Abstract
This paper discusses the network communication and intellectual property right. Intellectual property right is granted to the owner of the product for the exclusive creation of the product.
There are two main reasons; intellectual property rights are implanted. First to provide with legal expression of economic and moral right of the owner of the creation and the right of the public to access the product of creators. Second, to promote the premeditated act of government to demonstrate their propagation and application of the result to contribute to social development and the economic system of the society. A new technique known as Digital Right Management (DRM) is used in movie, music and games industry to thwart the copy and protect the privacy of material.
Q1) Define Intellectual Property Rights. Identify three examples of technological intellectual property rights. Discuss the difference between patent and copyright in software. 4
Q2) Explain digital right management. Compare and contrast three different technologies used for digital right management. 5
Movie Industry 5
Music Industry 6
Game Industry 6
Q3) Why patents are considered an unreliable way to protect intellectual property right in software? 6
Q4) Suppose Acme Software wants to develop a program that duplicates the functionality of a program made by Best Software. Describe how Acme Software may do this without violating the copyrights held by Best Software. 7
Q5) Suppose your band has recorded a song and posted it as an MP3 file on your Web site. How can you allow people to download your music for noncommercial purposes while retaining your copyright on the song? 7
Q1) Define Intellectual Property Rights. Identify three examples of technological, intellectual property rights. Discuss the difference between patent and copyright in the software.
Intellectual property rights mean the legal rights granted to the owner for the exclusive creation of the mind. These rights result from the intellectual activity in the artistic, technological, literary, and industrial fields. There are two main reasons; intellectual property rights are implanted (Alin, 2014). First to provide with legal expression of economic and moral right of the owner of the creation and the right of the public to access the product of creators. Second, to promote the premeditated act of government to demonstrate their propagation and application of the result to contribute to social development and the economic system of the society (Alin, 2014).
The three most common computers related intellectual property rights are:
- Patents
- Copyrights
- Trademark
The patent right of the software provides the rights to the inventor of software to eliminate others from using, selling, making, and importing the software for a limited time period. This right of limitation is granted in exchange for the disclosure to the public of the software. On the other hand, the copyright provides the original owner of the software the exclusive rights to the software for a limited period. The concept of copyright can be applied to artistic products, literary items and a wide range of intellectual and other creative forms (Alin, 2014).
Q2) Explain digital right management. Compare and contrast three different technologies used for digital right management.
A new technique known as Digital Right Management (DRM) is a technique that is used to thwart the copy and protect the privacy of material. This involves computer coding that is accompanied by the copies of the protected work that limits the effort to copy content by the online users. The different technologies used in DRM is providing the technical solution to online copyright issue (Hengl, 2009). DRM technology is an attempt to impede the effort of privacy by using different technologies that will not give permission to consumers to share many files or posses too many copies of work that is copyrighted and protected under privacy laws. Technologies proposed for DRM include:
Movie Industry
Initially, the movie industry was only associated with movie theaters, where exposure to watching movie content was limited, and copyrights were protected but with the advent of new technologies the privacy rate has increased. In order to protect this DRM technology of Content Scrambling System (CSS) is implanted in DVDs. CSS uses many different encryption algorithms and various keys to protect the DVDs. A 15-year-old boy has cracked into the code of CSS and made the code readily available on the internet. The copyright protection system of CSS cannot be changed because anyone who has purchased a DVD player will need to buy a new hardware to play the same file with different copy protection. As a result, now, there is hardly any copyright protection of this movie industry (Hengl, 2009).
Music Industry
The development of the music industry took place so that musicians can promote their work, but the lack of proper system to protect privacy rights, the free downloads and copyrighted content available in CD’s is readily available. The iTunes developed by Apple Computer Inc. is a free downloading application through which users can download, play, and organize different types of multimedia including television shows, movies, and music (Hengl, 2009). The download of original music track costs US$ 0.99 per track while if the user is interested in purchasing the whole album, discounted rates apply. On the other hand, the television shows cost between one to four dollars. Recently Apple began to offer DRM – free music from certain music label at same price but improve the quality. With DRM, the number of transfers downloads and usage on the number of systems became restricted. There are many Apple users that went completely against this strategy. Even though DRM did demonstrate result, but now Apple has removed the factor of DRM from downloading of multimedia (Hengl, 2009).
Game Industry
Game industry has not seen the impact of DRM due to the online usage. Still the SecuROM privacy protection was developed by Sony to protect the copy of computer games.
Q3) Why patents are considered an unreliable way to protect intellectual property right in the software?
Patents are considered an unreliable way in protecting the intellectual property right in the software because the patent office has granted patents to many companies indulged in forgery acts and designing software that do meet the quality standards. This occurred because for decades no patents were given and the patent office became unaware of the prior act in the software design and development and now when the patent is given it does not comply with the standards (Cunningham, 2007).
Q4) Suppose Acme Software wants to develop a program that duplicates the functionality of a program made by Best Software. Describe how Acme Software may do this without violating the copyrights held by Best Software.
The Acme software company chooses to clean the space of the software development. This is done through development of two independent teams. The first team determines how the Best software designed that particular software and develops the technical specification of the software. The second team utilizes this information and then designs software. The second team is dependent only on the technical information provided by the first team, and the coding is developed based on that information and not with any internal information of Best software product. This way Acme software can ensure that the code does not get copied from Best software (Michael, 2014)
Q5) Suppose your band has recorded a song and posted it as an MP3 file on your Web site. How can you allow people to download your music for noncommercial purposes while retaining your copyright on the song?
My band can implement and purchase a Creative Commons License that is a DRM strategy that will allow people to download music for the noncommercial purpose, but we will be able to retain the copyright of the song. We can choose to make our work available online under a single license or a combination of licenses. For example, we can permit the non-commercial downloading of the music with full credits given to us while retaining the right to maintain the ownership of the music.
References
Alin, Speriusi-Vladi (2014) “General Guidelines Concerning The Relation International Intellectual Property Business Versus Human Rights And Civil Liberties” Annals of the University of Oradea, Economic Science Series, Vol. 23 Issue 1, p50.
Cunningham, Richard (Jul 2007) "The Copyright Law Act Of 1976 Is Still Relevant In Today's Digital Age.”
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/legal/article_987.shtml
Hengl, Suzanne (Feb 2009) "Prioritizing Resources And Organization For Intellectual Property Act Of 2008." Baker Botts L.L.P.
Michael Quinn (Mar 2014) “Ethics for the Information Age” PearsonAddison Wesley, 6th ed.
