it how they please. This seems quite backwards to me, as time is money, and the time they spent altering an image could have been money put towards the artist. The social pressure or freedom is very twisted when on the subject of art, it is not seen as worthy, and then has copyright broken over and over. Art is deemed as an invaluable use of money, but is still valued for its skill, it is an odd thing, and I do not believe a lot of people that illegally download music are musicians trying to make a living, I do not believe people that download T.V shows and movies are directors and producers, and I definitely do not believe those who download, forge, and manipulate art from the Internet, are struggling artists, otherwise they would have a better understanding of the impact their actions have, and the futility of their actions.
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REFERENCES
Doctorow, Cory, 2007, Free Data Sharing is Here to Stay < http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/sep/18/informationeconomy> accessed 5/10/2015
