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Key Issues Surrounding Copyright

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In this essay I am going to discuss the key issues surrounding copyright and why copyright is particularly important in today’s online age. Copyright is an exclusive legal right given to the creator of intellectual property for a fixed number of years. This means that the owners of the intellectual property are granted certain exclusive rights to intangible assets for example, music, literature, artwork, discoveries/inventions, symbols and designs (trademark). Copyright lasts for 70 years or for 50 years for sound recordings and broadcasts but this can be renewed by those who own the rights. The coming of movable type in 1436 caused a spread of books across Europe. Before Gutenburg’s printing press the number of books in Europe was estimated to be within the thousands but within 50 years this grew to around 10 million. With such a significant amount of literature around this created an immediate need for protection of …show more content…

Acts that do not infringe copyright are, those for private and research study purpose, copies, performance or lending for educational purposes, copies and lending by libraries, incidental inclusion and criticism and new reporting.[1] For TV producers copyright can be a huge issues, having to clear every piece of music, archive footage and all stills that appear in their TV programme, this can be tedious work and if the programme is repeated then the fees have to be paid again each time that the programme is repeated. Companies like the BBC are covered by music blanket licenses, this means that they pay a set fee once a year to PRS, this then allows the BBC to use music with in their programmes without having to clear it with PRS every time and without infringing copyright, although music reporting forms must still be filled in for every piece of music used in the programme and handed in to the producer.

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