Cho, Hyun / Copyright - One of the Most Basic Rights Today/ Thurs34

Copyright – One of the Most Basic Rights Today

 

 

 

Copyright industry in Korea has already reached 80 billion dollars, which is the world's 9th largest, and its domestic musical copyright business has grown to 500 million dollars industry in last year, according to Korea copyright association. As the national intellectual property market has shown rapid growth during last decades, Korean government has newly established number of relevant laws and regulations and initiated official exam for licensed copyright manager since 2010. This trend shows the surging demand for protecting intellectual property business nationwide, which has already been hot global issue for last several decades.

 

However, despite these governmental efforts to safeguard copyrights, the nation still has been invading the rights, which seriously damage the industry with 20 billion dollars loss annually. The musical copyright industry suffers from the most devastating loss, since people illegally download and share music files. I oppose to this prevalent trend of encroaching musical possession for following reasons.  

 

First of all, downloading and sharing music off Internet is simply unethical behavior, nothing more than robbery. Not only the material property, but also intangible ones such as copyrights, should be protected because artists, musicians, or writers for them must have spent lots of time and energy on producing their feats. They have right to make profits by their work and this right cannot be invaded, unless one gets producer's permission to utilize it. It is very common sense that one gets punished if he steals something, even a little snack in supermarket. What makes difference with this from illegally downloading and sharing music files? Nothing, definitely.

 

Secondly, unlawful downloading severely threats the principles and mechanism of capitalistic system, which is widely accepted by the most of countries today. Some might claim that freely obtaining music files should be allowed, since inventor does not need to spend additional cost for manufacturing and distributing MP3 files. They might think the inventor is too greedy to take profits from these easily and freely reproductive computer files. However, I would like to warn them what they think is anti-capitalistic idea, which seriously harms all of members in whole society. As it is obviously examined by history, all communist nations failed to thrive their economy by equal division system, which impedes one's creative thoughts and lowers work efficiency. One's contribution to his or her property should be respected, rather than robbed. The latter only works in communist nation, such as the last survivor, North Korea.

 

As you can see from previous paragraphs, it causes many serious and negative results to download and share music without permission from inventor. It provokes unfavorable situation on both ethical and realistic matter, which indicates people must not invade others' intellectual property. Even if it's not likely to happen that people pay for every single files of MP3, the free downloading practice should be corrected to further our own benefits and rights in long term perspective. That is the long, but right way for us to go.