Laws, Rights, And Opposition: Steal This Film (2006)

Laws, Rights, and Opposition: Samantha Kustin Steal This Film (2006) fails to effectively evaluate the laws pertaining to piracy and the arguments both from creators who want their content protected and from consumers who want content to be more accessible to the public. To combat piracy, intellectual property owners lobby in congress for more copyright laws and protections. Some of these anti-piracy laws include the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Although, consumers have the legal right to use copyrighted material so long as they have a license or the use is considered fair use. However, there is some opposition against intellectual property laws because people feel that copyright prevents innovation

The Copyright Act of 1976 codified the fair use doctrine and defined the exclusive rights of copyright holders to distribute, copy, perform, display, and derive their works (Baase, 2013). This act protects intellectual property because it specifies who has the authority to use, distribute, and copy works. Plus, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) established anti-circumvention rules, prohibiting making, distributing, or using any tools to bypass access control technologies such as digital rights management (DRM) systems. This act prevents piracy because it criminalizes circumventing access control, even if there is no direct copyright infringement (Henderson, Spinello, & Lipinski, 2007). Fundamentally, copyright law is designed to encourage innovation and creation by protecting the value of creative works. However, despite awarding creators exclusive rights to their works, copyright law also grants others the right to use protected works if the use is considered fair

Richard Stallman, the creator of the GNU General Public License, argues that intellectual property rights impede the use and distribution of software. Plus, copyright opponents argue that open source models improve software quality and reliability. Thus, creators who oppose copyright may choose to employ a copyleft licensing model. Copyleft provides an open source alternative to copyright by allowing works to be copied with author permission with the caveat that all derivative works are also copylefted. (de Laat, 2005). Furthermore, Abigail McDermott (2012) describes how academic environments, libraries in particular, are negatively impacted by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Libraries and educators may circumvent digital rights management software to transfer works to a more disability friendly e-book format or to utilize a work in their lectures. However, these uses, which are considered legal under the fair use doctrine, are criminalized by the DMCA. The act also puts an unnecessary burden on librarians become experts on copyright law to avoid any infringement fines (McDermott, 2012). Thus, McDermott (2012) argues that copyright law is too restrictive and inhibits progress and freedom of speech, thus violating the United States Constitution. Additionally, Henderson, Spinello, and Lipinski (2007) assert that the DMCA limits the fair use doctrine and