Copyright

The topic of this week’s lecture was Intellectual Property, Creative Commons & DRM. This involved looking into areas such as copyright and piracy.
There are several different forms of piracy; these include things such as illegally downloading movies and music. There are also counterfeit goods such as clothing and money. These types of piracy are costing large companies millions of pounds. Therefore in this blog I will look into answering the question, what effect is piracy having on copyright?
According to research by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property, at least 7 million people in Britain use illegal downloads. This is costing the economy billions of pounds and thousands of jobs. The research by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property also revealed that shared content on one network was worth about £12bn a year.
More recently Australian band Men at Work are facing a big legal bill after a court ruled it had plagiarised a Girl Guides' song in its 1983 hit, Down Under. Larrikin Music had claimed the flute riff was stolen from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree. A costs hearing will take place in late February, with Larrikin seeking 40%-60% of earnings from songwriters Colin Hay and Ron Strykert and record companies Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Songs Australia.
Here is a link to The Intellectual Property Office website which gives information about copyright laws
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy.htm
This also helps give an answer to the question asked in this blog because it shows how copyright laws have been broken.