There are different forms of intellectual properties which should be treated differently. Patents were formed in order to protect intellectual properties and provide inventors the legal right to exclude others for reproducing or incorporating their properties for certain amount of time; in return, the technology would be disclosed to the public. At a first glance, this seems like a fair system. If you invent something after years of effort, it would be unfortunate for someone else to copy your work and make profit off of it. This would encourage inventors to keep creating new technology and sharing it with the public which in theory would form cycles of inspiration and new creations. However, this system can be taken advantage of. People can utilize patents to limit certain products to themselves and make it harder for other people to use it or improve upon it. Sometimes corporation would continue the time limit of their patents by producing new patents with subtle changes. In this sense, intellectual property should be given less protection than physical property in order to push for more growth in technology. Another form of intellectual properties are copyrighted materials. Rather than patents which cover new inventions and ideas, this covers more of consumer ‘goods’ like music and movie. In this modern of internet and social media, it is relatively easy to get access to pirated content. The issue is how people deal with it. I believe that it is ethical for users to “test” copyrighted works of others, especially if the products don’t have a trial. Sometimes, softwares can be misleading and not be good as promised. But once the users decide to keep it, they should pay the full price of it. The producers behind the product worked for it, and thus they should be paid for it. I can understand why people would pirate expensive softwares like Photoshop, but I don’t think it is the same situation for music which can be ‘tested’ on YouTube. If people get access to files, I believe that ethically they shouldn’t share, even if they bought the item. Just because you bought a ticket to a show doesn’t mean that someone else can reuse it. On the other hand, if you want to import files from CD to iTunes for moving it to iPhone, I think that is understandable. As much as people want free things, they should also try to pay for the services they get. I believe that overall IP laws are too strict, at least in the United States. For example, Monsanto basically force farmers to use their seeds because even if a seed is found on their property which could have been blown over from nearby farm, they will be fined. They also must annually rebuy seeds instead of reusing seeds from previous crop. Furthermore, in terms of music and movie, people face a lot of backlash over similar tune or content. Given that there are 7.7 billion people in the world, I am sure some people will have similar ideas. For example, pyramids are found in different parts of the world. As long as people don’t blatantly copy each other or share direct content, it should be tolerated.
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