Saturday, November 28, 2009

Legal Forms and Documents That Protect You From Copyright Infringement

With the worldwide adoption of the internet, copyright infringement has become one of the most common offenses in the media industry. Copyright laws are put in place to protect artistic and intellectual property. The laws are very specific and cover all types of print materials. Forms, legal forms, real estate forms, agreements, contracts all manner of legal documents are protected by copyright laws. Books, novels, poems, songs, articles all protected by copyright laws. Videos, movies, music again protected by copyright laws. It is illegal to steal or to use certain intellectual property or artistic property without explicit permission of the owner of that property. Yet it happens all the time, and very little thought is given to it. The reason the laws are not enforced because it is virtually impossible to enforce and is only enforced when something occurs on a grand scale.

Not to long ago there was a file sharing site that was in the news everyday. This file sharing site provided an arena where music could be shared amongst users. Basically a user would become a member by filling out a short membership form agree to the terms of service and would have immediate access to this website. The member would than be able to down load music that other members had uploaded to the site. If one member bought the latest CD and uploaded to the website , potentially millions of other members had access to this CD free of charge. The music industry was losing quite a bit of money. Clearly this was a case of large scale copyright infringement. Suffice to say in this instance the copyright laws were enforced and continue to be enforced in this forum. This is just one instance of copyright infringement online, it occurs everyday. Software is shared, music, movies, books all of it shared online, all of it clearly copyright infringement.

Term papers are another place where copyright infringement occurs regularly through plagiarism. It seems relatively harmless, a few lines copied without giving proper credit to the original author, but it is not legal and could wind up with an expulsion from school, though it very rarely does. This is another arena where it is difficult to enforce the rules, it would take an instructor many extra hours added to their work day to check each and every paper that they receive.

Enforcement is rare because it is difficult to trace every incident and because it is so prevalent virtually millions of people would wind up owing someone money.

James is an expert in writing about legal forms and documents that may help you when your in the search of the right legal document. He writes many articles about forms ranging from, power of attorney forms, real estate forms, and most any legal form that your searching for.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Kahn

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