Copyright and Fair Use

Copyright Piracy 

Brief

Copyright means that a person is utilizing someone elses’ work without their knowledge prior to the act. Many times, it is often that when someone is using someone elses’ material it not a malicious act, but infact a misunderstanding. Copyright Piracy is very similar to Copyright except it is the act of when someone replicates any copyright material and it is being capitalized on.

 

Consequences

According to Justice.gov it is said that the outcome of this act is:

1.      1 or more works with a profiting value of more than $2,500 is a sentencing of 5 years /or/ fined up to 250,000$ /or/ BOTH

2.      Previously pronounced wrong of this act could be charged up to 10 years maximum in prison /or/ fined up to $250,000 /or/ BOTH

 

Website Piracy

Zlibrary.com 

Z-Library is a website that is known for offering free digital eBook copies of just about any textbook possibly needed. They also provided multiple account plans that consisted: of 5 free downloads per day, 10 free downloads per day, and unlimited downloads any and every day.

 

This site has been in service since 2009 but its popularity grew in light of Tik-Tok the last few years due to influencers providing this site to its viewers to not only give them an outlet to purchase free textbooks if they do not have the funds and also just because its free and who doesn’t like free items.

         

 

The article on FastCompany.com shed light on the situation and that the government began to look into the site that was known for pirating known textbooks into e-book copies and profiting from them. In November 2022, the site was taken down and it’s creators Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova were charged with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering.

 

Personally, I feel as though the act was very intentional, but I honestly believe that there was no malicious act towards it except stealing the works of the authors. Yes, they stole a significant amount of ebooks from various authors, but they were helping us broke college students out by providing us with free books. They found a problem in world solved it (illegally), but all in all they did help others, though the action was wrong.

Social Media Piracy

Youtube

The biggest site and or app used for broadcasting and viewing videos of any genre is known as YouTube. YouTube is an outlet that increases in some years in numbers and in others it depletes, so in a sense, it never really dies.

 

Influencers on YouTube are constantly being demonetized for copyrighted music and other products in their videos rather it’s a second-long clip or a minute-long clip.

clip starts at 0:32 - 1:01

                         

Ultimately, when their video is demonetized, it means that the content is taken down from the site in which they are not able to gain monetary value from it. Not only is unintentionally wrong, but YouTube also protects its creators by taking down their content instead of creating a criminal offense.

 

This act does not deliberately cause harm, but it is unlawful in a way. If these measures are taken for minor incidents like such, then explicit content rather than its imagery or wording should be treated as such, though it is the measures aren’t as drastic.