Day 4: Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea

This was an interesting article on intellectual property rights and it was really very interesting. I thought that the introduction was hilarious. Who else but the French would steal a story about rats? Maybe I am being a little hard on them, so therefore allow me to digress. Intellectual property rights is a huge topic across university campuses and computer chat rooms. My stance on the subject is that I believe it is wrong to take something that does not belong to you. Therefore people, especially teachers need to be careful if they buy software, music, or anything else that has a software license agreement that only allows a certain number of users. It is really interesting to think about the huge impact that the digital world has brought to both copyrighted & trademarked materials. I have a good friend who lives in Thailand and he can get a copy of Windows Vista for $5.00 or a copy of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for $5.00. Until we can enforce intellectual property rights worldwide, I think that recording companies should back off of the local college students.

I think that it's interesting how bands such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have basically given their recordings away free online. A recent interview by Thom Yorke of Radiohead stated that why not let the fans be the first ones to review the record. Also, if you sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. If you're an emerging artist, it must be frightening at the moment. Then again, I don't see a downside at all to big record companies not having access to new artists, because they have no idea what to do with them now anyway.