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One issue caused by the development of ICT is that of copyright.
When a person creates a piece of writing, or a piece of artwork such as a painting or a photograph, the ownership is theirs and they have certain rights to allow or charge authorised people to make copies. This also applies to videos, pieces of music and computer software. Unauthorised copies are cheating the owner out of a possible source of income.
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| ICT has made it easy for people to scan pages of books or
graphics, make copies of music or
computer programs, and to transfer them from one computer to another.
Digital information is easy to copy
and send to other people or download
from the Internet.
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In Britain, for example, copyright expires 70 years after the date of the author's death. | ||
Computer software is
particularly prone to abuse. The Copyright
Designs and Patents Act makes it illegal to...
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| However...
There are still many file-sharing sites that allow unauthorised copying and distribution of digital material (BitTorrent, Kazaa, Bearshare etc)...but some have already been closed down (Eg. WinMX) |
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