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Canadas Copyright Law Essays - Copyright Law, File Sharing

Canada's Copyright Law Essays - Copyright Law, File Sharing Canada's Copyright Law Canada's Copyright Law Canada's copyright law is one of our hardest laws to enforce. The reason the police have so much trouble enforcing this law, is due to technology. This law is very easy to break, and once broken, it is very hard to track down violators. So although some form of a copyright law is needed, the one we have has, too many holes to be effective. There are three main ways in which the copyright law is broken in everyday life. They is audio/video tape copying, plagiarism, and software piracy. The first, and most commonly violated aspect of the copyright law, is the copying of audio tapes for oneself and friends. Thanks to the invention of dual cassette stereos, this has become very easy. You simply take an original or even another copy of a tape, as well as a blank tape. Stick them both in to the stereo and bingo you have a new tape. You also just broke the law. Along with copying audio tapes, now we can copy video tapes almost as easily. If you hook two VCR's together, they can copy from one to the other. You could rent a movie form the video store, copy and return it, with no one the wiser. The problem with copying video and audio tapes is that for every copy you make the recording artist, the actors, producers and everyone else who collect royalties from the tapes lose money. If the companies start to lose money, they raise prices. Thus a vicious circle begins. As prices go up, fewer people buy original copies. If less people buy the original cassettes prices will once again rise. Another major form of piracy is plagiarism. The stealing of someone elses ideas or work. The biggest category of people who fall into here are students. Very often a student when doing a research paper will "accidently" forget to footnote his work. By "forgetting" to give the author credit, the student has claimed the work as his own. Another reason students may copy someone else's work is to sound more sophisticated hoping that if they use someone elses words it will sound better than their own. Generally, this provides an easy way for a teacher or the police to catch them. Teachers also plagiarize rather frequently. Very often a teacher will photocopy several pages from a book, in order to save the students the expense of having to buy the book for themselves. While this is a noble act by the teacher, in most cases, this is illegal. Unless the author of the book, gave consent for his/her work to be freely distributed, teachers can't copy it any more than students or anyone else can. The third category of piracy is Software Pirating. There are several forms which this can take. The most common form is very similar to audio/video cassettes. It is when someone copies a game or program from his/her computer to someone elses. As long as the two people have the same type of computer, (they both have apples or IBM's) this is a very simple process, so long as the programmer didn't put a bug into the program (a precaution they take against people copying their work). Another form of Computer Piracy is a "cracker". A cracker is someone who has an in-depth knowledge of computers and programming. He can then remove the "bug" that prevents programs from being copied. After he removes the bug he's able to distribute the software at his own discretion. This is in direct conflict with the copyright law, because the program was not meant to be copied thus the bug. It therefore becomes illegal to remove the bug. Like audio/video cassettes copying, computer games causes people to lose money. In this case, instead of it being the singer, or actors, it is the programmer, and the software companies who lose. This leads to the same vicious circle. More copies make higher prices etc.. The copyright law is hard to enforce likewise so are the penalties. If you are found in violation of breaking the copyright laws, you probably will only have to pay a fine. However, the fines can be quite substantial and depending where you are in the distribution chain (how many copies were made before yours) the fine varies, with whoever copied the original paying the most. In extreme cases, where a contract is enacted upon the purchase of the original copy like with Word Perfect, a

Globalization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 10

Globalization - Essay Example Globalization also allows businesses to take up cost cutting measures by outsourcing production to countries where they can avail the benefits of cheaper labor, raw material, equipment, processing etc. that being said, operating in an international market also poses a number of threats some of the major ones being compliance to laws of specific countries of operations and increased competition For example, Nike outsourced its production to Asia and was criticized greatly for not considering the significant amount of child labor used in the factories there. Thus, the need have a strategic competitive edge is imperative for success in this era of globalization. For governments, globalization is seen as a threat as well as an opportunity. On one hand it hampers the growth of local industries and adds the aspect of uncertainty to the economic construct of a country. This is why many countries make it difficult for foreign companies to enter and operate in the home country, as a measure to protect their local industries to promote self-sufficiency For example; China has restrictive import policies so that the local industry does not suffer as a result of increasing trade. On the up side, globalization opens doors to trade and investment, boosting the economy (Imf.org). It also allows greater consumer power of choice and the influx of foreign business helps in the development of technology and communication locally. Lastly, it helps in countries to maintain positive relationships with each other, contributing to world peace and regional harmony like the trade relationship between US and European Union aimed at bringing both regions together th rough trade. Agreements like the transatlantic trade and investment partnerships regulate and support such trade