Before Jason Hardin came to talk, I only had a general view of copyright laws. In some of my business classes, we had several discussions about the topic but not to the depth of which our guest speaker spoke. For instance, I had no idea that U.S. Copyright Laws date back to 1790 and are mentioned in the Constitution. Copyright laws were established to encourage people to be creative and develop new ideas, inventions and technologies. They were made as an incentive for creators which allowed people to protect their work and make a profit. As a business/management major, this totally makes sense on an economic level. With the encouragement of the copyright laws, when established, new technologies encourage growth and development; creating more jobs and reducing unemployment. Now looking at it from the legal stand point the law states that The term of copyright for U.S. published works is the Author’s life + 70 years. We can thank Disney and Sonny Bono for extending this period to 20 years extra. When looking at Disney’s case it makes sense that they would want to extend the copyright laws. Disney’s products are a major source of income, provide a lot of jobs and to be honest, it would be weird to purchase Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse from anyone else. However, Disney’s additional 20 years are almost up. What are they going to do next? If Disney no longer wins out in court, Walt Disney’s products can and will be produced by other companies and sold at lower prices, which is a huge competitive problem. Many disapprove of Disney’s actions, mainly those who would like to make a profit off of Goofy, yet from a business management view point, I would have hired Sonny too. I have more thoughts about the subject, but I think that was enough Macro, MGMT and BLaw for one blog.
Copyright Laws by Lindsey Neubauer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at lindseyneubauersblog-lindsey.blogspot.com.
I liked your post. It was concise and too the point. I laughed with your last comment.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that the copyright laws were actually in the constitution until his talk, and I think it's really cool that it is. It's actually a much more important part and central issue in the founding of our country than I would have assumed.
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