Ethical and economic considerations in intellectual property rights

• Have you ever borrowed a book, video, or audio book from a school or public library?
• Have you ever rented a video from a video store, NetFlix, or Video-on-demand?
• Have you ever borrowed from or loaned to a friend: a book, magazine, video, or music CD ?
• Have you ever recorded (without permission)part or all of a live performance of a play, dance, opera, music, lecture, comedy sketch, etc ?
• Have you ever made and distributed multiple photo-copies of copyrighted material?
• Have you ever made or bought illegal copies of commercially recorded music or movies?
• Have you ever uploaded a video to YouTube that contained music or video content owned by someone else?
• Have you ever included links on your own FaceBook page, Blog, or Twitter to a YouTube posting that contained music or video content owned by someone else?

Consider how each of the above acts might have impacted (positively or negatively) the author, publisher, or other rights holders to the original creative output.

Now, consider how each of these acts might have impacted (positively or negatively) the reader, viewer, listener, student, or teacher of any such original creative output.

How do you feel about your participation in these acts?

Disclosure: The CyberFiction site contains numerous opportunities to engage in many of the above acts.

Complicated isn’t it?

Now, share your thoughts with others by commenting below and/or joining the CyberFiction Conversation Google Group.